Wicked WIKI!

Well I finally ventured out into the land of WIKI! At first I assumed that it was too complicated to do... which is probably why I avoided doing it for this long. However, after my experience with it, I now realize they are quite simple and easy to understand, create, use and manage. Basically that is how I see the steps of a WIKI as well.

1. Understand–“a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content…” (Leuf & Cunningham, 2002). In other words, you create a web page about anything. Then you (and others) can add to and edit it.
2. Create – sign up free with a username and password and then follow the simple directions in decorating your WIKI page.
3. Use – click edit, write what you want, click save, done.
4. Manage – view or edit your page any time.

They are so easy to make that I actually made two. Well really, I couldn’t decide which WIKI site was better so I chose to create two and then compare which one was better for me. I decided to put it into a Venn Diagram:

After using and comparing the different features of both WIKIs, I decided that I personally prefer wetpaint. It has an easier editing process and includes a lot more free features. Wikispaces is still very useful too and it is quite easy to edit and manage. However, many of the features it has can only be accessed with a paid membership.

Despite what WIKI site people choose; I can clearly see the benefit of any of them. For instance, in educational contexts they could be used for a collaboration of class research, communication between classrooms in different countries or a way to communicate and collate information for a group work task. Students could even create an information page for a class show and tell or an individual assessment task. There are endless uses for this tool. I believe it teaches students how to collate and edit information. For instance, a student may find some new information on Polar Bears and decide to add it to their class Polar Bears research WIKI. The student can not just edit and paste the information onto the page as they’ll need to make sure they are not doubling up on information already posted. They will practice scanning, editing sections of texts, paraphrasing, making dot points and synthesising and summarising information. They also learn many technological skills such as how to manage a webpage, create hyperlinks, add URLs, pictures and videos as well as how to search and collect data about specific topics and communicate and share that information through the WIKI space.

If anyone is apprehensive about creating a WIKI I would encourage them to put away their preconceived ideas and have a go.

Nathan-Out.