The Usage of Wikis

 This time I am going to talk about Wikis. In previous posts I was sharing my ideas about blogs, digital children and podcast. This time I am not going far from the technology as my post is about Wiki. According to Leuf and Cunningham (2001),Wiki is a database where each page is easily edited also it is a collection of expandable WebPage. To tell the truth I liked Wikis a lot. I would say more than Blogging. As Mattison (2003) mentions   “a wiki can be a blog, but a blog does not have to be a wiki.” When I was writing a polar bear story I was so enthusiastic because here I had an opportunity to be more creative and was waiting for ending  as my peers had to continue it. But most of all I like wiki because of collaborative learning. Here  let`s say the learners should not comment like in blogging they can continue each other`s ideas. They have to read the beginning in order to continue, so they should be aware of that certain wiki page. It can be easily used for educational purposes and my perception is that students or learners will like them a lot. The wikis are easily editable and the users will not find much difficulties. I also created my wiki page and invited my friends there. As an English teacher I would use Wikis with great pleasure especially with adults by all means they would like it. This kind of technological innovations help teachers to go far from the traditional way of teaching and use technology as much as possible. Of course the lack of technological knowledge can be a problem but Wikis has simple usage , so it can be implemented. Students can easily edit it and change what they want. All that stuff can be done in groups or individually. The only thing that I do not like in Wikis is that individuals can delete what is written originally and edit new text. According to Will  Richardson Wikis create "the purposeful work of negotiating and creating truth".

In conclusion I would say once again that I like Wikis a lot and for sure  I would use it for the educational purposes.

Link for the image: http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&biw=1366&bih=600&tbm=isch&tbnid=5yi8dbdgjWpgVM:&imgrefurl=http://aaronparecki.com/Web_2.0_Tools_for_the_Classroom&docid=XsACjGLNtn6J_M&imgurl=http://aaronparecki.com/2009/090/article/1/files/what-are-wikis.gif&w=361&h=207&ei=WUeIUMeOBIaBiQeP0YHABw&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=285&sig=109605187291664981752&page=3&tbnh=150&tbnw=270&start=39&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:31,s:20,i:224&tx=132&ty=85