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wikis

Page history last edited by Mercedes 14 years, 6 months ago

 

WELCOME TO THIS DESCRIPTIVE

PAGE OF A WIKI

Here you will find information about important aspects about Wikis.

 

 Martha, Mercedes, and Mercy   

 

WIKIS

 

 

 

WHA IS A WIKI?

 

A wiki is a type of website that allows visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need of registration. Wikis can be in-house sites meant to serve a limited number of editors or wide-open sites where almost anyone can contribute. The most famous example of a wiki is WIKIPEDIA, an online encyclopedia whose articles are edited by volunteers and whose content is subject to change by nearly anyone.

 

 

HISTORY

 

Wiki Beginnings - Wild About Wikis 

 

In 1994 Ward Cunningham started developing the first WIKI web, and installed it to Internet domain C2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham as wiki wiki as an alliterative substitute for “quick web”.

 

For the creation of wiki wiki Cunningham was in part inspired by Apple’s Hyber Card. Apple had designed a system allowing users to create virtual “Card stacks” supporting links among the various cards. Cunningham developed Vannevar Bush’s by allowing users to comment on and change one another’s text.

In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Today some companies use wikis as

their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets and some  schools and universities use wikis to enhance group learning.

The "wiki" name was inspired by the transit bus line at the Honolulu International Airport which is named after the Hawaiian expression for Quick (wiki wiki)

 

THE STRUCTURE OF A WIKIS

 

First of all it is not necessary to build a very complex structure to get a wiki going. The first thing we need is a welcome page or a home page where people could end up in and have a little bit of a description of what the actual goal of the wiki is, what are you trying to achieve, how are you going to try to put together the information in the wiki itself, so that people will know what is expected from them.

A second very useful thing is to have like a who is who page where people are encouraged to drop by, edit it  and put information about themselves, like a picture, a basic bibliography of what they do, how they got together into that project, what they expect from the wiki.

Another thing that is necessary is the categories or topics about which the community is going to participate. Finally, there is a section for help resources so that the users can know how to navigate it. This section will encourage users to participate more actively. 

 

 

TYPES OF WIKIS

Educational Wikis

Educational wikis serve the purpose of educating people through an open and collaborative publication format. Wikipedia is the most well known of these types, supplying information for free to any enquiries. The beauty of wikis is the ability to adapt and change the available information. This ensures that information is up-to-date and correct (Fichter 2005, p. 49).

Social Wikis

Social wikis allow people to discuss and publish information about subjects of interest. An example may be a wiki about travel consisting of pages written by people who have travelled and wish to share their experiences. Then, if you travelled to New York in 2000 and wrote about your experiences on a wiki page, someone else can later add information about what’s happening in New York. Now detailed stories about a destination allows the reader/user to experience a collaboration of other people’s travels. This is an interesting way to publish and discuss travel or any other topic of interest.

Corporate Wikis

Corporate wikis are a useful format for groups or teams that work in collaborative environments or are starting new projects. Wikis can be used for storing minutes of meetings, linking sites or creating online documentations (Fichter 2005, p. 49). The open nature of wikis allows the corporate environment to create an up-to-date living documentation.

 

OTHER  TYPES: 

 Wikipedia  Free encyclopedia

 

  Wiktionary  Dictionary and thesaurus

 

 Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals

 

 Wikimedia the parent organization of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote Wikibooks, Wikisource,

 

BENEFITS 

 

Among the main advantages that wiki provides we have:

·         Wiki allows users to create and improve pages in an easy and fast way.

·         Lots of people can participate in its edition.

·         It encourages users to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

·         It is not necessary to be an expert in technology to edit or create a wiki.

·         It eliminates e-mail threats among groups to communicate or to obtain information.

·         It helps to avoid transfer of document attachments to a distribution list through your e-mail system.

 

With regard to educational area, we can say that using a wiki in the classroom

 

1.    FACILITATES COLLABORATIVE AUTHORING

Using a wiki in the classroom gives students the opportunity to author in a collaborative environment.  The benefits of collaborative authoring include:

·         Learning from others.- Collaborative authoring allows the students to learn from one another- both in terms of viewing each other’s content but also by seeing the quality of other student’s work.

·         Developing a higher level of critical thinking.- Students have the opportunity to critic other students’ information and learning how to defent their views when critiqued by other students.

·         Deepening investigative skills.-  When students have the opportunity to work collaboratively on one document they are encouraged to do more investigation.

·         Building class community.- Working together in a collaborative process helps class members meet one another and build mutually beneficial scholarly relationships.

 

2.   EMPOWERS STUDENTS TO CREATE KNOWLEDGE

      In a traditional classroom, the instructor provides most of the content and

      Students absorb and interpret that content. With wikis, you can give students the

      opportunity much of the course content.

3.  REFLECTS NEWLY-EMERGING TEACHER-STUDENT PARADIGM

Through the use of Wikis students are encouraged to create some of the course content which in a traditional classroom was made only by the teacher.

 

 

CLASSROOM APPLICATION

Wikis are used in the “Real World” by people collaborating in projects or trying to share things online such as family information and photos, technical information from users of a product, data from a research, etc the greatest potential, however, lies in student participation in the ongoing creation and evaluation of the wiki. A wiki is an ideal tool for the increasing amount of collaborative work done by both students and teacher. Students might use a wiki to collaborate in group, report, compile data or share the result of their research.

 

Here we have some tasks that can be performed using a wiki:

·         Students, teachers, and even parents could collaborate to gather, edit and present information n a wiki.

·         A wiki could be used to build a classroom dictionary or terms in a subject area. For examples students could build a list of historical or literacy definitions for a course.

·         Another idea is to break kids up into small groups for a project or activity and have them paste their work on a wiki. One could then invite other students groups to comment.

·         A teacher could post words for students to expand into definitions.

·         Students could research new topics and contribute their findings.

·         A wiki could be used as a portfolio showing development of a project.

·         Finally a wiki could be used by teachers to develop and edit curriculae.

 

LINKS FOR TEACHERS 

 

English as a foreign or second language : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_a_Foreign_or_Second_Language

Interactive Games:

http://inspireenglish.pbworks.com/FrontPage

http://inspireenglish.pbworks.com/Action+Mazes

http://www.esl-lounge.com/board_gamesindex.shtml

Practical English:

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/What+time+is+it?

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/commonly+confused+words

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/common+errors

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/answer+questions

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/sentence+meanings

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/Job+Interviews

http://practicalenglish.pbworks.com/Directions

 

Videos: http://www.simpleenglishnews.com/

Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/

 

 

 

 

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