Meaning : A wiki is a Web site that allows users to add and update content on the site using their own Web browser. This is made possible by Wiki software that runs on the Web server. Wikis end up being created mainly by a collaborative effort of the site visitors. A great example of a large wiki is the Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia in many languages that anyone can edit. The term "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian phrase, "wiki wiki," which means "super fast." I guess if you have thousands of users adding content to a Web site on a regular basis, the site could grow "super fast."
Importance :Wikis are increasing in popularity among courses and learning establishments such as colleges and universities. Akin to the inherent community feel of forums, wikis allow all users to edit the content of a collection of web-pages. In the same way that Wikipedia allows everyone to edit and re-write a continually evolving encyclopaedia, educational wikis can be easily set up and run by teachers and course leaders to allow students to upload content that can range from, for example, niche subjects such as photography, or e-Learning in the establishment itself. Arguably unlike forums and blogs, there is more of an incentive for students to uphold the standard of informative quality when contributing to a wiki.
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Lists of Uses
There are several papers that, among their discussion of wikis, present a list of uses for wikis in the classroom, along with a discussion of each in most cases. Mader’s site (2006b) focuses solely on wikis in education, citing uses such as simple webpage creation, project development with peer review, group authoring, tracking group projects, data collection, and class/instructor reviews.
His online text (Mader, 2006a) contains writings by several authors discussing such topics as integrating a wiki in instruction, collaborative writing projects, group wiki projects, using wikis within course management systems, constructing science knowledge, and wiki-based collaboration and academic publishing. Fountain (2005) presents a survey of wiki use in education, and suggests several additional uses of wikis. Co-creating and co-monitoring projects are discussed as is collaborative concept elaboration.
Duffy and Bruns (2006) list several possible educational uses of wikis:
• Students can use a wiki to develop research projects, with the wiki serving as ongoing documentation of their work.
• Students can add summaries of their thoughts from the prescribed readings, building collaborative annotated bibliography on a wiki.
• A wiki can be used for publishing course resources like syllabi and handouts, and students can edit and comment on these directly for all to see.
• Teachers can use wikis as a knowledge base, enabling them to share reflections and thoughts regarding teaching practices, and allowing for versioning and documentation.
• Wikis can be used to map concepts. They are useful for brainstorming, and editing a given wiki topic can produce a linked network of resources.
• A wiki can be used as a presentation tool in place of conventional software, and students are able to directly comment on and revise the presentation content.
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• Wikis are tools for group authoring. Often group members collaborate on a document by emailing to each member of the group a file that each person edits on their computer, and some attempt is then made to coordinate the edits so that everyone’s work is equally represented; using a wiki pulls the group members together and enables them to build and edit the document on a single, central wiki page.
Guzdial, Rick, and Kehoe (2001) recount how wikis, including their CoWeb, can be used fo classroom activities such as distributing information, collaborative artifact creation, and discussion and review. Naish (2006) describes wiki use in learning as an information resource, a collaboration tool, a tool for building e-learning content, and as icebreakers. The concept of workflow learning in action is thoroughly discussed. Schaffert, Bischof, et al. (2006) suggest the use of wikis in project-based learning, collaborative story writing, and interdisciplinary and intercultural learning.
Tonkin (2005) identifies four different forms of educational wikis:
1. Single-user wikis allow an individual to collect and edit his or her own thoughts using a
Web-based environment.
2. Lab book wikis allow students to keep notes online with the added benefit of allowing them to be peer reviewed and changed by fellow students.
3. Collaborative writing wikis can be used by a team for joint writing.
4. Knowledge base wikis provide a knowledge repository for a group.
Lamb (2004) points out that some faculty utilize wikis so that design teams can quickly and collaboratively build reference lists and outlines, brainstorm instructional strategies, and capture suggestions. Bergin (2002) suggests a variety of uses for wikis including student homepages, anonymous feedback, student-created FAQ, ideas related to the course, infrastructure hints, and discussions. Schwartz et al. (2004) survey twenty-four universities and report how wikis are being used. They report that most dealt with activities, events, or clubs rather than with curricular issues.
Wikipedia's (2006) School and University Projects page suggests uses of wikis in the classroom to provide students with exercises editing and publishing content on Wikipedia.
Wikis and other emergent technologies are beginning to fill a gaping void in existing practice (Lamb, 2004). They enable extremely rich, flexible collaborations that have positive psychological consequences for their participants and powerful competitive ones for their organizations (Evans and Wolf, 2005). Collaborative creativity promises to be a key business skill in upcoming years. Educational institutions can offer immense value to their students by familiarizing them with the simple technologies that make collaborative networks possible. Today’s students will not only manage business innovations of the future, but in many cases will drive them. Rather than being limited to today’s skills, students must learn the skills of the future. Educators need to teach what wikis and other social software may mean to business, not just as a phenomenon, but also as a skill (Evans, 2006). By incorporating wikis into the classroom, educators can better prepare students to make innovative uses of collaborative software tools.
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