Original Post: Wikis (Roger Hall)

           Within the media center, I believe that Wikis can serve a great purpose. First of all, they can be used to compile lists of links that take the user to useful information pertaining to the media center curriculum. In addition, Wikis could be a setting where students can upload their projects dealing with using technology across the school curriculum. Moreover, they can edit the pages themselves and offer one another necessary feedback for completing the assignments and increasing life-long learning. On the surface, all of these things make implementing Wikis sound like a smooth, easy process; however, there are several things to keep in mind when applying the principles of a Wiki not only to the classroom but also to the media center as well.

Throughout the school building, Wikis can be used most effectively in several ways. One of the opportunities that presents itself is with a short research project where students display their work. Also, another example of a Wiki would be a compilation of vocabulary words mutually exclusive to the classroom subject area. More times than not, one of the greatest purposes of a Wiki is to be a webpage which collects links posted by both teacher and students pertaining to the course. Moreover, this aspect could also involve documents or files which coincided with the classroom course of study. A trend, however, is designing a Wiki to serve as an e-portfolio for students where they can upload their work throughout the class and receive feedback.  

Despite all of its beneficial functions, a Wiki does have a few drawbacks, too. For starters, much like Wikipedia anyone can edit the content by taking away or adding to what is already there. The integrity of the information provided is compromised when this is allowed to occur. This can put a strain on the teacher to verify that the correct information is displayed on the classroom Wiki. Along with that, the learners themselves can create a collaborative bias in that only their points of view are unfurled on the Wiki. This can create a major rift between factual information and tainted misinformation created by the students as they post ideas and topics which are contrary to the primary sources of information thereof. This, too, can cause problems for the teacher to dispel biased details which have no truthful backing.

One of the uses for a Wiki that I found particularly strong was one concerning the research of Dr. Rossi of the University of Delaware. Instructing both a Calculus and Applied Mathematics courses, he created noticed that having students use Wikis throughout his courses allowed the learners to spend more time outside the classroom concerning solving mathematical problems mainly due to the fact that there is a collaborative atmosphere of feedback between students on this format. I found this to be a strong point because as a current teacher I think about all of the times that I wished that my students were involved in my subject’s curriculum outside of class. This is yet another way to accomplish this goal, and it was all because of a Wiki.

In contrast, the only piece of information that I found weak was just using a Wiki as a mere “storage cabinet” when in fact, its purpose should be a student-friendly collaborative tool. One of the ways to move Wikis toward being active spaces for collaboration is to allow student interaction with the topics at hand instead of just having the space to serve as a destination for documents and files. This can be done by giving students passwords and consequently access to editing privileges so that they can both manipulate what is stored and what is discussed on the Wikis themselves. This allows collaborative feedback among learners so that they can learn from each other. However, some intervening needs to be made for the instructor so that the correct and appropriate kind of collaboration occurs for the means of educating the class on how to best conduct their group projects.