WIKIs

Wiki Web sites are designed to enable students to edit and publish content, upload files and link to other resources within the Wiki and other Web sites. Students have access to who can view their Wiki sites; it can be made available for all users, or individual users, or groups of selected users (Answers.com 2009; The University of Melbourne, 2007). I have used Wiki once before for the course I am studying currently, Bachelor of Learning Manager; the subject was Futures. I found it very daunting to use at first, just as I found the blog but once I had a look and navigated around I found it very simple to use. I find the Wiki and Blogs are very similar ICT; however, there are a few slight differences. The type of information to be written about will determine where the work will appear. For example for information that is to be done in chronological order likes news, diary or journal blogs this would best appear in a blog and for information for group collaboration and research best suited for Wiki (ISIF, 2009). Kearsley and Shneiderman (1999, p. 1) say “collaboration can be as simple as a two-minute in-class exercise involving pairs of students or as elaborate as a multi-year curriculum development project involving many teams.” Hence their engagement theory is immense on collaboration and Wiki are primarily about collaboration. Because Wikis are primarily about collaboration this is helping students to achieve effective and efficient learning as the LM is conducting group work during class time (The ACU, 2000). An example of using Wiki in a classroom setting following Kearsley and Schneiderman’s (1999) engaged theory components, Relate-Create-Donate, students could work in collaborative teams to do an authentic unit plan for example work “How much will catering cost for a five-day school camp?”. Within this unit plan the LM would explain what the unit plan involves finding out how much the meat will cost for school camp and the students will be separate into three groups: group 1: breakfast, group 2: lunch and group 3: dinner. Students then in their groups first would Relate which emphasises team efforts that involve the group talk amongst themselves regarding how best to gather information one way could be to present their finding in a graph – horizontally all the class mates names on a piece of paper and vertically what the students would like to eat for breakfast. . Second the students would create. Students will go to the supermarkets to work out the pricing of the food and drinks for the items they will need to buy for this unit. Third, Donate produce to the class and the learning management their findings – students will calculate the quantities of food required to cater for their allocated group and the total cost of food required. The capabilities of Wikis are:

• The user is able to control who adds data and who cannot, some people believe that everyone can add to Wikis because Wikipedia has this application; however, this is just a misconception.
• Allow users to comment on the content .
• Archiving information for easy access (Dixon, 2007) .
• Best for group collaboration and research
• Pages can easily link to each other
• When you create new Wiki pages, they are instantly available for searching (ISIF, 2009).
• LM and students can control who they would like to see their Wikis and add comments.
• LM and students can add links, photos and media.