Wikis in the Classroom

I heard about wikis several years ago, but I honestly did not know what they were or how they worked. I assumed that, like Wikipedia, they were large repositories for professional communities. 

After watching the Richard Buckland video, I now have a better understanding of a wiki's use. I believe that wikis can serve a valid and valuable use for an educational classroom. Buckland teaches at a University, so his students are much mature than the 14-15-year-olds that I teach. What he does in his courses, however, should be easily adaptable to any post-secondary school.

In a high school setting, I need to be much more cautious. I am dabbling with the idea of trying a wiki in one of my business classes. The business students are more responsible and seem to take more pride in their work. However, I will not have one ready for testing until after spring break (March 14-18).

One disadvantage that I found with a wiki is that, when I was on our EDU 255 class wiki several times, I never knew it. Granted, I did click on the link that said Class Wiki, but when I saw that some people had posted things, I thought I was on someone else’s blog. I clicked the edit button, but then I thought I would be changing someone’s post, and I knew I didn’t want to do that. (This was before I watched the Richard Buckland video.) So, then I asked to be invited to join the Class Wiki (yes, I know), only to be told two days later that, joyfully, I was accepted. Well, with that good news, I went to the 255 Wiki site, found that it looked exactly like it did before, and I did exactly what I did nine days earlier. We live, we stress.

Advantages: 

• total transparency of teacher's course goals and outcome objectives
• synchronous or a asynchronous read/write, teacher/student/peer collaboration
• immediate feedback
• live monitoring and peer sharing
• teacher can easily see who is doing/not doing quality work
• synergy, as Stephen Covey would say. The result is greater than the sum of its parts.
• continuous and permanent record of edit

Some of the pitfalls to address that Buckland pointed out were:

• students must use their real names (no anonymous posts or edits)  
• no discussions, no opinions. facts only
• make students turn in all their work on the wiki in order to date stamp assignments

I would have to say that I’m quite confident that the advantages of a wiki for educational purposes far outweigh the risks. Some day in the near future, I’ll find out in a more practical way.