Wikis

To be honest, my knowledge of wikis is pretty slim. In fact, before reading, the only thing I knew about wikis was that wikipedia was a wiki, and it was a place where anyone can post. I remember when I taught 5th grade 3 years ago, I had been warned about the validity of wikipedia, and so as my students did research I did not allow them to use wikipedia. I like that in the book Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts, Richardson addressed this. Perhaps wikipedia (and other wikis) do actually contain accurate information. The only way to find out, however, is to do some research!

I think the cool thing about what a wiki could provide in a classroom environment is that students can work together on the same work AND also share this work with live audiences. What an awesome way for students to create community! I think that using a wiki is also certainly a great way to help students become good users of information!

I love the wiki prayer at the end of chapter 4 in the Richardson book. (Please grant me the serenity to accept the pages I cannot edit, the courage to edit the pages I can, and the wisdom to know the difference). Personally, I can see how it could be hard to add information to something knowing that it just may be edited by someone else! However, I think the benefits are huge. After all, one of my favorite quotes is, "None of us know what all of us know." A shared collection of information is more likely to be accurate and include more information than just one person's thoughts, right??