Wikis In Plain English

Wikis In Plain English – This is a MUST watch video if you are new to wikis.

Technology is a powerful tool, and as it becomes more affordable, there are more opportunities for it to be used in the classroom. Online platforms such as wikis and blogs are platforms that allow students to consume and produce their own content online, whether as a group or individually.

There’s so much I’ve learnt over the past few weeks in my Writing for E-Media class; from writing for the web to photo stories to podcasts and now wikis. Oh my, creating that group wiki and finding content posed a challenge but it was a fun experience. But given that I’m aware of its challenges, the purpose of this blog post is to provide you with a simple guide on how to efficiently use wikis for its educational purposes to achieve maximum effectiveness.

A wiki is a Web page that can be viewed and modified by anybody with a Web browser and access to the Internet. This means that any visitor to the wiki can change its content if they desire. It’s so easy for people to log in and revise pages that wikis are becoming known as the tool of choice for large, multiple-participant projects.

What You Need to Know About Wikis:

A wiki is a collection of plain text files that allows users to create Web pages, all it takes is a connection to the Internet and a Web browser. When you click a wiki page’s “Edit” link, the script sends the raw  text file to your browser in an editable form, allowing you to modify the content of the page. Pressing the “Save” button sends the modified text back to the wiki server, which replaces the existing text file with your changed version for all to see.

Wikis offer a powerful yet flexible collaborative communication  tool for developing content-specific Web sites. Because wikis grow and evolve as a direct result of people adding material to  the site, lecturers can easily check for a student’s involvement in a group or group activities in general. Since wikis reside on the Internet, students can access and participate from any location, provided they have Internet access.

Wikis could be classified as the easiest and most effective Web-based collaboration tool in any digital classroom. Its simplicity provides students with direct access to a site’s content, which is crucial in group projects. A wiki’s capability can show the evolution of thought processes as students interact with the site and its contents.

The possibilities for using wikis as the platform for collaborative  projects are limited only by one’s imagination and time. Wiki enabled projects can provide various levels of site access and control to team members, offering a fine-tuning element that enhances the teaching and learning experience.

Like any other digital tool that we interact with, wikis also has its downsides. Given that users can modify the content of a wiki (add to, edit and delete content) allowing such manipulation of the site’s information carries some risks. Thus, wikis are often monitored to ensure that inappropriate language, spam and incorrect or inappropriate content are not allowed. This can be both time-consuming and personnel-intensive. As a result, many wikis require authorization so only group members can modify content.

Now that you have garnered quite a lot of information, be sure to check out my wiki entitled “Tastebook – The Palette’s Ultimate Guide”. This can be found on wikispaces.com. Enjoy!

The famous wikipedia icon