When I hear the word “wiki”, I automatically think of referencing a Wikipedia article, although since starting the MET I have started to think of other options under the “wiki” umbrella. I have some experience using wikis either for reading or writing purposes – I did a collaborative design project in ETEC 510 last term entirely on Mediawiki, I used pbwiki to collaborate on a small project in ETEC 512 and I frequently use Wikipedia as a reference tool for anything from historical facts to movie trivia to sports statistics.
In reflecting on my past experience with wikis and connecting them to the teaching and learning process, I have found that they can be tremendous collaborative tools. When using pbwiki, I was working with a group that was less experienced with technology and the pbwiki interface allowed for “wysiwyg” content rather than html generated content. The final product was a good representation of working collaboratively in an environment that served as both the sandbox and the final product. My experience with Mediawiki was wonderful and a great lesson in the power of wikis. My design project group created an entire course in Mediawiki and the features of the interface allowed for us to feel like we were all in the same room throughout the process. The “recent changes” link allowed us to view the recent changes of other group members, which was very useful given the scope of our site. We were able to message each other and leave notes on the “discussion” pages as we went through. The process was very fluid – there was no need to compose formal emails to each other or list the changes we were making because Mediawiki is intuitive enough to allow for these things to happen through the natural process of using the interface. The use of html was a big tricky for me to get used to with some of the more complicated functions, but it seems that many wikis (like pbwiki) are available in “wysiwyg” mode so one won’t be scared off by html.
For the purpose of this toolkit activity, I checked out the educational wikis, which were much of what I expected. My interest was peaked by a suggestion in the toolkit assignment to look in the discussion page on Wikipedia. I thought of a nice controversial topic, the Holocaust, and decided to see if the discussion page was wrought with racist or politically motivated material or if it was truly indicative of a collaborative, scholarly discussion. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this discussion page consisted of dialogue between strangers about how to best represent information on the Holocaust and an academic discussion about references, points of contention and points of inclusion. I also looked up Adolf Hitler and found that the discussion tab had many posts about correct grammar and even members that would chime in at the mention of any words that could be seen as not neutral (ie. A member made an argument that using the word “atrocity” to describe Hitler’s action was not neutral enough). The Wikipedia guidelines are clearly posted and suggestions for what would make the article a “good article” are listed. I know that many people see Wikipedia as a “bad” resource but there are clearly a lot of check and balances in the large community that is genuinely interested in presenting factual information in an accessible manner. While not all articles are “example worthy”, I am confident that the growing Wikipedia community will soon fill in the gaps and that Wikipedia will become a credible source of information in the eyes of academics and educators.