Using wikis for educational purposes
Posted By Doug Belshaw On 15th October 2005 @ 10:47 In Internet | Comments Disabled
WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com...
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A ‘wiki’, according to [3] Wikipedia (the wiki-based online encyclopedia) is:
a type of website that allows users to easily add and edit content and is especially suited for collaborative authoring
Going further…
In essence, a wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML pages combined with a system that records each individual change that occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of its previous states. A wiki system may also provide various tools that allow the user community to easily monitor the constantly changing state of the wiki and discuss the issues that emerge in trying to achieve a consensus about the wiki content.
Rather amusingly, the word ‘wiki’ comes from Hawaiian, meaning "quick", "fast", or "to hasten". What has this got to do with education? Well, imagine the situation where you want pupils to demonstrate knowledge and work collaboratively, but both they and you are tired of traditional groupwork activities. Pupils could work individually or in pairs at the same time as working in a large group. Each individual/small group can edit everyone else’s work, encouraging responsibility (and self-restraint!) For students in post-compulsory education a wiki enables knowledge specifically related to a module or topic to be produced collaboratively, moderated by the teacher. I’ve created one at [4] mrbelshaw.co.uk/wiki m going to try it out with my AS-level class! 
As usual, [5] opensourcecms.com is the place to go to tinker around and experiment… 
Popularity: 3% [[6] ?]
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Comments Disabled To "Using wikis for educational purposes"
#1 Pingback By ‘Wiki’ Textbooks » mrbelshaw.co.uk/teaching On 23rd January 2006 @ 16:43
[…] I’ve written in an earlier post about the potential for ‘wikis‘ - collaborative, organic, growing repositories of information - in education. I intended to use one with my AS History group as a way of recording and collaborating on information related to their module on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, but never really got round to it. […]
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[3] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIKI
[4] mrbelshaw.co.uk/wiki: http://www.mrbelshaw.co.uk/wiki
[5] opensourcecms.com: http://www.opensourcecms.com/
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