Stewart Mader, he of the excellent Using Wiki in Education blog has just published a wiki-based book. Although in the style of a traditional book – i.e. him as contributing editor – it’s freely available and editable by pretty much everyone. The other contributors are leaders in their respective fields, including the inimitable Vicki Davis and for a very reasonable $19 you can download PDF versions of the chapters. Read on for my thoughts… :)

The book includes the following chapters:

• Foreword – Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian Software
• Acknowledgements – Stewart Mader

1. Four Letter Words – How wiki and edit are making the Internet a better teaching tool
   Stewart Mader
2. The Collaborative Writing Project
   Paul Schacht, SUNY Geneseo
3. The LTC Wiki – Experiences with Integrating a Wiki in Instruction
   Stuart Glogoff, University of Arizona
4. Scaffolding Student Collaboration for Group Wiki Projects
   Rick Reo, George Mason University
5. Hanging it all out – Using a wiki in University Research
   Peter Higgs, Queensland University of Technology
6. Wikis in Education Case Study – Westwood Schools Wiki Integration
   Victoria Davis, Westwood Schools
7. Navigating the Wiki Maze – Using a Wiki Tool Within a Course Management System
   David Wicks, Seattle Pacific University
8. Constructing science knowledge using a wiki
   Stewart Mader
9. Wikis in the Academy
   Jude Higdon, University of Southern California
10. Wiki-based collaboration and academic publishing
    Stewart Mader

The following quotation from the first chapter by Stewart caught my attention as it resonated with something I’ve heard Wes Fryer mention before:

“Because there is no physical analog to a wiki, designing an interface that allows multiple authors to simultaneously collaborate on multiple documents isn’t an intuitive process. It’s something that I, and many designers like me, are working out as we go along.” (Dave Elfving) A Wiki is both a technology tool and a community forum, and is unique in that it has no physical counterpart. This makes it both challenging because there’s no exact historical precedent to guide the development of wiki software, or the conduct of wiki sites. This is also very liberating, and an example of the era we are just entering with technology, where new tools only exist in the online realm because they take advantage of maturing architecture that is only possible online.

I can remember Wes talking about five stages that participants in the Apple 1-to-1 education programme in the 1990s found. They discovered that initially educators use new technologies in established ways; they use new tools with an old mindset. That is why I think a lot of people (including myself sometimes) find working with wikis a bit difficult – they’re something completely different from what we’re used to.

That they can be used positively and powerfully in educational situations in beyond doubt. In Chapter 6 Vicki Davis looks at the way the Westwood wiki has been used in her school. She has come up with six main ways in which it has been used:

• Lesson Summaries
• Collaboration of Notes
• Concept Introduction and Explanatory Projects
• Dissemination of Important Classroom Learning
• Individual Assessment Projects
• Rewards

The student reaction, she says, has been fantastic. Vicki quotes one of her own blog entries from the month after she set up the wiki (December 2005):

But my amazement came afterwards as I walked through the halls. Two girls attracted my attention with their squealing – I asked what was up with them – They were squealing about the English material going on the wikipage! It was going to help them on their project! They were so excited. They practically drove me crazy the rest of the day getting passes to come in and update the information for their exams and projects. Other teachers started coming to me and asking what was going on. They couldn’t believe the amount of material synthesized and summarized in one class period!

I haven’t finished reading all of the book yet but I’m certainly looking forward to doing so. I like the way Stewart has brought together a range of uses for wikis and encouraged his contributors to write about their use in a clear, straightforward and practical way.

Nice one Stewart! :D