Yesterday, while talking with a former student who’s now enrolled in a ‘technology for [high school] teachers’ class, he pointed out that, while the syllabus said they’d cover wikis in the last week, the teacher said they probably wouldn’t bother.
I wasn’t surprised to hear this, because I talk about wikis a lot (mostly because of this assignment, which I’ll discuss more extensively in a follow-up next week). Faculty and students alike often either glaze over or develop this slightly panicked look, as if I’m asking them to code an API request or something.
The irony is that wikis are now among the easiest online technologies to use: many have What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)-style editing, so users don’t have to remember any codes; pretty much all wikis include automagical versioning and restoration, so it’s hard for users to permanently break things (unless you do something crazy, George, and give them all administrative rights!) The name wiki comes from the Hawaiian for “quick”–and it really is a super painless way to get students collaborating. After the jump, a roundup of resources and tips to get you started, and then next week I’ll delve into the pedagogy and use a bit more.
Wikis are easy to use, and they really do make possible new ways of thinking about classroom interactions.
There are at least two good reasons to use a wiki: 1) the creation of dead-simple web pages (students can create and share multimedia pages without knowing any code), and 2) meaningful, easy collaboration. What’s nice about wikis and group work: They allow better coordination within groups; can let groups collaborate outside of class without actually meeting; can allow faculty to calibrate “who did what” grading adjustments very precisely. (Just look at the page history!) They also, potentially, allow students to re-organize information in ways that are more useful for them.
Another big selling point for wiki use in the classroom is the concept of “wiki gardening,” which is the routine maintenance and sprucing up of wiki pages. In the context of group work, this means that there’s almost always something you can contribute that would be meaningful.
Some people argue that the wiki way is inherently more democratic than other formats. (For an example of how this sort of talk has entered the mainstream, see this recent NY Times article on Obama as the wiki candidate: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/weekinreview/08cohen.html ) One needn’t believe this to reap the benefits of wikis!
The CommonCraft “Wikis in Plain English” video is a good place to start, although Jon Udell’s screencast about rockdots (i.e., the heavy-metal umlaut) really gets at the heart of what makes wikis–and Wikipedia in particular–so powerful. (UPDATE: Corrected link to Udell’s screencast, which is genuinely one of my favorite little things on the internet, even after several years.)
The WikiMatrix compares the various platforms out there that you might use.
That’s enough for now; come back this time next week for a detailed look at how I use wikis in the class.
[Image by flickr user cambodia4kidsorg / CC licensed]
Comments
1. Wade - September 02, 2009 at 10:30 am
Wiki's are also great for students. You can put your lecture material on the wiki and then edit it from semester to semester. In essence the wiki can be an ever evolving textbook saving your students hundreds of dollars each semester on buying new edition textbooks.
A finance professor I have has done this effectively. After the stock market tanked this past fall he merely had to edit his wiki's to reflect the change in our economy while other professors were left scrambling to find a textbook that reflected current United States economic changes.
As a graduate student wiki's have also been a great tool for managing my research topics as well as the classes I assist in teaching. I hope that more professors will catch on and start using wiki's. The learning curve really isn't that steep for the amount of value they can provide.
2. Julie Meloni - September 02, 2009 at 10:40 am
Your comment about more professors using wikis reminded me of something my students said about using Google Docs -- they liked it, and would use it more often, if their other professors used it like I did. That makes sense.
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