When you hear the word wiki, you probably think of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia anyone can edit. Wikipedia may be the largest wiki, but educators are creating their own wikis, large and small, to improve learning, communication, and collaboration.
A wiki is a website designed for multiple people to collaborate by adding and editing content. Some say wiki is a acronym for What I Know Is since a wiki as designed for multiple authors. However, the word wiki is actually Hawaiian and means quick. Wikis really are a fast way to make a web page or site. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use a wiki.
There are dozens of solutions for starting your own wiki. The two popular places for educators are PBworks and Wikispaces. Both are free for educational use and have excellent Help resources.
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Teachers are using wikis to showcase student work, post newsletters, link to resources, and display photos. Students are using wikis to contribute to class projects, share book reviews, and publish multimedia projects. Administrators are using wikis to communicate with staff, make forms available for download, and collect great teaching ideas. Those are just a few of the hundreds of way wikis are being used in education. Browse the wikis below to get an idea of the possibilities.
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msburtonisonline.pbworks.com
Valerie Burton at Jefferson High School in Louisiana designed a wiki for English I students and their parents. She posts assignments, class procedures, student work, and resources. |
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mrboyersclass.pbworks.com
Damon Boyer’s classroom wiki is a great resource for his fifth graders and their parents. It’s where he posts weekly spelling lists, class expectations, students’ reflections, and collaborative projects. |
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iclassroom.pbworks.comiClassroom is maintained by the students in Mrs. Cunningham’s Geography & Civics classes at Bullitt Central High in Kentucky. |
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Cindy Bonus at Marriotts Ridge High School in Maryland created a wiki for her Calculus and Precalculus classes. The wiki uses Glogster to add artwork and interactivity.
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jabernethy.wikispaces.com
Jan Abernethy’s fifth graders in Pennsylvania contribute to a variety of wikis, all linked from this main wiki. Visitors also find dozens of multimedia projects by students and plenty of educational web links. |
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bergmannscience.wikispaces.com
Colorado science teacher Chris Bergmann uses a wiki for his eighth graders to download links and assignments. Students can watch demonstration videos and refer to the class’ calendar. |
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room113smm.wikispaces.com
Thirds graders in Room 113 at a Catholic school in Nebraska use their wiki to share what happens in their classroom. |
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California fourth grade teacher David Lindsay uses his classroom wiki as a window into his classroom and a portal to curriculum resources.
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arborheights.wikispaces.com
Arbor Heights Elementary in Seattle, Washington uses a wiki as its school website. The principal, secretary, and staff can update the site as needed. |
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teachweb2.wikispaces.com
Teach Web 2.0 was started by teachers at an independent school in St. Petersburg, Florida and now has contributors from around the world. The wiki offers educational analysis of new web tools. |
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educationalwikis.wikispaces.com
Educational Wikis is a listing of nearly 500 wikis in alphabetically order. Search the page to find subject areas or grade levels. If you have a wiki, feel free to add it. |
Since a wiki is a website, you can gather from the above examples that wikis are used in many of the same ways that websites are. Wikis are great for homepages, assignments, portfolios, book reviews, group projects, virtual word walls, document downloads–everything you’d do with a web page. Wikis have certain characteristics that make them even more useful for education.
- A wiki can be authored by one or many users. Wikis have security/permissions settings so that a wiki’s creator can give access to only specific users. By restricting editing privileges, teachers can have a wiki that only they can edit. Alternatively, a wiki can be open to students to edit but not for everyone else on the Internet. Wiki security settings are flexible.
PBworks Security Settings Wikispaces Permissions Settings - It’s easy to edit a wiki. Wikis have an edit button at the top of each page. Clicking that button puts you into edit mode for that page. As mentioned above, you can restrict editing privileges and if you do, users will have to log in to edit the page.
PBworks Edit Tab Wikispaces Edit This Page Button - Only one user should edit an individual page at a time. A wiki will alert you if you try to edit a page that is currently being edited by someone else. That’s because a wiki page is not designed to be edited by multiple users simultaneously. If a small group is working on a page, only one computer should be used for all members to contribute. While an individual page can be edited by only one person at a time, different pages of a wiki can be edited simultaneously.
- It’s easy to add new pages. Wikis have Create a Page or New Page links on every page. Click that link and name your new page to get started.
PBworks Create a Page Button Wikispaces New Page Button - A history of revisions is available. Click a wiki page’s History button to see a list of each revision of that page. The history displays the date, time, and author of each instance the page was changed. You can click the date to view the page at that point in time. You can also choose to revert to that revision. This is very helpful if undesired changes were made to the page.
Wikispaces History List - Teachers can create accounts for students. Usually wikis require a verified email address to create an account. PBworks and Wikispaces allow for teachers to create accounts for their students without an email address. Be sure your PBworks or Wikispaces account is registered as academic/education.
- There are no moderation or approval features. When a user makes an edit to the wiki and clicks Save, that edit is immediately published. Although there is not an option for the teacher to approve edits before they are published, a wiki can email you each time it is changed. Additionally, wikis have web feeds (a.k.a. RSS or news feeds) that can alert you to changes.
- You are free to add web links, images, videos, and widgets. The example wikis above don’t rely on text alone. Hyperlinks connect other pages on the wiki or lead to other websites. Images and videos can be added with a couple of clicks. Many wikis use widgets. Glogster is a popular widget with wiki-using educators. Two other popular widgets are ClustrMaps and Live Traffic Feed. These widgets allow teachers and students to track the number of hits their wikis receive and allow them to see where their visitors are from.
Here are some tips for using wikis in the classroom:
- Start with one classroom wiki and use it for a specific purpose, like for a weekly newsletter. You can branch out from there. This way you are modeling wiki use for your students and you can become more familiar with how a wiki works before you have students working on wikis.
- Classrooms can have more than one wiki. The main wiki can be edited by just the teacher. Then, as needed, the teacher can create other wikis for projects. For example, Mrs. Abernethy’s wiki is only edited by her. But on her wiki she links to wikis students collaborated to make, including the their Animals and Swine Flu wikis.
- If you have students collaborate to create a wiki or wiki page, make sure there are clear expectations. You can find dozens of sample rubrics for wiki evaluation at Rubistar. It’s often helpful to have students co-develop wiki standards.
- One teacher suggests alternative partnering when working on wikis. Instead of putting strong and weak students together, put weaker with weaker and stronger with stronger. This way one student doesn’t take over the entire project.
- If students or groups of students are reporting similar information, create page templates ahead of time for easier formatting and focus for students.
- Wiki vandalism can be a concern. Be sure to restrict editing privileges so that not just anyone can make changes. If your wiki is defaced or inappropriate information is added, you can click History to see who made the changes. Be sure to share this ability with students to deter them from any mischief. Reinforce to students that it is very important to keep their passwords private so that others cannot log into their account and post something they did not want posted. If vandalism occurs, it can quickly be erased by reverting to the previous version of a page.
- Bill Ferriter, sixth grade teacher in North Carolina, has written Teacher Tips for Wiki Projects Part One and Part Two on his blog. In the posts Bill shares eight suggestions for integrating wikis into school work.
With PBworks and Wikispaces, gone are the days when you had to know HTML and buy special software to publish to the web. Creating and maintaining a website with a wiki is indeed a quick and convenient way to make a website.
Photos from Flickr by pmsyyz and Andjam79
Tags: by Tony Vincent
