Journal 8: Wikis NETS-T (5) Artifact

A wiki is a collaborative website. It can be a single webpage or a collection of web pages where users who have access to it can post and edit content. It’s a place for creating and browsing through information, a kind of database that’s easy to create and update. The individual wiki pages are connected to each other through hyperlinks. The collection of the pages is the wiki itself. The most familiar wiki is, of course, wikipedia.

Wikis can be designed for private access by a select group of users, for example a business or classroom. In the classroom it is a natural tool for project work and cooperative learning. A group or the entire class can collaborate on a wiki. For example, a class could develop a wiki site based on a work of literature, as one class did on the book, The Kite Runner. The site includes information about the author, the setting (Afghanistan), themes, and significant quotes.

Here are some ideas to keep in mind when using wikis in the classroom that I gleaned from the Classroom 2.0 wiki tools thread, “Examples of Collaborative Project Wikis,” posted by Tanya Travis on February 2, 2009:

“We did the wikis mentioned above with up to 20 kids writing, typing, linking and adding pictures at the same time. We, my co-teacher and I, co-ordinated the saving. NO one saved until we told them to. Even though it's not the best option some of the typing can be done in Word while others are working on the wiki …”--Nancy Bosch

“I learned the hard way that if more than one student tries to edit a page at the same time only the first person who clicks on to the page will actually save. I also get around saving problems by having students work on different pages in the wiki” --Tanya Travis

“The easiest way to avoid the editing issues with multiple students is to create individual pages for each student. One of our teachers had her students doing a project on artifacts so we created an "artifacts" page and then each student created a link on that page to their own individual page where they will upload their information. This allows all of the students to go to the lab together and work on their project….”
--Mary Bless

If you need help starting a wiki, there were a couple of websites discussed on Classroom 2.0 that looked helpful. Wetpaint is a free resource that provides features from wikis, blogs forums, and social networks to help you create a collaborative social website. Wikispaces offers up to 2 GB of free wiki hosting in its basic package along with standard and WYSIWYG editing features.

For more ideas on how wikis can be used in the classroom, see other resources bookmarked on my “wikis” delicious tag (Wiki in a K-12 Classroom and Wikis in the Classroom).