Wiki's in Education

What are Wiki's?


First off I should explain briefly what Wikis are."A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser." (Wikipedia, 2011) Wikipedia is a very common and widely used example of a wiki. (Wikipedia, 2011.) Check out this video it does an awesome job and giving a basic explanation for what wikis are and how they work.

Wikis in Plain English:

http://www.commoncraft.com/video/wikis


Wikis are a great tool to use in the classroom, especially if you want an assignment that is accessible through the internet. It allows students to work together, organizing, creating, and learning a topic without the constraints of working face to face during class time. I think using wikis in the classroom is great for things like study tools. This way the information presented on the Wiki is always there for the students to access at their leisure. It also encourages students to present their best work as they are collaborating and presenting their work to their peers. Wikis are therefore the perfect tool for creating group projects. 


There are several advantages to using Wiki's in the classroom:

• They allow for web based storage of work (you don't have to worry about dogs eating homework, or loosing assignments!)
• They require little to no technical knowledge. (although this assumes a basic knowledge of computers and internet research is already present)
• They can be accessed anywhere, anytime, by any type of computer as long as there is an internet connection
• One user can share his or her work with all of the users at one time.
• A wiki can be protected with a password so you don’t have to worry about the public viewing it. 

Despite the advantages there are some disadvantages to using Wikis in the classroom:

Most of the disadvantages of Wikis have to do with organization and setting clear standards for students contributions to the Wiki.

• Rules and expectations for the Wiki need to be clearly defined and often updated as the Wiki progresses and grows
• The Wiki's content needs to be constantly monitored to be sure that appropriate and accurate content is being uploaded.  This is a very time-consuming task, but is necessary especially if you want your student to be able to use the information on the Wiki correctly.
• Wikis requires students to be connected to the Net and have access to a computer. (This is only an issue if the Wikis are being assigned as homework, or if you expect the information to be accessible as a personal study tool)

All in all I think I would use wikis in my classroom, but I would be sure only to assign marks to a wiki or use it for important issues if I was sure all of my students had access to the wiki at home or had enough class time.
Here's and example of how I would use a Wiki in my science 7 classroom:  Create a classroom Wiki as a unit review or study tool, I would have the students contribute to a makeshift unit 'encyclopedia'.  Each student would be given a term or mini topic, to post about on the wiki. These “mini topics” would contribute to the larger unit topic and serve as a review tool for all the information covered in the unit. This would make study notes accessible to all students via the internet. Students would have to opportunity to add to or edit other students post in order to increase the overall knowledge base and ensure the most accurate and detailed information ends up on the Wiki. However, this wiki would need to be carefully monitored by the teacher to ensure the students are getting the correct information, and a set minimum contribution would need to be established so that everyone is contributing equally to the wiki. This activity would work nicely with the grade 7 Planet Earth Unit, and more specifically the Rock Cycle related learning objectives as there is little to no opinion involved in this topic, so it would all be facts posted on the Wiki (eliminating possible discrepancies among responses).