Wikis

Wikis
Wikis are excellent tools for collaboration. When wikis are used students learn to collect and share information as well as publish and negotiate.

This short video from Common Craft explains Wikis in Plain English

According to Wikipedia, the most well known wiki, “A Wiki is a group of Web pages that allows users to add content, but also allows others (often completely unrestricted) to edit the content.”

Wikis were invented in 1995 by Ward Cunningham who defined a wiki as “the simplest online database that could possibly work.”

Wiki – short for wiki wiki – comes from the Hawaiian term for quickly or super fast. In a nutshell, a wiki is a website that allows a user to add content, but also allows that content to be edited by another user. Wikis are community based and easy to use. If you can type an email or create a document in Microsoft Word you will be able to create a wiki. Wikis can include text, audio, and video and users can look through the history of the page to see how it developed. In addition, users may revert back to an earlier version of a page.

Wikis in Education as a tool for collaboration
Wikis can be very useful for the classroom teacher. Any time students collaborate on a project, wikis should be considered as an option. They work well as a means of sharing and editing data for the creation of collaborative knowledge. Wikis also provide users with a central spot to gather their work.

These are a few ideas for using wikis in the classroom:

• Have students publish notes on a wiki. All students would benefit as they would be responsible for making sure the content was accurate.
  


• Student created encyclopedia. Each student would be responsible for publishing articles and editing the work of others. Check out Mrs. Cassidy’s Grade 1-2 Dinosaur Wiki
  


• Creative writing assignments and peer editing - You could create a page with an introduction and then let your students publish their writing assignments on a wiki. Students would be responsible for editing the work of their classmates. This would allow them to correct spelling and grammatical errors as well as develop or revise other writing traits.
  


• Wikis work great for posting meeting notes or conference planning.
  


• Teachers can use wikis to supplement the curriculum. Take a look at the Houghton Mifflin Technology Resources wiki.

• Wikis Provide Unique Collaborative Opportunities

More about wikis:

Wikis
Wikipedia page on wikis

Wikis in Education

Wiki Ideas for the Classroom

The Power of Wikis in Higher Ed

Wikis in Higher Education: Pros, Cons, and How-Tos

Wikispaces for Teachers
Start a wiki in 30 seconds

Want to create your own wiki? Try using PBWiki – Yes, PB stands for Peanut Butter. According to the developers creating a PBWiki is as easy as making a Peanut Butter sandwich! At any rate, this is a great educational tool that is easy to use.

Go to PBwiki and create a wiki
http://pbwiki.com/education.wiki

Wiki Ideas for the Classroom by Will Richardson
http://weblogged.wikispaces.com/Wiki+Links

There are many other wiki resources – some are fee based and some are free:

SnipSnap

SeedWiki

Wikispaces

Wetpaint

Add a comment about your wiki exploration. Remember you will need to have a Google account to do this.