Wednesday, December 21, 2011

UMass Professor- Wiki Yankee Ingenuity


I have to thank my sister for sending this story my way earlier this week. According to Masslive.com, a UMass professor was recently nationally recognized for his history wiki.

For those who do not know, a wiki is a website on which a user (often multiple users) can collaborate to add and modify content using a web browser (like Wikipedia). Apparently, “wiki” is a native Hawaiian word meaning quick.

Robert W. Maloy, who is a senior lecturer at the UMass School of Education created a wiki absolutely full of information for history teachers. In fact, it is simply called resourcesforhistoryteachers. If you teach and love history like I do (bad history dork here), you should definitely check this wiki out.

Not only has Maloy compiled resources for all grades of history, including AP, but he has posted resources for electives like Government and Economics. Furthermore, he has correlated his resources with the Ma state frameworks (Awesome!!!)

Professor Maloy is the administrator of resourcesforhistoryteachers, but other history teachers and even students have contributed content to his wiki. This seems like a great idea. Creating an online resource like a wiki is a great educational experience for students. Not only do they do the original research, which is generally how history should be taught and learned, but they get to see how their creation changes and evolves as others contribute to it.

It’s no wonder that Professor Maloy’s wiki was recognized as a runner up by the 2011 Edublogs Awards, in the category of Best Educational Wiki.

As a history teacher and history geek, I have to give a lot of credit to Mr. Maloy. This site is really impressive and could be useful for so many educators and students. I certainly plan to check it often while preparing for upcoming classes and posts.

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