Wiki's Will Win You Wover!

Do you like the catchy title? I thought it was clever. I think it's how I feel about wiki's these days. When I first thought about wiki's and what their purpose was, I envisioned them being a lot like blogs but more collaborative. In fact, they are much different. Blogs are a way to journal about our thoughts and understandings then people respond back with their opinion or views. After reading, Sarah Guth's (2007) paper Wiki's In Education: Is Public Better, I'm beginning to see that wiki's are a Web 2.0 tool used to build collaboration between those who are participating in the wiki and the topic they are writing about. They are also an opportunity to publish quality pieces of writing.  

Berger & Trexler (2010) explain a Wiki's  

"focus as authoring content, rather than just downloading existing content on the Web. Student authors select, evaluate, write, revise, edit, and publish information and ideas to their collaborative wiki Web site." 

This Web 2.0 tool then becomes increasingly important in helping students and myself learn to share, collaborate, and deal with editing others work and have my own edited. Guth also reported that the students in the study also had the same difficulty as I am having,

both a challenge and a benefit of using wikis in education is helping students let go of individual ownership. (p. 62) 

I am learning to do this since one of our first discussions in this course from our textbook, The Socially Networked Classroom by William Kist. I wondered what I had to share but I am learning that everyone has something to share, even myself.  Guth also reported, the students  

"still felt strong ownership for their personal contributions and had difficulty editing each other's work/" (p. 64)

I know this is an issue I will be struggling with. I think, who am I to be editing someone else's work. Again, it's going to take time to leave this mindset. 

I had two goals in mind for my proposal. One was to create a Wiki (at the time I wasn't sure of why or what it would entail) and to add to the Daily 5 Wiki of our Friday night Twitter chats. I successfully added some of my word work activities to the wiki. If you would like to see the post I did on how easy it was to add content to this wiki click here. This particular wiki is not one in true sense of what Berger and Trexler (2010) stated a wiki should be. Instead, it is a place for teachers to share their ideas, resources and insights into this program. I added an introduction of myself so I could get use to using the editing function of a wiki. This is still a very new Web 2.0 tool for me and I know I am not using it to it's full potential but with all new things, experimentation is important to understanding what to do and how to use it.

I knew I wanted to create a wiki of my own, I have to create something in order to know how it works, but at the time of the proposal I struggled with knowing what was the wiki for. The more I read and looked at other wiki's I realized I wanted to have a place to share what I do. Several people ask for power points, documents, images, etc from me after I finish a presentation or from a post I may add to my other blog. For now my wiki will be a place to house all of these items. I will leave the wiki open so others can add to it. I feel the more I use it and give others the address, the more others will feel comfortable collaborating on it. A problem I know I am going to encounter is having people contribute and become members. Why would they want to? At this time I am unsure of how to answer this question. Perhaps with more use and putting out my content on Twitter others will find the value in collaborating on the wiki and adding their own work.

References

Berger, P., & Trexler, S. (2010). Choosing web 2.0 tools for learning and teaching in a digital world. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

Guth, S. (2007). Wikis in education: is public better?. WikiSym ’07. doi: 10.1145/1296951.1296958