A “Wiki Wiki” Overview

What's a Wiki?

Wiki’s are truly interactive websites that allow anyone who is made a member of the site to create pages, delete pages, edit new or existing pages, and upload and delete digital documents and files to or from the site. This level of interactivity is what differentiates a wiki from a traditional website or blog. Once a wiki page is created by an organizer, this person may invite other interested people to subscribe to the site as well. Once they are accepted as members, the invitees are able to alter or add information at will.

To maintain the integrity of the site in terms of validity and “community standards”, all changes are documented in some form of revision “history”  that keeps track of who made the changes and when.  Organizers can choose to make their sites fully public or maintain limited access to members who must log in and use a password to access the site.

My own experience:

After spending sometime exploring various wiki farms and reviews of their services, I settled on Wikispaces. Many farms have educational services and educational packages for school use, but what I liked about wikispaces is that the free trial versions, educational wiki’s   and the paid subscriptions allow you to choose whether or not you are going to run advertisements and the degree to which you want to make the wiki public. Other farm sites like Wetpaint.com used to offer this option to educators, but are no longer able to do so as this became a cost issue for the company. Currently,  I am using a "trial version" but as I have been exploring more possibilities for using wiki’s in my own classroom I plan to upgrade to a free k-12 plan very shortly.

Getting Started:

Signing up was very easy and step my step tutorials to get started are available on site. I found the interface easy to navigate even before clicked on the tutorial, and was able to establish a home page within minutes of establishing my account. I was able to customize the look of my site using template layouts (they call them “Themes”) much like the layout options available in Blogger.

Setting up my pages was also an easy task as the ability to create pages, add and edit content, and to hyperlink between internal pages and external links does not require any prior knowledge of html programming,  (however some advanced features do require an understanding of Cascading Style Sheets or CSS). I also set my permissions for viewing to “Protected” which allows for public viewing, but only member access to edit or add information on the wiki.

Creating a “logo” or makeshift “banner” in Illustrator/Photoshop, I named my wiki “A Meeting Place” since my intentions was to use the site to plan a get together with my friends  (I thought I would try to duplicate the scenario used in the Wikis in Plain English video). This actually became problematic since the new email address was not allowing my email notices to be delivered to my friends’ inboxes and I later found out that the wikispaces invite notices would only show up AFTER my friends became Wikispace members. With time not on my side, I changed plans and decided to set up a wiki as a discussion, exploration, and presentation forum for students instead.

Personally:

If I had more time to indulge my own interests, I would use a wiki in a similar fashion as "Sarah" from the "Wetpaint video". The opportunity to discuss and learn from others who share my passions for things like cupcakes and zombies would be an incentive to start or join a wiki related to these areas of interest. I also like the idea that a community of users contribute to the content. In this way, unlike a blog shaped by my own experiences and perspective, the wiki site would become as much of a resource for me as it would be for all the other members (and I would not have to be the “talking/blogging” head in the virtual room).  

Professionally:

One of the objectives students must demonstrate in the new CTS COM Tech curriculum is the ability to participate constructively in a critique of their work and the work of others. I decided the wiki might be a way to conduct these critiques online (and maybe in a less “intimidating” manor). I created wiki pages to provided background information and criteria for evaluating what makes a strong composition/image in Photography and would make these available to the students.

The interactive Wiki format allows students to not only add comments and ask questions of myself and their classmates but it would also allow them to put their own "spin" on the ideas we were discussing (from both the classroom discussions and the online discussions).

Students would eventually create their own pages within the wiki (similar to the example I used for the Dorthea Lange photo critique), and using the discussion widget to add a discussion box to the bottom of the page to conveniently keep track of comments made about their work.

Taking the time to assign logins and usernames would also help me to administer the site and watch for inappropriate use if it occurred, but I would hope that students who were participating would gain a sense of ownership of the site as well. Giving the students a sense of control over their own learning experience and providing the means for them to contribute to the building of the wiki would hopefully create a feeling of responsibility  that would minimize the need for intervention on inappropriate postings. (Richardson, 2009).

I could also see students researching their favourite photographers or creating their own in-class “Wikipedia” related to the subject of photography. As they continue to help build the site, they would be participating in the construction of their own knowledge and learning from each other in the process. The scenario being created lends itself well to a constructivist theory approach to teaching and learning, while also helping students to develop skills for collaboration within the community of learners.

The access to a community of learners also extends to myself in terms of professional development. While creating my wiki, I searched for othe wiki’s that dealt with developing or using Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning. I am now a member of the “Web tools 4 U 2 use“ wiki , which is a site for library media specialists and teachers to share ideas and insights on how to use these tools in the classroom. This is another reason that I plan to continue my membership with this farm as I am finding interesting discussions that I hope to participate in.

I think it is this potential for collaboration and connectingwith other educators that really “blows me away”. The fact that we have access to a technology  that allows me to collaborate with educators that I may never have had the opportunity to meet in person and that together, WE could be developing ideas for leveraging these new technologies is an astounding concept to take in.

References

PBWiki (Creator). (2007). pb Wiki - What's a Wiki?. [Video]
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmByB0sIPog&feature=channel

Richardson, W. (2009). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd Edition ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.Sturtz, D. N. (2004).

Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M. & Rudolf, J. (2004). Educational Wikis: features and selection criteria. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/163/244