Thing #15 Wikis!

And now I feel like I know what I'm talking about! I've heard about them for awhile -- certainly Wikipedia -- but I also felt very ignorant. The concept was a strange one to me, especially Wikipedia: people contribute to defining the meaning of something that ordinarily would've been amply described in Britannica or WorldBook? How can this be? The problems seemed obvious. But in our collaborative world, where the next generation is all about putting forth their say-so and not being defined by something predetermined, wikipedia is iconic.

And what is a wiki? My way of defining it for a teacher on my campus was to say that it's kind of a happy medium between a paper and a webpage. It has the flexibility of paper in that it's easily rewritten and quick; yet it's able to be viewed by many people as a webpage is. However, you don't have to jump through hoops to make it change the way it looks, like you would with a webpage, because it doesn't require special software. So really it's the best of both worlds.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I have a handle on wikis -- I don't. I'm in the process of creating one for my school, and it's taking some concentration on my part. But what new thing doesn't? Once I get it down, I think the teachers and I will love it (I plan on using it heavily in collaborative planning for research), and I hope the students will use parts of it (like the Book Club) for gathering information about upcoming meetings and assignments. And if we use it extensively in this venue, maybe things like Wikis will find their way into the classroom with teachers creating them for students to use as projects, or data analysis, or classroom newsletters.