Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts: Wikis (Chapt 4)

After reading chapter 4 on Wiki’s, I understand the concept of a wiki a lot better.  When I was in school, Wikipedia was just being started and we were taught to never use Wikipedia because anyone could add information and it may not be true.  After reading this chapter, I think it’s very important to teach our students about Wikipedia.  I did not know that there is a history as to what people change on a Wikipedia and if an individual deletes information, the information is not lost, it can be saved.  It was also reassuring to read that 4 out of 5 experts said the entries in their field of study were accurate, informative, comprehensive and a great resource for students.  I also like the idea that wiki’s are collaborative.  In schools and in many jobs, you are required to collaborate with others.  Wiki’s can help students understand and practice collaborating to create a wiki or add their expertise to another wiki.  There is so much you can do with wiki’s.  Students could have a wiki with another class in  another country and be able to work together to help each class learn more about where they are from. 

As a teacher, I will incorporate the use of wiki’s into my class and help students understand a wiki so they may contribute to our class wiki.  I feel that if students are a part of something and feel that they have control over the class wiki and it is their work in progress, they will be excited to keep the wiki current and keep it going.   I will also take some advice from the chapter and advise my students to use Wikipedia as a starting point to their research.  I also like the idea of using a wiki in the classroom and allowing the students to edit each other’s contributions.  I think this would be a great way for students to learn about editing and use their English skills to correct errors.  In another college courses, my group used Google Docs for a group paper.  I found this resource to be very easy to work with and allowed us to each to contribute our sections to the paper and allow each group member to edit the entire paper.  I think both a wiki and Google Docs would be an excellent way to have students peer edit papers.  If each student had a log in you could make sure another student had edited the paper and see what types of edits were done.