Wild, Wonderful, Wacky and Wuseful Wikis

WIKIS are an inspiration. I would use my wiki to help me gather all kinds of information to create a curriculum for teaching a filmmaking class to high school students. I would use the wiki to help me plan the class and to gather as many web sources for material as I could find. Since we don’t have a textbook, it would be as if we were creating our own textbook as we learned. The wiki would be an interactive tool for my students and I to figure out what we wanted to learn and where the sources of that information are.

I would use my students as a co-creator of the site. We would start with the AFI list of the 100 greatest films of all time (AFI.com) and have my students pick one film from each category. As my students did their work on this project, I would have them add that content to the wiki, as well as links to where they got their information. I think this would be an active lesson not only in filmmaking but how to use sources without plagiarizing.

I would also have the students use websites and other internet sources to learn about the camera and editing software we have. One of the first projects would be to film an instructional video about our equipment. When another member of the faculty or other students wanted to use the equipment we’d be able to give them the video to learn from. I think this would be a great example of learning by teaching others. Also in creating this film everyone would learn the camera and the software backwards and forwards.

I would also try to draw from existing lesson plans online and be open with my students where those ideas came from. The great hope would be that they would continue to draw from these websites to learn from lesson plans we would not be using. Perhaps I could even use their input on what they learned form other lesson plans to start to create an advanced filmmaking course.

We would continue to add the films we made to the wiki and the site could serve as a showplace for students work. We could also create a blog that would have the same films. But the films on the wiki become an ever increasing library for future students of the class to draw from.

We could also use the wiki to pull together and update information about film contests and film festivals that we could enter our work in. I think all of these uses would increase student interest in the wiki and create an incentive to create great content.