1. Pedagogical Potential of Wikis
- Maximizing written and visual interaction among members of the wiki community
- Democracy of wikis - it's a read-write web space that everyone can contribute, change, reshape
- Quasi-Real-time changes - the changes made to the wiki are immediate
- Primacy of text - wikis are primarily text media. They can include images and video, but they are gounded in the hypermedia of the web
- Distributed Authorship - the very openess that marks collective access to the wiki supports distributed authorship
- Promote negotiation - the non-hierarchical nature of membership in a community of practice as expressed through the wiki means anyone can change anything. Geting to an agreed upon published state therefore requires interaction and discussion, else edit wars will prevail.
- Promotes collaborative writing and open editing - jointly creating written work, and doing so in an open, exposed, and public manner exposes the work to quality analysis political analysis, as well as higher quality and an appreciation for the nuances of editing.
- Promote feedback
- Can enable anonymity where desired
- Build trust - working together in the open and constructing narrative
The Profetic.org expands on this elegantly:
The goal of such "co-curricularization" is to influence the quality of ALL work, not just one's own 1 Quality is to be influenced OVER TIME (long term sustainability of knowledge) (Ciffolilli, 2003 & Schwartz, 2004), ACROSS collectivities (across students, over classes, over years, over generations; see, e.g., Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), VIA open-natured projects and TOWARDS creating "impossible public goods" (Ciffolilli, 2003). While creating assemblages of valuable collective goods is not new, tools that intrinsically incite them — and on such a large scale — may be truly new (Godwin-Jones, 2003).
Like many on-line environments, wikis create the possibility for international "Collaborative Collectors" and interdisciplinary "social webs" that enhance social life through knowledge of and mutual participation in new types of cultural and leisure activities (Mark, 2001 cited in Muirhead, 2004). Networked collectivities purportedly allow for wider, diversified, teamwork (Ciffolilli, 2003). Teamwork is said to invite multiple perspectives, induce higher developmental skills, reduce uncertainty during complex activities, and increase participation (Harasim 2003, cited in Muirhead, 2004).
Examples of using a wiki for teaching and learning
- wiki used in a classroom for presentations and peer review work. The wiki is also used as a student writing portfolio
- wiki Howis a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest how-to manual.
- General resource wiki for blended learning
More social uses of a wiki can be just as revealing and interesting. Consider
- a track team that uses the wiki for managing workouts
- Planning a camping trip