Wikis in the Classroom

Wikis are all about community and collaboration.  The wiki was created to allow a group of people working on a project to easily store and edit information in one central area.  All members see the same information.  All members have the ability to directly edit and add information. 

In the classroom, a teacher can use wikis in a variety of ways:

• As a workspace were student teams can work on a team assignment. 
• The teacher could assign a research project to the class, and have students post their research results to the wiki
• Students use a wiki to create an on-going vocabulary list, or list of definitions for technical terms (like we in IDDE are encouraged to do).  As classmates discover different definitions for various terms, these definitions can be added to the wiki.
• A class can use a wiki to collect and organize resources on a variety of sources.  For example, in this class, when we discussed social networking, several classmates named social networking sites that they have used.  A list of social networking sites could cataloged in a wiki, and students can add comments about experiences with these sites.
• In a creative writing class, the teacher could assign a theme or topic and have the students post their writing to the wiki.  Then each student could read and reflect on each other's writing.
• Language learners can work together to translate a passage into another language.

These are just a few ways one could use wikis as part of a curriculum.