TWU ID

About Wikis

• Wikipedia's History of the Wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

A search of the Internet today will find an unbelievable number of wikis.  They can be used by individuals, businesses, groups, or any combination.  The topics cover any interests that an individual or group might have.  In addition, each wiki has different ways in which communication, interaction, and the addition of information is handled.  Some wikis are completely private, password protected, and cannot be located through a search engine.  Other wikis are public but may or may not allow commenting or the addition of information from the casual viewer.  Some wikis allow comments and addition of information only from "members" of the wiki, or they moderate the additions of information to their wiki before they are posted.  Some wikis, however, are completely open and allow commenting and participation from anyone in the general public - Wikipedia is one of these open wikis.

Because of their intrinsic design for collaboration, wikis are an excellent tool for educational use.  They can be used by an entire course to organize the course, organize and allow for collaboration on a class project, or even as a destination point for course materials and interaction in place of a course management system.  In addition, they can be used to facilitate collaboration between members of a group on a group project, or as a portfolio of their work for the course of a semester.  Wikis are designed to have the ability to be "reverted", or returned to the last, or an earlier, version.  This means that they are very user friendly, since mistakes can be easily corrected by one or two clicks of the mouse.  Wikis also are designed to identify who is making different additions of, or updates to, information.  This makes group work much more transparent than other formats, such as exchanging files, or communicating via email.  In most cases, the instructor or wiki manager has complete control over seeing who has been doing what within each page of the wiki.  And, wikis combine some of the more attractive features of other Web 2.0 tools such as the ability to upload video, pictures, and sound recordings, as well as offering areas for user interaction and commenting in an asynchronous environment.

There are a number of different wiki tools available.  Most are very user-friendly, and some are even free to use like PBWiki (what we have used to make this wiki) and Wetpaint.  Others that provide a wider variety of "skins" (design layouts) and advanced tools may cost a little to use.  Socialtext is one of the more popular of the for-pay tools, and their wikis include a wider variety of user tools and organization options.  Wikis are also fairly secure for use in an educational setting.  The ability to make a wiki private and password protected, which is an option on most tools, works very effectively in keeping unwanted users away.  For example, making your wiki private will keep it from being included in searches by search engines like Google or Yahoo.  The only way that someone would be able to find your wiki would be if they had been provided with the URL.  In addition, password protecting your wiki is a further step that will keep those without proper access from viewing the information posted.  So, while it is always good practice to take certain precautions and set up certain rules and procedures for your educational wiki, privacy is not really quite as big an issue as you might imagine. 

So who are some of the people out there that are using wikis?  Here are some examples: