Pattyjane’s Weblog

About Wikis and their Use in an Educational Setting. One of the articles I read online, “Teachers New to Wikis”, covers many of the basics like, “What are Wikis?” “How can teachers use wikis?” “Appropriate spaces” “How can teachers introduce wikis to students?” “obstacles” and “getting started”. I learned something new about wikis in every sub topic and some assumptions I had were validated. So in “What are Wikis?” I learned that wikis are free online writing spaces that anyone can use and read. Anyone who writes a wiki has to accept the fact that someone may edit (I prefer the word, “revise”) (add, delete) anything they’ve written. In this way wikis are collaborative and can be a creative writing experience. I didn’t know that wikis can show a history of previous writings and edits. This is much different than the usual word processed document, where teachers usually only see the final draft, because teachers can go back and see the process of writing. Another important distinction is that no one author can claim the wiki as all their own writing. Instead, it is acknowledged that the wiki is a joint effort of the participating community of writers. In addition I learned that a wiki is all about writing, really. It’s not suppose to be a presentation space (like power point) or a blog, where no one edits but comments back. As I become more familiar with wikis, blogs, web sites, links, etc., I realize the importance of these differences.

I was most inspired by the part, “How can Teachers use wikis to facilitate teaching, writing development, and learning?” First of all, providing an alternative space for students to write will encourage them to write in the first place. It can also provide a space where students can carry on a debate or share information on a current events topic, subjects studied in class. I might use it to document debriefing of a unit or study where students take the K-W-L chart to reflect on what they’ve learned and continue to build on each others ideas. In the past, I’ve had the class write poems together with me at the overhead being the scribe. But with a wiki, students could go up to the poem and write when they are inspired or edit to make it better. One year, I had students put together a “text” book on the solar system. But with a wiki, students could collaborate on writing another kind of text, let’s say a “Civil War” joint diary where groups of students take on the persona of a few people effected by the events of that time. I could see as students learn more, they could inject period details creating a first person historical fiction account. Soon I will be doing a “service learning project” and I like the idea of students using the wiki format to jointly build a web site on the project. I like the ideas presented for introducing wikis to students, but for myself, I would first try it out on a project like one of the ones I mentioned above, and then wait and see. Though, I could see the possibility of some students getting upset over revisions made to their writing. When I do peer response groups for in class writing projects, I always leave it up to the author’s choice, whether or not to act on revision advice. A wiki would diverge from that writing protocol. I could also see students still claiming some ownership of the piece and keeping mental track of what they’ve written. I can hear them now, “I wrote that part!” or “Grace wrote that!” It’s a possibility that some students might deliberately sabotage others writing. And there would always be the question, How public should our wikis be?, to ensure student privacy. In this article, I journeyed to a link on wikibooks. I especially liked two ideas discussed in this article: One is the idea that wikibooks could replace or augment the traditional textbook in the same way that wikipedia has augmented the encyclopedia. Teachers could get online free (open source model strikes again!) “texts” in curriculum areas. They could also edit the wikibook and customize it to their teaching and student learning needs. A second idea I liked is the notion that wikibooks could augment the traditional academic publishing model. Usually academic authors have to wait for peer review before publishing, but the wikibook approach, permits the author to publish it online and make it available.