WIKI's

THE FIND: The wonderful world of Wiki's.  We covered to different Wiki sites last night, of which I joined both:
http://www.pbworks.com/
http://www.wikispaces.com/

MY IMPRESSIONS and THOUGHTS
When Robin mentioned we would be looking at Wiki's last night, I thought I had at least a basic understanding of what a Wiki was, from my years of 'hating on' Wikipedia as a professor.  Which has changed since we started this class, but I will comment on that in second.   But after looking at the functionality and user-friendliness of the sites, my creative juices started to flow. 

Ok so why have I historically been a Wiki hater, because that is what I was taught, simply.  In my masters program, that was online and thus most of our research was via online sources, as there was not a brick and morter library to go to.  Which brings up a topic for a future posts, encouraging and training students to use online sources, and perhaps another on how to recognize a crediable online source.  But I digress,  simply I was taught that wikipedia was not a reliable source due to the lack of control and checking on the content.  I do still believe that to a point, but my thought since starting this class has changed.  I know feel why not use wikipedia to get some basic knowledge on a topic.  If I were teaching a class on Computer NEtworking and I had students that did not have the basic terminology down and were reading the text but not comprehending as evidenced from their work, why not suggest looking at this information on Wikipedia.  I still am not saying use Wikipedia as a scholarly source but more as a way to get some cursory ideas about a topic.

So I definitely think that Wiki's have a use in education and I plan to implement them when I start to make improvements to my online courses.

THE APPLICATION AND USESOne application is as a resource landing site, for my semester project I want to create a student resource center website.  My thought was to have a resource wiki linked to this site.  Where I or class members could add sites for reference on certain topics. 

However, one that I am more excited about is using a Wiki for a group project.  Leaning toward the idea above but with a different focus.  Have a group publish a wiki on a course topic.  They can be as creative as they want.  I currently have some of my classes do a PowerPoint along these same lines, however from our brief exploration last evening, it seems a Wiki-space would allow more creative freedom.

So on to new topics in today's class.  Thanks for reading and I do hope you will leave a comment, perhaps you have additional ideas how a Wiki could be used for online classes.  If you have ideas leave them for me and I will share them in a future posting or email me at gvcjtl@gmail.com

Regards,

John