What is a wiki?
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who
accesses it to contribute or modify content. They can be set up and
modified quickly and easily and no specialist programming knowledge
is required. It is possible to set a wiki so that only the teacher
can modify content. Many providers offer a basic but cost-free wiki
with perhaps 100MB of memory for content. This is enough to create
a substantial wiki site, which may be used to develop collaborative
writing, to provide a focus on grammar, to enable guided exam
revision or to promote independent research into aspects of another
country’s culture.
Key features
- Easy to use: wikis can be created in minutes
and edited very easily by all users with appropriate permissions.
No programming expertise is required
- Versatile: text, images, interactive
exercises, audio and even video can be uploaded to a wiki. The free
memory allowance is not infinite and the providers hope to entice
users into buying an enhanced version of the wiki with large
amounts of memory. However it is a relatively simple matter to set
up more free wikis and place links to them on the home page of the
first wiki
- Appealing: students find wikis give them a
degree of ownership of the learning process. They are also familiar
with being able to contribute collaboratively online from blogs or
social networking sites
- Multi-purpose: wikis can be used to focus on
writing skills, grammar, vocabulary, cultural knowledge,
listening skills, project work and much more. They can also
be used to generate resources which students can access or teachers
can use for whole-class work on the interactive whiteboard.
Hyperlinks to educational wikis can be placed on the school’s
website or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
- Excellent tool for collaboration: wikis can be
used as a way of sharing ideas amongst teachers as well as for
inter-student collaboration.
- Robust: it is possible for anyone with the
password to delete the entire contents of the wiki, accidentally or
otherwise. However, any such deletion can always be reversed by the
teacher at the click of a mouse.