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. *-)

Listening to EdTechTalk at the weekend continue their discussion on the potential of ‘wiki textbooks’ (or ‘wikitexts’ as one contributor insists they should be called) stimulated me into thinking about the potential of wikis again. The potential for continually-updated, open and freely accessible information was discussed, something in the mould (but going beyond) the traditional textbook. A number of issues were discussed in terms of potential advantages and potential problems, but as far as I see the obstacles in the way of it are:

• Content: How do you persuade people to add content for free? Who’s going to fund the website and start-up costs?
• Authority: Who’s going to be responsible for the content? Who would the moderators be? Should students be allowed to modify pages?
• Delivery: How will students get access to the wikitext? What other options other than printing off relevant pages are there?

I think if theis threefold problem could be addressed then we’d be well on our way to being able to implement wikitexts in the average classroom environment.

Wanting to do something immediately, I got in touch with Andrew Field (of Schoolhistory.co.uk and Contentgenerator.net fame) mentioning, among other things, the potential of wikitexts and whether he’d be interesting in helping set one up. Interestingly, surprisingly and encouragingly, he said that this had already been done, directing me to a discussion on the TES Staffroom forum about the website wikitextbook.co.uk. I was a bit wary at first, seeing that it stated in a prominent place that it is hosted by a commercial company, but Andrew reassured me that the CEO (Ian Grove-Stephensen) of Chalkface is actually a great bloke and committed to both Open-source and the development of technology in education. Suitably buoyed by this news, I got in touch with Ian, who in turn put me in touch with Simon Margetts, who is leading the wikitextbook.co.uk project. I told him of my willingness to help and offered to lend my support, to which he replied:

If you’d like to get involved that would be great! I think individuals can get involved in a number of different ways:

• Adding the odd link to a page they stumble across
• Write a page on a particular topic
• Become a major contributor to a particular subject. This will involve writing a number of pages on a variety of topics and possibly taking on an editing role
• As above, but to a greater degree! Placing a great deal of content on a particular topic and editing that subject, and others, on a regular basis.

Any contributions you would like to make would be gratefully received; if you have notes that you would like to place on the site that would probably be the easiest place to start and have the greatest pay off for your students in terms of being able to access your notes anywhere.

I also hope that students will take ownership of the site adding their contributions where they feel confident enough to do so. This could be done in a collaborative fashion or by peer review (great for assessment for learning!).

I fully intend to get involved with this, though perhaps not allowing students to add their own material at first. Hopefully my participation will encourage others to do likewise. Collaborating on such a website, as with Wikipedia, for nothing more than the praise of your peers and the contribution to human knowledge will hopefully overcome problem number one (content) of the three that I outlined above. From there, we only have to decide who the moderators are going to be (which should become fairly obvious in terms of expertise, willingness and frequency of involvement) and then wait for the requisite technology to be made available (e.g. tablet PCs) in the classroom! :d

Edit: I’ve just come across Dave Cormier’s (one of the hosts of EdTechTalk) blog entry about wikibooks.