Abstract:

During the last two decades, national level ICT strategies and national curriculum guidelines for the use of ICT have been prepared in several countries. All the time new tools are emerging. Wikis are one tool (Web 2.0 tool) that can be used by students and teachers. Wikis allow participants to share information and experiences, to work collaboratively, to edit pages and to discuss and solve problems. Based on these guidelines, in this study, researchers designed a professional development program (PDP) for physics and chemistry schoolteachers. The program aims at helping teachers to adopt using wikis in teaching of Physics and Chemistry. The present communication aims at describing how teachers use wikis in their practice. The research reported in this study is qualitative, adopting an interpretative orientation. The participants in this study were twenty physics and chemistry teachers belonging to different schools. Two kinds of data collection methods were used in this study, wikis written documents and interviews. The results showed that schoolteachers used Wikis to support the learning of students outside or inside formal education, to promote collaborative work, as well as, individual work. Wikis were organized per class according to curricular themes or by multiple classes with an interdisciplinary common theme. Wikis were involved in Physics and Chemistry classes and in other curricular areas. Wikis made possible to integrate various classroom resources. The strategies used by teachers were diversified. They used inquiry activities, discussions, simulations or films, role-plays, knowledge application activities, lecture activities and problem-solving. Wikis allowed schoolteachers to follow and comment students’ answers. Teachers enjoyed the experiences, grew in their own knowledge about the use of wikis.It is important to communicate these findings to other teachers because they can plan their lessons with them in mind.

Keywords:

Web 2.0, Wiki, Physics and Chemistry, Science Education.