Orkut

The wiki I found was through Google. It's called Orkut & it allows you to create "communities" aka wikis. I actually used this wiki my freshman year in college for a class. I thought it was useful in helping the class communicate with each other about assignments. The community that I chose to create to show to 302 was titled "Family Vacation". I can choose whether or not this is a private community. I could invite my family members to start discussions about our annual family vacation without the public Orkut members seeing it. In the classroom, I think that I could use this wiki for a "pen pals" type of activity. I could invite members of another classroom in the country into my classroom wiki and the children could communicate back and forth about what they're doing. Maybe myself and another teacher could collaborate on a lesson and then have the kids talk with each other about what they think of that specific lesson or unit as it progresses. I remember when I was a kid, I really enjoyed communicating with students in other places that were far away from Iowa. It was interesting to get information from other parts of the country or world. As far as online documents go, I would use Google Docs. I've used it numerous times and have not had any problems with it. It's another awesome way to work on assignments without having to be physically present with a group. You can also use Orkut at the same time to start a discussion forum about the Google Doc.