This week, Carolyn will be presenting on how to setup a wiki at the Project Technology workshop Wedneday morning or afternoon. For those of you who don’t know what the difference between a wiki and a blog is, I thought I would explain.
A blog by definition is a web-log: a site where articles are entered like a journal and displayed for a global audience to post comments about the article. The content stays the same; its just the comments that are added by the audience that add to the page. A user usually makes a blog to host their own commentary on a particular topic. For example, this blog is only about the Project Technology workshops. I have a completely different blog that is about various technology issues and discussions. Both are commentaries on different topics but I allow anyone to post comments about each of the topics.
A Wiki on the other hand is a site where anyone can edit the content of any article posted. So, instead of me posting an article for someone else to comment on – anyone could change the content of the article or add more information to it. Some wikis require commentors to create an account to make the changes. However, there are many that do not and the articles are freely edited.
The best example of a wiki is Wikipedia – an online encyclopedia of information that is changing every second.
While many feel that this type of tool could be used inappropriately by students; there are many educators out there embracing the use of wikis in the classroom. Below is a list of uses of wikis used in K-12 classrooms as well as many universities:
- Wikis are used to provide space for free writing
- Class topics are debated – including assigned readings
- Classes can share resources for collaborative research
- In group projects, students can keep a journal of the work perfromed by the group
- Collaborative documents such as essays written by an entire class
- Teachers discuss curricular and instructional innovations
- Encourage students to revise Wikipedia pages or to take on a new Wikipedia assignment
- Inspire students to write a Wikibook
If you attend the Project Technology workshop this week, let us know what your comments about it. Let us know if you can/can’t use Wiki’s in your classes.
1 response so far ↓
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Becky Stucky
// Feb 16, 2007 at 10:24 am
The junior AP teachers have created a wiki (well, actually, Joel and Carolyn created it!) for our students to post their Vietnam projects. We decided this would be a good way to memorialize the soldiers who died in Vietnam. We are in the process of getting this up and running, but look for it soon at
http://www.vietnamexperience.pbwiki.com
Becky Stucky
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