Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wikipedia project, has responded to readers’ questions at Slashdot. It’s interesting to get a look at some of the issues faced by the world’s largest wiki.
Category Archives: Wikis
Canonical Wiki list
I continue to consider how wikis can be used with students and have been second guessing my decision to install Mediawiki, the software that runs the Wikipedia. Not that Mediawiki isn’t powerful software, it’s just that it may be a little too complex. Now that Moodle has a built-in wiki module I’m also thinking that using Moodle’s authentication, and thereby keeping the “bad guys” away from our educational wikis, would ease the concerns of many. In searching for alternative wiki engines, I discovered the so-called canonical list of wiki engines. I knew there were a lot of wiki engines to choose from, but I had no idea that there were that many.
Wikis in the classroom
I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while since reading something on Will’s blog on the topic. I think wikis would be an interesting way for teachers to get students involved in Web publishing without needing to teach kids any HTML.
The best way to figure out what a wiki is would be to have a look at the mother of all wikis: Wikipedia. In particular, you can look at the wiki entry in the Wikipedia to get a good summary of the features of wikis. It boils down to this: a wiki is a free-for-all Web space where anyone can edit anything. It sounds chaotic, but it turns out that wikis also catalog all changes which means that an act of wiki-vandalism can be corrected easily by rolling back whatever changes were made. So do wikis have any educational use? I think so.
The easiest way to involve students with wikis would be to have them contribute to one of the many wikis that are already out there on the Internet. Wikipedia has articles that would fit with virtually every topic. Math, social studies, science, language arts/literature, and arts students, how about contributing something to an existing article or creating a new one to describe what you’ve learned in the past year? Other similar wikis include:
- Wikibooks – a free source of textbooks developed by volunteer contributors
- Wikitravel – a free travel guide
Either of these wikis would be a candidate for student contributions. What a great tool to teach students about the importance of proper citations, careful research, and appropriate writing styles.
The next step might be a classroom wiki where students could collaborate on projects or easily produce a Web site that chronicles their learning. When I was teaching, I would have loved a way for my students to create course-related Web sites without needing a full-blown lesson on HTML or Dreamweaver. These wiki sites are much more organic and free-form. There are literally dozens of free, open-source wiki implementations that could be installed on a school’s Web server. Some allow password-controlled access to the editing options. That might be a good option for a teacher who may be nervous about the wide open nature of a pure wiki.