Wikis permit asynchronous communication and group collaboration across the Internet, it's been sometimes described as a composition system, a discussion medium, a repository, and a tool for collaboration.
The EU project WikiSkills develops and implements a wiki training to teach educators how to make the best use of wikis in education. die Berater® will be piloting the Wiki training in Vienna in March. Through this, the project promotes innovative pedagogical approaches to foster digital literacy, as well as social skills, writing skills and critical thinking. By working with wikis, students and course participants can learn not only how to publish content, but learn to acquire and improve cooperative skills.
Benefits of using wikis
Wikis embody the idea of a potentially collective, democratic, open, and dynamic design. However, this somewhat romantic vision has been challenged by vandalism and “information wars” and required registration is not uncommon in some wikis.
Wikis allow users, with both author and editor privileges, to edit the overall organization of contributions as the content itself. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems and note-taking. Many wiki platforms are open to alteration by the general public without requiring them to register user accounts. On the other hand, private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them. Some wiki platforms welcome thousands of editors at the same time. But most wiki platforms have much less participants, ranging from a handful to a couple hundred. It is also possible to run a personal wiki. Thus, a wiki holds technology as well as community aspects.
When wiki activities enter schools or universities there are consequences for learning and teaching. Content and networked structures are built from within as users add material and make use of a simplified hypertext mark-up language to create links and add features. In LMSs and groupware, activities are often linked to individual work (learners’ personal folders etc.) that can be shared later, while in a wiki it is the collective (e.g. class) activities that give rise to content formation, structure, and (indefinite) growth. And while degrees of interdependence can be observed when people jointly draw and take notes, the wiki affords immediate and unlimited participation due to its distributed character; interdependency is not an option but its rationale.
What can a wiki be used for?
Wikis may serve many different purposes. Examples include community websites, corporate
intranets, knowledge management systems, and note-taking.
Here are some examples of uses:
- Collecting historical data; building encyclopedic content: purpose heavily inspired from wikipedia, it is frequently used within companies as well or on local territory wikis.
- Drafting and reviewing material: promotional flyers, public documents, reports, books, grant requests, documentation, annotated bibliography, minutes of a meeting, writing
- assignments etc.
- Directory for team, officials, local media: great use for a wiki, each person can keep her or his information up-to-date.... as well as information for others. Administration is quick and easy. A famous example is Diplopedia, the wiki of the US Diplomatic Department.
- Project knowledge management: brainstorming, sharing of ideas, coordination of activities etc.
- Publishing: all of the above, course resources
- Website supporting a temporary event, such as a conference: the wiki may host information about the program, about the speakers, content of talk, list of attendees, travel details and much more. Information can be easily and quickly updated by editors in a context of relative urgency.
