Wiki, Let's Go.

As a classroom teacher that has watched students rapidly move towards hitting Google and then Wikipedia for all of their needs, wikis occupy an interesting place in recent student technology usage; almost all of my students have used wikis, but few (if any) have had the opportunity to utilize a wiki in a collaborative sense. Like my students, I haven’t had the chance to participate in wiki-ing (would that be the correct verb?). What have we been missing out on? I searched for benefits of wikis and came up with some interesting information. In his blog entitled The Real-world Problem With Wikis (http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=781), Kevin Lim offers the following brief pros and cons of wikis:

Problems:Quality issues (i.e. accuracy and reliability of information)
- Real-world conflicts on what or which version should get published
Benefits:
Speed: Live, real-time publishing
Relatively cheap to maintain
Relatively easy to use
Collaborative, democratic knowledge sharing
Grassroots empowerment

In a very basic way, Lim has summed up what I believe should be clear to many educators; there is really only one reason to “stand against” wikis (Lim’s problems, to me, are related and can be considered to be the same), the issue of reliability and accuracy. From an educational point of view, this may be a moot point (more on this idea to follow) or even a learning opportunity. In Andy Carvin’s article called Turning Wikipedia into an Asset for Schools (http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2005/07/turning_wikiped.html), he suggests that students should collaborate to choose a topic, check facts, correct mistakes, and cite sources on Wikipedia entries:

“Get enough classrooms doing this, you kill several birds with one stone: Wikipedia's information gets better, students help give back to the Net by improving the accuracy of an important online resource, and teachers have a way to make lemons into lemonade, turning Wikipedia from a questionable information source to a powerful tool for information literacy.”

In other words, if you’re not using Wikipedia as a primary source but as a learning tool, Wikipedia could be amazingly educational and empowering. In Blogs, Wikis. Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Richardson informs readers that if “we begin to look at Wikipedia as another opportunity for our students to contribute what they learn and know to a larger audience, I think we can begin to appreciate it for the really incredible site that it is.” Both Richardson and Carvin make a powerful point that goes to the core of working toward making Web 2.0 tools work for us; if a potential weak element of Wikipedia, its openness, can be flipped to become a positive, what could be better?

But it may be that many of us are missing the point of wikis because we are fixated on Wikipedia, which is the only wiki we are familiar with. Even if Wikipedia is associated with problems of accuracy and reliability, it should not preclude us from using student- or class-created wikis to create learner-driven information.

The idea that wikis are not necessarily about creating simply finished products, but can continue to grow (be edited, added onto, and so on) should allow us to see a web tool as a living entity as opposed to one that is completed and then forgotten. I plan to create a wiki for two of my English classes. The wiki will require students to add pages based on issues arising from the novel April Raintree and the film Where the Spirit Lives. Students will not only work on their own pages but also ultimately read, add, edit, and evaluate others’ pages. So far, I’m thinking about creating one for each class, then having students edit each other’s work. Alternately, I may use the wikis with new students the next time I teach the course. If everything works as planned, we will be able to move towards the ideals Richardson has proposed:

“In using wikis, students are not only learning to publish content; they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more. In essence, students begin to teach each other.” (65)

Unfortunately, I cannot fit in the required time to start our wikis before this blog post is due. I did create the wiki and folders for my two classes using pbwiki.com. Not only was it ultra-simple and quick, I also received the following email:

Hi there,
It's Kristine from the PBwiki team, and today I'm going to share some of the best tips for preparing your wiki for your students.
Log into your wiki to follow along. Go to My.PBwiki.comand chose aprilraintree.
Give Students Clear InstructionsTo make sure your students understand how to engage with this new online resources make sure you post clear directions om the front page.
Add student assignments and instructions on the front page.
Treat your wiki front page as a short introduction with links to other pages.
Type a few bullet points and create links to the pages (to link, edit a page, select the text, and click "Insert Link").
If you have handouts, create a page called "Handouts" and upload the files there. Next, use a creative activity to engage your students on your wiki. Here are three examples:
Individual pages- Ask each student to create a wiki page, posting information about their interests and what they hope to learn from the class. Be sure to comment on the pages, and engage them by referencing their personal interests in discussions. Use this as an easy icebreaker to have students get to know each other.
Online spelling list – Create a page titled ‘Spelling’ and post your spelling list. Ask students to post the definition or upload a corresponding image.
Class notes - Each week assign one student to write up the class notes, including important points and class discussion. Be sure to comment on the notes, and add additional insight from the lesson.
For more ideas see how other educators have used wikis in their classroom. Check out our public directory of Educational wikis.
Thanks!
KristineThe PBwiki Team

It’s clear that pbwiki.com is actively working to recruit and retain educational wikis if messages such as these are being sent to people like me. Since I hadn’t done much on the wiki, I took the advice I was given and started a page (and a folder) for handouts; again, it was quick and simple. Although I am not getting my students involved in the project yet, I like the fact that pbwiki has a dedicated section that is committed to helping wiki rookie teachers such as myself.

I also signed up for a wikispaces account to see what that service had to offer; after all, librarywiki said that pbwiki, wikispaces, and wetpaint were the most popular open source wikis. Wikispaces also seems to have made an effort to make educational wikis easy and accessible for teachers and students. I also took a look at wetpaint, but it seemed a little too slick; I was surprised that Lee Lefever does an ad for wetpaint on the home page , and when I clicked on “popular wetpaint sites”, what I saw seemed to be advertisements for television shows or upcoming movies.

I thought I had read that you need to have e-mail addresses to add users to edit pbwikis, but you can create usernames and passwords easily. Changing the look of a site was easy on pbwiki, but wikispaces kept giving me the message “Space settings updated – There was a problem uploading the file”. Wikispaces seems like it is set up to make your site visually attractive, with its easy-looking directions on how to change your wikis logo, content, theme, and so on, whereas on pbwiki you have to upgrade to premium to change your logo, for example. So far, they both seem relatively easy to start up, but if my students and I can’t make the site actually look appealing, it might be a little bit harder to initially get them engaged. Clearly I’ve still got work to do before I can bring it to my students, but that’s okay because we’re not there yet anyway. Wish my students and I happy wiki-ing.