As with most new concepts, there are always people supporting it and people criticizing it’s capabilities. This is no different with the latest technological idea: Wikis!
Proponents agree that wikis offer beneficial research pages as well as a place for people to collaboratively offer support and opinions on various topics. Benefits of Wikis include:
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- Wikis provide students with the ability to see that thinking is never over! It is always important to brainstorm your ideas, write about them and then revise to a finished product. While we do this continuously during Language Arts through written stories, students need to see that this is cross curricular. There is always someone who wants to challenge your ideas and spring new ones off of them. An example might be when posting information about an experiment. Someone else might take the conclusions of that experiment and ask new questions which would require new thinking. Thinking is an ongoing process, just as learning is!
- Wikis provide students with a strong sense of teamwork and collaboration, which is of course important in everyday life. Students might have to post their ideas and wait for someone else to edit or change them. Through teamwork, they can create a response that is more complete!
- Students evaluate and create using their own pondering. The teacher might give them an overall concept to think about, such as a novel that was just read. Students must then take it upon themselves to think about their responses, create the wiki and then springboard new thinking off of a classmates response to that same novel.
- Connections are constantly being made to both new and old concepts. A thought that a classmate writes might make another student think about a concept learned in science or something they saw while they were at the mall over the weekend. Making connections to everyday life and across curriculums is how students learn!
- Active learning is taking place while students are on a wiki page. Students must think for themselves, revisit what they already know and add to their thinking in order to complete the assignment. They can’t just tell what they think, but must also use evidence to back up their answer, therefore they are actively engaged in their learning.
Critics to Wiki propose that these sites are not accurate. They are pulling sources from a wide variety of people, ranging in age from teen years to senior citizens. If the page is not set to private, anyone is able to add or delete information as they see fit. Because it’s used as a resource to gather information for student research, it’s crucial that students realize Wikis won’t always have accurate information. Either on purpose or by accident, people can post false information. This would make the research they are doing innacurate! Anyone can post their ideas/thoughts/opinions to thousands of web users in seconds!
If you choose to use Wikis in your classroom, you as the educator will have to take responsibilities to ensure the information your students are finding is accurate. Fortunately this is easy to do via the history tab. You can check who has added what information in a matter of seconds. This will help make the resources more reliable. In making a Wiki with your class, you can set the page to private so that only those with permission may change information. This will prohibit vandalism from happening (at least by outside users!).
As more technology comes into play, we gain more and more things to worry about! Wikis are such a valuable tool for helping students expand their minds as well as their skills on the computer. Despite being controversial, the true question really should be “why not wiki”?!?!
