Wikis In Education - Leadership Council

Wiki and Edit: Four-Letter Words That Can Change Learning Leadership Council January 21, 2009 Corinne Carriero and Ellen Robertson

Wiki Defined
Collaboratively edited body of work
Created by Ward Cunningham in 1995 as an easy publishing tool
Short form of “wiki-wiki”, Hawaiian for “quick” bus system
Part of Web 2.0 (Read/Write Web) toolkit
Blogs
RSS feeds
Aggregators
Social bookmarking
Photo publishing sites
Podcasting and vodcasting

Wiki Characteristics
Created in real time
Organic and democratic in nature
Everyone could be “editor in chief”
Considered “open source” – no one owns it
Everyone together is smarter than everyone alone
Everyone could:
add
fix
erase
start

Power of Wikis
2004 tsunami that killed 175, 000 people:
1st post appeared 9 hours later as a beginning wiki
24 hrs later---edited 400 times with photos, charts, lists of dead
48 hrs later---edited 1,200 times and included video of wave itself
Forget CNN—this was the most comprehensive info of all media

Types of Wikis
Wikitextbooks
Wikirecipes
Wikitravel
Wiktionary
Wikinews
Wikiquotes
Classroom curriculum wikispaces
A Wiki of wiki authoring sites http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SiteList

“ Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”. ~Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, 2004

Most famous Wiki: Wikipedia
Who is an authority?
High profile errors
“Cream” rises to the top or curdles
Collaborative efforts of the group determine veracity
Wikipedia has been called “Whackypedia” but this name is not warranted!

What a wiki looks like
Some examples:
Graduate Course Held by Wiki
High School Science
Curriculum wikis

Basic wiki components
Editable pages
Ability to upload documents
Ability to link
Ability to invite editors
History of changes
Revert back tool

Wiki’s power in education
Teaches students collaborative construction of knowledge
Edited body of work becomes reference tool for others
Teaches negotiation skills
Teaches publication skills
Teaches students how to create and work as a community

Wiki’s power in education
In summary –
Provides opportunity for students to engage in authentic, purposeful work

Why use wikis in the Classroom?
To collect and disseminate school information
As a tool for articulation
To amass and publish tailor made resources

Why use wikis in the Classroom?
Great motivator for students
Easy to monitor
Allows for creativity and innovation
Encourages participation of all students
Promotes communication between students, teachers, and parents
A new, interesting way to learn

Educational Uses of Wikis
Simple websites
Peer-reviewed projects
Group projects
Manage school and classroom documents
Classroom discussion and debate
Teacher collaboration
Post classroom assignments
Collaborate with other classes

Some specific classroom uses
Create a classroom website
Create a class newspaper by wiki
Create a book by wiki (group authoring)
Course review
Have students use a wiki to plan details of a field trip
Let students manage a project: tasks, goals, responsibilities, and so on

More classroom uses
Collaborate on an international unit, or an e-pal exchange using a themed wiki
Project development with peer review
Track a group project
Presentations

Some wikis are questionable resources for research
Anonymous authors
Student-posted information may be modified/spammed
Vandalism
Filtering
Challenges of Wiki Use in Education These challenges come into play with public wikis! Educators can use PRIVATE wikis to get around them.

Free Wiki sites (special considerations for educators)
wikispaces.com
pbwiki.com

How can administrators use wikis? Let’s brainstorm!

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Wikis In Education - Leadership Council

by Corinne Carriero on Jan 20, 2009

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Wikis In Education - Leadership Council — Presentation Transcript