My View of Wiki's

Shockingly, I had never heard of Wiki's before starting at UWG. I had to go to the new student orientation in August 2010 and had no idea what Dr. Bennett was talking about when she mentioned that UWG uses them. I immediately went home to investigate. I still didn't realize what a Wiki could be used for because I was just looking at one and not actually contributing. I had heard of Wikipedia but didn't know that there was anything else out there. I know differently now.

Within a week of first learning about Wiki's I had just started teaching and was trying to get familiar with the new reading series that was adopted by my county. Guess what? I found out that there is a great Wiki that is used for the new reading series. Each grade has a entire page of resources. I became very excited and tried to spread the word to other teachers.

In order to do this assignment I did a little bit of research on how Wiki's came about. I was again shocked when I saw that Ward Cunningham, Wiki creator, started developing and working on this in 1995. I feel like I must have been locked away in a closet or something. Now the wiki's that we know of today really didn't come about until the early 2000's so I shouldn't feel too bad. However, it does make me feel like a school building can sometimes be like an island. You are linked to others but at the same time what happens in your own building can sometimes be worlds apart from what everyone else is doing.

Posting on our class Wiki is the first time I've ever interacted with Wiki's. I think it's a great way to see other people's work. I also think that it works well when we are working in groups because it enables all group members to update and make changes to assignments. If we stick to email and discussion boards to create and work on assignments we group members tend to have many versions of a document before we are finished which can get confusing. I think that this would be a great way for students to post their work within classrooms or even on a grade level. Teachers/students could also post assignments or completed projects based on a particular unit of study or topic of interest. I think there is a lot of potential to use Wiki's in classrooms. It's also important to note that Wiki's are not blocked by Internet filters so it is an easy way to communicate work electronically.

I have a word of warning. Wiki's that are open to all to post and edit information can be altered or deleted either intentionally or unintentionally. Last week I went to our class Wiki to post my tech tip. I was hurry to do this because I was tired and wanted to go to bed. Somehow I ended up deleting the entire tech tips page. There was only white space. I was in a panic. I actually had to email Dr. Cooper to let him know I wiped out everyone's posted work. Luckily I sat and played around for awhile (after I got over my panic). I figured out that if I went into history and went back to the last post before mine I could "revert" back to that time. The last post before mine was at 5:08 p.m. and so I chose that and luckily the tech tips page became available again. I had to repost my work but that was not a problem. Just be careful before you click save. I think I accidentally highlighted everything, hit backspace and then hit save before I realized that it was all gone. Aside from that...enjoy!