Go Wild With Wikis: Part I

May 17, 2009 in Working with Web 2.0 tools
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Wikis are a great place to start for people new to the online world because they are relatively easy to use, feel similar to using MS Word and their appearance is more like traditional web sites.

This first session from this three part “Go Wild With Wikis” series facilitated by Sue Waters, from the Classroom 2.0 beginners series, covered Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0, what are wikis, basic features of Wikispaces wikis and how educators are using wikis.

Skills level of participants who attended the session is shown in the table below (Yes= has their own or uses with their students; No = doesn’t have own or use with students; No response = they didn’t respond to the question).

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

The term Web 2.0 was first used in December 2003. Nowadays people use the terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 to highlight how features of the World Wide Web has changed.

During the session we brainstormed the main difference between Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 (as shown below – 71 people). The mobile phone was to emphasize that the modern mobile phone has more computing power than the computers in the early 1990’s.

In very simplistic terms Web 2.0 has changed the Web from where we read/consumed information written by programmers (i.e. able to write HTML, design web sites) to enabling anyone to create, participate, share, communicate information without ever needing any programming skills.

Introduction to Wikis

The term wiki comes from the Wikiwikiweb site developed by Ward Cunningham in 1994. Visiting Hawaii he was looking for a bus from the airport and was told to take the ‘wikiwiki’ (Hawaiian for quick) bus. Wikis = quick website.

Wikipedia is hosted on a wiki (MediaWiki) demonstrates how people can globally collaborate to produce and share information. There are numerous examples of educators using Wikipedia for school and universities projects to demonstrate how open content works.

The most common wikis used by educators are:

Wikispaces, WetPaint and PBWorks wikis are all free hosted wiki solutions (i.e. you can sign up for a free wiki and the company hosts the wiki for you) where as MediaWiki is a wiki solution that you host yourself on your own server or with a hosting company. Each type of wiki uses wikitext but has different features. Participants were taken on a tour of the edit, discussion and history features of wikispaces.

During the session we also brainstormed the different ways educators can use wikis (as shown below – 95 people).

Recording (60 mins):

Blog posts and discussion forums:

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2 Replies

  1. 1   Go Wild With Wikis: Part II | Edublogs Live Pingback on Jun 5th, 2009 at 9:13 am

    [...] Web 2.0 provides us with tools that allow us to easily create, participate, share, communicate information and collaborate in ways that previously we couldn’t. These tools mean our students can work with students in other parts of the World; and even content experts, to connect and/or collaborate on projects to gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding on topics that interest them. [...]

  2. 2   Learning about using a Wiki | Integrating ICT Pingback on Jun 11th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

    [...] Edublogs Live Events on Elluminate presented by Sue Waters http://edublogslive.wikispaces.com/ • Go Wild With Wikis: Part I • Go Wild With Wikis: Part II I used the Elluminate recording of the Illuminate [...]

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