Wednesday, September 17, 2008

More on Wikis-Educational Uses

As there are so many ways to use Wikis for educational purposes, I found it helpful to peruse a site that is a composite of several educational wiki sites with their links. It is: http://educationalwikis.com/Examples+of+educational +wikis. One of the best example sites is:
Asalaamualaikum-a wiki that focuses on Pakistan for ages 10 & 11. It is a great example of student involvement. One of the pages advertised obtaining a 'voki'-a customized voice and a character-avatar, to participate! (www.voki.com if you are interested!)

The self-correcting mechanism of wikis lends itself to a bit of intellectual competition or at least, the production of a worthy product to avoid correction. It keeps participants on their toes to always be in a state of a peer reviewer or reviewee. (not a real word!) Adding to or correcting someone's story, is done in many areas in education. This medium simply extends this practice to a broader audience and is not limited to only the classroom setting.

2 comments:

SaraJoy said...

Your comment about other contexts in which we all serve as peer reviewers and reviewees made me think about the concept of "joining conversations"--academic or otherwise.
Maybe theses and dissertations wouldn't be such a leap if students were exposed to concepts like consulting the available literature, finding and filling gaps, connecting to the on-going narrative, etc. from grade school on...

opencontent said...

"The self-correcting mechanism of wikis lends itself to a bit of intellectual competition or at least, the production of a worthy product to avoid correction. It keeps participants on their toes to always be in a state of a peer reviewer or reviewee."

This is one reason why we post our homework on publicly accessible blogs. The dynamic is somewhat different, of course - people will comment on your blog story instead of correcting it out from under you on a wiki. But this is a critical insight as well.

Nice job this week!