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wikis
by Wen-ling Tung
Photo by jeffmacneill
Courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
What is "wiki"?
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wikis are used to create collaborative websites and allow the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself by using a simplified markup language. In addition, wikis support hyperlinks and have simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links. Wiki, in Ward Cunningham’s original description: “The simplest online database that could possibly work.” Ward, the developer of the first wiki site called “Wiki Wiki Web” in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com in 1995. “Wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “fast.” According to Cunningham, he says he chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for “quick” and thereby avoided naming it “quick-web.”
In the book The Wiki Way: quick collaboration on the Web, Ward and co-author Bo Leuf described the essence of the Wiki concept:
Wikis have some special functions. First, they have the function of hypertext links to other pages. Second, users can also create any number of index or table of contexts pages with categorization or whatever form of organization they like, which may be challenging to maintain by hand. Generally, wikis provide some ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages. In addition, most wikis have a backlink feature, which displays all pages that link to a given page. Also it is typical in a wiki to allow users to create links to pages that do not exist, which serves as a way to invite others to share a subject new to the wiki. And most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database.
Wikis and Security.
There are many different types of wikis. Different settings allow you to make your wiki as private or as public as you want.
Yet most of the wikis are open to users and allow anyone to edit content. Some larger wikis employ sophisticated methods, such as automatically identify and revert vandalism and JavaScript enhancements that show characters that have been added in each edit, and some wikis allow unregistered users, identified by their IP addresses, to edit content, whilst other limit this function to just registered users. Generally speaking, on most wikis, becoming a registered user is a short and simple process. Users can sign up without any difficulty and allow everyone to create and edit while some wikis require an additional waiting period before gaining access to certain tools. For example, on the English wikipedia, registered users can only remain pages if their account is at least four years old, and Portugese wikipedia use an editing requirement. Also some wikis choose to "close-up", requiring the users' real name and detailed biography, which seems ineffective and affect the growth of wiki.
Wikis in Higher Education
With the features of powerful collaboration, wikis allow everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site which encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. Linda L Briggs in “The Power of Wiki in Higher Ed” mentions his interview with Stewart Mader, who has staked his career on the power of wikis, talking about powerful ways to use wikis in education, and how colleges and universities use wikis to enhance learning. Stewart indicates that in higher education, there are three ways a wiki can be useful: teaching, research, and administration. He points out that the usefulness of applying wikis in teaching comes from two things. First, teachers can work together using a wiki to write curriculum and lesson plans for courses to develop the assignments and so forth. For students, wikis are beneficial primarily as a collaborative tool for things like group assignments in courses. In addition, wikis allow instructors to focus on fewer, more in-depth assignments or products that are results of highly collaborative work by students. And since an instructor has access to the contribution history on the wiki, he can see what students are doing as they are doing it, which allows an instructor to help students to keep a project on course towards success.
Pedagogical Rationales for the Use of Wiki
Since wikis provides users with author and editor privileges, they can easily edit the content and the overall organization of contribution as well. In addition, wikis are able to incorporate sounds, movies and pictures, which make wikis a simple tool to create multimedia presentations and simple digital stores in a language. For example, in a language class, the instructor can create a class wiki, which is a free online learning community, providing students reading resources, asking inspiring questions, making announcements, and engaging students with any activities related to the target language learning, sharing ideas, giving feed backs and so on. And students can use the class wiki to create and edit their own works or do the group works, present their projects, and exchange their opinions among them. Moreover, a class wiki is not only use among teacher and students in a class, but engage visitors from all over world, which students will feel exciting and being motivated if the visitors can join their discussion and give comments. The following link is an example of an English Class Wiki (by Steve Shann): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BByRVoDVEpM
Another example is from Nathalie's experience sharing. She has applied Wetpaint as a class wiki for her literature class. Wetpaint is more students centered tool, so students can completely create it themselves. And the other features, such as very user friendly and easy importing widgets from other sites, engage students to be more creative and more willing to use the tools for learning purpose. They can discuss the topic on the discussion board, editing and doing their group work, and sharing their opinions at the class wiki, and Nathalie, as an instructor, can put reading resources, link video clips from YouTube, giving students responses and feedback, which makes her teaching work more efficient and well-organized and more communicative. In addition, it is better that all the creative works of students and the class curricula and discussions will be maintained well on the class wiki even the class have ended. However, she found that her class wiki in Wetpaint is not much outside interaction.
Framed by the 5C's, the appliance of wikis can help achieve the standards of foreign language teaching by ACTFL. A class wiki help students achieve the standard of communication--engage in daily conversations, provide and obtain information, express feeling and emotions, and exchange opinions. With the functions of import widgets easily, a wiki also allows students to reach the standard of culture more effectively--gain some knowledge and understand of the culture of the target language. And the feature of working wiki online make student be able to use the target language to communicate within and beyond class setting. Since students can efficiently interact with their instructor and classmates to their best in the target language by wikis, they will develop a certain level of comfort with the new language in the online learning environment which is more efficient, nurturing, motivational and communicative.
For simple but clear explanation of wikis, please see the following video clip "Wiki by Plain English" by Lee and Sachi Lefever
Photo by jeffmacneill
Courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
What is "wiki"?
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wikis are used to create collaborative websites and allow the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself by using a simplified markup language. In addition, wikis support hyperlinks and have simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links. Wiki, in Ward Cunningham’s original description: “The simplest online database that could possibly work.” Ward, the developer of the first wiki site called “Wiki Wiki Web” in 1994, and installed it on the Internet domain c2.com in 1995. “Wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “fast.” According to Cunningham, he says he chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for “quick” and thereby avoided naming it “quick-web.”
In the book The Wiki Way: quick collaboration on the Web, Ward and co-author Bo Leuf described the essence of the Wiki concept:
- "A wiki invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, using only a plain-vanilla Web browser without any extra add-ons. "
- "Wiki promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and showing whether an intended target page exists or not."
- "A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape."
Wikis have some special functions. First, they have the function of hypertext links to other pages. Second, users can also create any number of index or table of contexts pages with categorization or whatever form of organization they like, which may be challenging to maintain by hand. Generally, wikis provide some ways to categorize or tag pages to support the maintenance of such index pages. In addition, most wikis have a backlink feature, which displays all pages that link to a given page. Also it is typical in a wiki to allow users to create links to pages that do not exist, which serves as a way to invite others to share a subject new to the wiki. And most wikis offer at least a title search, and sometimes a full-text search. The scalability of the search depends on whether the wiki engine uses a database.
Wikis and Security.
There are many different types of wikis. Different settings allow you to make your wiki as private or as public as you want.
Yet most of the wikis are open to users and allow anyone to edit content. Some larger wikis employ sophisticated methods, such as automatically identify and revert vandalism and JavaScript enhancements that show characters that have been added in each edit, and some wikis allow unregistered users, identified by their IP addresses, to edit content, whilst other limit this function to just registered users. Generally speaking, on most wikis, becoming a registered user is a short and simple process. Users can sign up without any difficulty and allow everyone to create and edit while some wikis require an additional waiting period before gaining access to certain tools. For example, on the English wikipedia, registered users can only remain pages if their account is at least four years old, and Portugese wikipedia use an editing requirement. Also some wikis choose to "close-up", requiring the users' real name and detailed biography, which seems ineffective and affect the growth of wiki.
Wikis in Higher Education
With the features of powerful collaboration, wikis allow everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site which encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. Linda L Briggs in “The Power of Wiki in Higher Ed” mentions his interview with Stewart Mader, who has staked his career on the power of wikis, talking about powerful ways to use wikis in education, and how colleges and universities use wikis to enhance learning. Stewart indicates that in higher education, there are three ways a wiki can be useful: teaching, research, and administration. He points out that the usefulness of applying wikis in teaching comes from two things. First, teachers can work together using a wiki to write curriculum and lesson plans for courses to develop the assignments and so forth. For students, wikis are beneficial primarily as a collaborative tool for things like group assignments in courses. In addition, wikis allow instructors to focus on fewer, more in-depth assignments or products that are results of highly collaborative work by students. And since an instructor has access to the contribution history on the wiki, he can see what students are doing as they are doing it, which allows an instructor to help students to keep a project on course towards success.
Pedagogical Rationales for the Use of Wiki
Since wikis provides users with author and editor privileges, they can easily edit the content and the overall organization of contribution as well. In addition, wikis are able to incorporate sounds, movies and pictures, which make wikis a simple tool to create multimedia presentations and simple digital stores in a language. For example, in a language class, the instructor can create a class wiki, which is a free online learning community, providing students reading resources, asking inspiring questions, making announcements, and engaging students with any activities related to the target language learning, sharing ideas, giving feed backs and so on. And students can use the class wiki to create and edit their own works or do the group works, present their projects, and exchange their opinions among them. Moreover, a class wiki is not only use among teacher and students in a class, but engage visitors from all over world, which students will feel exciting and being motivated if the visitors can join their discussion and give comments. The following link is an example of an English Class Wiki (by Steve Shann): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BByRVoDVEpM
Another example is from Nathalie's experience sharing. She has applied Wetpaint as a class wiki for her literature class. Wetpaint is more students centered tool, so students can completely create it themselves. And the other features, such as very user friendly and easy importing widgets from other sites, engage students to be more creative and more willing to use the tools for learning purpose. They can discuss the topic on the discussion board, editing and doing their group work, and sharing their opinions at the class wiki, and Nathalie, as an instructor, can put reading resources, link video clips from YouTube, giving students responses and feedback, which makes her teaching work more efficient and well-organized and more communicative. In addition, it is better that all the creative works of students and the class curricula and discussions will be maintained well on the class wiki even the class have ended. However, she found that her class wiki in Wetpaint is not much outside interaction.
Framed by the 5C's, the appliance of wikis can help achieve the standards of foreign language teaching by ACTFL. A class wiki help students achieve the standard of communication--engage in daily conversations, provide and obtain information, express feeling and emotions, and exchange opinions. With the functions of import widgets easily, a wiki also allows students to reach the standard of culture more effectively--gain some knowledge and understand of the culture of the target language. And the feature of working wiki online make student be able to use the target language to communicate within and beyond class setting. Since students can efficiently interact with their instructor and classmates to their best in the target language by wikis, they will develop a certain level of comfort with the new language in the online learning environment which is more efficient, nurturing, motivational and communicative.
For simple but clear explanation of wikis, please see the following video clip "Wiki by Plain English" by Lee and Sachi Lefever
Wenling |
Latest page update: made by Wenling
, Dec 15 2008, 2:27 PM EST
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1 word added 2 words deleted view changes - complete history) |
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