How are you using Wikis in education?

[Rick]

Hi folks,

It's been kind of quiet lately. :) It would be great to hear how SDA
teachers are using Wikis in their curriculum, whether elementary,
secondary, or higher ed. There are many examples online of wiki uses,
but I'm interested in SDA specific uses at this point. Have there
been any negative experiences?
Sincerely,

Richard Thomason
MCE

[Garland Cross]

What's Wikis?

Pam

Rick <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Mel Wade]

A wiki is a website for community edited collection of articles.

Examples include:
http://www.wikipedia.com
http://www.wikihow.com

--
Mel Wade
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." - BF Skinner
http://www.melwade.com

[Richard Thomason]

Partial definition from Wikipedia… (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki to read full definition.)

A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. These wiki websites are often also referred to as wikis; for example, Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis.^[1]

Wikispaces.com is a popular site for hosting Wikis and you can see some examples of how to use a Wiki at their blog… http://blog.wikispaces.com.

K-12 Teacher? Wikispaces.com is giving away 100,000 free wikis for primary/secondary education - find out more.  These can be configured for only users you want to have access.

 

I’ve setup an experimental wiki at www.richth.com/wiki if you would like to create an account and mess around with the technology. (Open to any here btw.)  I’m new to them too, but want to learn how they can be used in education.  I also want to learn how to manage them.  I think it would be best to create your own page for your use by giving it your name or your schools name.

 

I’ve caught one interesting example of using a wiki in a classroom, which had 4 computers.  The teacher’s assignment was for students to start writing a story, and when the bell rang, they each moved to the next computer and continued the story where the previous student left off, making up anything they wanted.  She then displayed each story using her projector and as a group, they analyzed what was right and wrong about each story.  To me that sounds like a neat way for students to learn about language.  Of course, this could be done using word processors just as easily, but perhaps having students go online made it even more interesting for them.  A neat twist I thought.

Richard Thomason

[Mel Wade]

FWIW, I'm a wikiHow admin so if you need some help, let me know.  The technology is pretty simple to use.  I considered it for Edforum, but the challenge is monitoring the posts.  In our case, I'm not worried about what our members would post (anyone can e-mail anyway), but there are some very inappropriate things posted on wikiHow.  The Recent Changes Patrollers catch them pretty quickly it's a challenge to keep up.  Also the technology takes a bit to get used to, but once you get the idea you can really fly with it.

Here are some key links on wikiHow:

http://www.wikihow.com/Category:Help
http://www.wikihow.com/Act-as-a-wikiHow-Admin
http://www.wikihow.com/Edit-a-wikiHow-Page

Here's my user page:
http://www.wikihow.com/User:Melwade

BTW, if you create an account, the Google Ads go away.

Since wikiHow is a community driven area, the community decides what is good and bad.  There are certain kinds of articles that will be deleted.  There is a deletion policy (http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Deletion-Policy) that governs what will be deleted, but the community weighs in on a the final decision to delete.  Consesnus must be reaced or it stays.

Even with this, there are many things that I would not want my classroom "educated" about, but there are also many very good things.

Wiki's are also used for product manuals where the community can build and contribute to pages.  Here's an example:
http://k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page

I see some really neat potential of wiki's as a multi-school colaboration tool.  Used in this way with editing capabilitiy limited to authorized users would be pretty cool!  Several schools sharing a social studies or history project across the country, or writing a newpaper, or...

[Richard Thomason]

Thanks.  Good stuff here.  I agree about education use on general wikis, which is why I implemented a secure one on my personal web site.  If an educator were going to use wikispaces.com or even wikiHow, it should be configured so only authenticated users can contribute and view.  Unfortunately, on wikispaces.com at least, you must pay for that security, another reason I opted to implement my own.

 

I see some really neat potential of wiki's as a multi-school colaboration tool.  Used in this way with editing capabilitiy limited to authorized users would be pretty cool!  Several schools sharing a social studies or history project across the country, or writing a newpaper, or...

This is a great way to get students involved with other students from around the world.  Students see the relevancy when others are able to provide immediate feedback on their writing.  With tools like wikis, why collaborate only with students in your class?  Go for the world. <g>

 

[Garland Cross]

Thanks for the defiition of a wiki!  Never to old to learn something new!

Pam

Mel Wade <m...@melwade.com> wrote:

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