Media Mavens

Six months ago, if you asked me what a wiki was I might have been able to describe Wikipedia; but the explanation would have been derogatory.

“Wikipedia?” I might have said, “Oh, that’s just that online encyclopedia thing. But you can’t trust it; anybody can change the information on that site. I wouldn’t use it.”

Otherwise, I had no idea what a wiki was. And probably wouldn’t have known one if I’d seen it.

It’s amazing what we can learn when we want to. And even more amazing how our thoughts, opinions, and even vocabulary can change in months, or even weeks. I know mine have when it comes to wikis, and most Web 2.0 tools.

Now, four months later, I’ve learned just about everything there is to know about Wikispaces.com, and I’ve helped to create a wiki (although I will admit most of my participation was supplying copy for the pages).

And while I still look up additional resources to back up anything I find on Wikipedia, I no longer look down on the Web site as a waste of space on the Web (as if that space were limited). I’ve even been known to check a quick fact on the informative site.

Wikis – for those newly initiated into the Web 2.0 world – are still Web pages. They are simply pages that can be created and modified by more than one user. Wikis are collaborative, interactive, and widely used – especially for those who prefer asynchronous work.

They are also easy to create. The only tools needed are an Internet connection and Web browser. The technology behind wikis involves CGI script and plain text. These two are combined to create quick and easy Web pages. Actually, the word wiki means quick in Hawaiian, but quick-Web doesn’t flow off the tongue the way wiki does. Ward Cunningham of Microsoft coined the term (Educause Learning Initiative, 2005).

There are several sites that make creating a wiki even easier. One of the most popular is Wikispaces. I did my Tech Tip on Wikispaces, and learned a great deal about this user-friendly Web site. One of the most important things I learned is that Wikispaces offers free wikis to educators. This site: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers offers more information on free wikis.

There are a multitude of other sites that can help you create your own wiki. Some of these include: Wetpaint, PBworks, Luminotes, and Wikibooks a site for online educational textbooks.

And there are so many ways educators can use wikis – class projects, homework sites, online book clubs, group projects within a class, community liaisons, a lesson plan database, a way to share creative writing projects, and so many other uses. These are just the ones I’ve come up with off the top of my head.

But I did look up some educational wikis, just to see what other people have come up with using this technology. There is actually a wiki on Wikispaces that talks about how wikis can support education. You can find it at http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Articles+and+Resources. The first page is a list of tutorials, guides, articles, discussions, podcasts, and other resources to help you learn more about and better understand wikis. The first tutorial on this page, A Wiki Walk-Through, gives excellent ideas for wikis in subject areas like math, social studies, and foreign languages. Click on this link for some of those ideas http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/wikiideas1.cfm.

The other page of this wiki does exactly what it says it does; it gives examples of educational wikis. These are listed in alphabetical order, and there are dozens of them. For each wiki listed, there is a link to the wiki, the teacher’s name, the school (or a pseudonym), and a brief description of that wiki. Some of the ones I found interesting are:

Teenager’s Guide to Everywhere

• This wiki was created by ninth grade students in South Dakota. Using tags and a Google map, these teens have created their own travel guide, providing interesting facts about exciting places around the world. To choose the theme of your trip, or a specific locale, you can click on the map or on one of the many tags across the top of the page. Tags range from art to mystery to London to death, with other amusing themes in between. By the way, death takes you to a page about Auschwitz.

Ah Bon French

• This wiki is for middle school students who are learning French. There are eight chapters and two appendices, and each of these is divided into three segments and then lesson plans are provided. Not all of the chapters or appendices have a third segment, but all have a link to lesson plans. I clicked on the Chapter Six Birthday Parties segment and found a lot of words I’ve forgotten how to pronounce since college French, but a fun way for students to interact. You can also translate everything on this site into several different languages. I chose Japanese and was amazed by how quickly everything translates. And no, I couldn’t read a thing.

2^nd Grade Class Wiki

• It is impossible to resist looking at this wiki from Southern California. Each of the students has their own individual page that contains a personal narrative. Chloe’s describes her best birthday ever when she had a party at Build-A-Bear. There are also ABCs of different subjects like Health and PE, Social Studies, Math, and Writing. And, there is an avatar narrator.

I also looked at a few media center wikis and found that most don’t have a lot of interactive elements to them. The Woodstown Middle School wiki does have a list of book reviews, which would be an interesting addition, except the postings are all from teachers. But I do like the idea of posting different book reviews on a media wiki. Lack of interaction may be one of the downsides of wikis. People too scared of the technology or too scared of embarrassment to post something on the page. But one of the positive attributes of wikis is that they can be changed and edited. So if you realized later than you misspelled a word, you can simply go back and change it. Or someone else could do it for you. Of course, this is another downside. On public wikis, anyone can change the content. And a problem could occur if you created a brilliant page with all the information anyone could possible want to know about the Battle of the Bulge. Then, two days later, someone goes into your public wiki and says that the Battle of the Bulge is waged on NBC’s The Biggest Loser; and goes on to describe that show in great detail. But by having a private or protected wiki, this is less likely to happen. All in all, my views on wikis have changed dramatically in the last few months – primarily because I now know what a wiki actually is. But this new knowledge also has me thinking about various ways to use wikis. First, my mind is trying to determine how I can turn my Media Center Orientation into a wiki, and from there, who knows? The possibilities are as vast as potential Wikipedia topics!

Educause Learning Initiative. (2005). 7 things you should know about wikis. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7004.pdf