Start with one classroom wiki and use it for a specific purpose, like for a weekly newsletter. You can branch out from there. This way you are modeling wiki use for your students and you can become more familiar with how a wiki works before you have students working on wikis.

Classrooms can have more than one wiki. The main wiki can be edited by just the teacher. Then, as needed, the teacher can create other wikis for projects. For example, Mrs. Abernethy's wiki is only edited by her. But on her wiki she links to wikis students collaborated to make, including the their Animals and Swine Flu wikis.

If you have students collaborate to create a wiki or wiki page, make sure there are clear expectations. You can find dozens of sample rubrics for wiki evaluation at Rubistar. It's often helpful to have students co-develop wiki standards.

One teacher suggests alternative partnering when working on wikis. Instead of putting strong and weak students together, put weaker with weaker and stronger with stronger. This way one student doesn't take over the entire project.

If students or groups of students are reporting similar information, create page templates ahead of time for easier formatting and focus for students.

Wiki vandalism can be a concern. Be sure to restrict editing privileges so that not just anyone can make changes. If your wiki is defaced or inappropriate information is added, you can click History to see who made the changes. Be sure to share this ability with students to deter them from any mischief. Reinforce to students that it is very important to keep their passwords private so that others cannot log into their account and post something they did not want posted. If vandalism occurs, it can quickly be erased by reverting to the previous version of a page.

Bill Ferriter, sixth grade teacher in North Carolina, has written Teacher Tips for Wiki Projects Part One and Part Two on his blog. In the posts Bill shares eight suggestions for integrating wikis into school work.