The Wonderful World of Wikis

The Wonderful World of Wikis

I haven't written in my blog in a few days because our next assignment for Emerging Technologies is to design a wiki.

Yes, I've heard of wikis, or at least phenomena like Wikipedia. We've worked on building a wiki in my last class. This time we have the opportunity to use a wiki for other than education purposes. More on my choice for a wiki later.

Wiki's open editing style has both benefits and pitfalls in an educational setting. Teachers are uncomfortable with open internet access to classroom assignments and giving students control over actually editing items that the teacher may add. But that is the whole beauty of a wiki. It does give students the power to collaborate on a more equal footing. As far as open internet access the security of the wiki is up to the discretion the administrator. A wiki can be open for public viewing or secured to be viewed only by those with emails added to security. Wikis are user friendly, and can be started for free (Did you hear that! FREE) with sites like pbwiki, wetpaint and wikispaces. How can this be of benefit to education? WOW!! Let me show you some information I've found.

If you know nothing about wikis, here is a simple but effective presentation called "Wikis in plain English" by Lee LeFever http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=c04c7bfc822caf7c7459

My search for information on uses for wikis in education brought me to a blog by Stewart Mader, author of Using Wikis in Education . His blog entitled Future Changes has many insightful articles demonstrating the effectiveness of wikis in both the educational and corporate settings. See: http://www.ikiw.org/2008/04/10/interview-the-state-of-wikis-in-education/
This particular article attracted me because I wanted to get an overall concept of wikis benefits in education. I especially enjoyed reading about the suggestions for wikis in the classroom. We have such an opportunity to broaden our educational horizon, to make our students collaborators, this type of medium can ready our young people to the global market. Mr Mader calls himself a wiki evangelist. If you follow his blog you will see why, find many more interesting articles on the future of technology.

Another great internet site I found in my search was "Wikis in Education " a wiki resource through Wetpaint http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/?t=anon a fantastic collaborative site for teachers and... its a wiki! Educators can search for curriculum used by other educators with wikis to build on lessons and share ideas.

So, you might be wondering what I chose as my project. Since I am a co-leader of a Girl Scout Troop and we've been dealing with some communication problems (the girls aren't telling the parents about activities and the parents are in a "drop-them-off,pick-them-up-but-never-stay-and-help zone). My wiki is for my Troop. The girls are enjoying the online discussions. It's not without its glitches. My add-ons came off my laptop which uses Windows Vista. Some of its programs are not accessible for older Windows versions. Also the first window can confuse people. I've received a few "What do they mean by enter a password?" telephone calls and emails. I've also found small features I've taken for granted like "cut" and "paste" don't work well on the pbwiki editing section and I would love to have the Girl Scout logo as a background but I can't seem to get anything but the standard white to work. I'm just starting up the learning curve when it comes to wikis but I have to tell you, I've become an evangelist too! I'm sold!