Let’s talk about wiki setvices for education.
Wiki is a web technology used for collaborative
publishing on the web. Wiki is a type of server software that allows you to
work with data on a remote server on the Web. Users interact with the software
through a web interface that lets them read, edit and publish content. Content is
getting priority not design.
Wiki is used for collaborative publishing. A group of
co-authors can freely add and change the content of the wiki website: rewrite
texts, add new texts and images, add and link pages and more.
Unlike other publishing platforms, wikis are:
- heavily based on collaboration;
- non-linear and not based on time;
- are purely content-oriented.
There are several genres of wiki sites but today we are
going to talk about educational wikis.
Wikis have a wide range of educational applications,
most of which can be combined within one wiki site. There are some activities
that can be fulfilled on one platform without significant interference and
thereby can form a part of an integrated educational resource such as Student's
Profile. A task to create such a page gives the student an incentive how to use
formatting, publishing and multimedia capabilities of a wiki platform, thereby
preparing the student for more complex tasks.
For foreign language teachers wiki services offer a
range of experimental wiki-based vocabulary-building and writing tasks.
Let’s have a look at free wiki tools:
- Wikispaces proves to be one of the best, highly
reliable, easy to use and intuitive free wiki platforms to use as your wiki
platform.
- Wikia offers a more modern look, has more features and
a vast fan base for attracting commercially active communities. Less suitable
for educational use for incessant advertising on every page of your wiki.
- ZohoWiki provides state-of-the-art interface and
functions for a modern corporate-inclined wiki. Best for tech-savvy classrooms.
- Wiki Site is a native WikiMedia-based free wiki
hosting with limited features and resources.
- WikiDot offers free plans for wiki sites with
advertising. Standard wiki functionality (unfortunately, is not available in Belarus any more).
- Wikipedia — is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration and a wiki-based editing system. With its vast repository of knowledge and accessibility — students can get to it from any browser or device — Wikipedia is perfect for classroom lessons on any topic and provides an opportunity to cover subjects such as information literacy and source bias evaluation.
Wiki also provides the projects of its users and this section is called wiki experience. Here are some of them:
- TEFLPedia — A great example of a professional teachers’ community that comes together by means of a wiki site.
- Richard Doyle, English Fifteen in 15 Weeks! — is a fascinating ESP wiki-based project held at Penn State.
- Wikiversity — a Wikipedia-Like Learning Community is an example of a vivid and vibrant learning community operating with the help of wiki technology.
To conclude, wiki is a nice service for education because it is free, easy to use, and enables students and teachers to generate their own content. Bit I would emphasise only Wikipedia for education and Wikia for general use. All other services mainly contain outdated data. Nowadays there are tonnes of other services and sites which can be integrated in education that are more updated and easy in use, BBC Learning English as an example.
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