Friday, September 14, 2007
What Can You Do with a Wiki?
I was skimming the blog of good friend and colleague Anna Marie and was reminded of this great post from Dana Huff. One of the questions that always comes up in classes is "Who's using this stuff?" Dana is certainly one who is, and there are a number of comments to her post that indicate others are, too. Check it out to get informed and inspired.
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6 comments:
What terrific information Dana has collected! It's interesting to see how knowledge can be shared. While navigating Dana's links I discovered another wiki that had collected a series of essays on critical learning and videogames, which seemed particularly relevant after our conversations of the last couple of weeks. Creating a wiki seems more feasible after looking at these sites, and I think it could be a really great collaborative project to have a create a class wiki. It would be interesting to see what would emerge from a single class assignment... an essay, a research paper, a story. How could you monitor participation?
Wiki can have various applications for a journalism class. When we searched for "time lapse" videos on YouTube for fun just last weekend, my boyfriend and I found videos that showed how a wiki article for the Virginia Tech shooting evolved in the morning hours of that unfortunate event. The internet is bringing so many people together, and studying how and why we collaborate -- and what we collaborate on -- is a matter of social studies and journalistic importance, too.
After reading what Dana posted, I am reminded that, at YourHub.com, the suggestion was made that we add blogs and stories to wiki articles, where appropriate. This makes me want to re-examine this possibility.
I also think I like the idea of getting Denver poets together to create an entry on the Denver poetry community.
So, I made a wiki once. It wasn't quite as informative as the wiki information provided by Dana. The wiki is a totally cool thing to work with, and especially if you can get the right team of troopers to help you support it. Look at wikipedia...I never cite it at a source...but I couldn't begin to tell you how many nights I have stayed awake reading factoid on that dang site. Ha, ha.
I'm not quite sure how I made it through all these years being so technologically illiterate- I was interested in this particular aticle because I didn't realize, or at least hadn't stop to consider, that "wiki" was actually something besides "wikipedia". But it is good to know. I think the concept of "wiki", the open invitation it extends to everyone is reliant on the general good will and knowledge of people, which is a nice thought. We are expecting that everyone who participates is doing so with the basic notion that they have something truthful and significant to contribute. Whether it is the case or not, I like the idea. That said, I would also be interested in an answer to the previously asked question, "how do you monitor participation?" when it is used in the classroom.
Hi, sorry to chime in so late (and thanks for the shout out, Louann). As to monitoring, that can be fairly easy. You can create wikis that only members can edit. That makes tracking who made what changes very easy.
Hey there Louann...My students have started their Great Expectations Wiki (thanks to help from posts like Dana's). Here's the site: http://strzyzgreatexpectations2007.pbwiki.com
Let me know what you think!
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