Using wikis

"Wiki wiki" means "quickly" in Hawaiian.

If you wish to set up a wiki for use with your students, there are many sites which you can use, such as this one pbwiki.com  Another one is www.wikispaces.com. It is worth bearing in mind the key difference between a web site and a wiki: in a wiki, all your students can change the content by adding or removing information, or editing the existing content. Wikis offer students the chance to collaborate on tasks outside the language classroom.

1. Collaborative writing

A wiki provides the possibility of joint authorship.  Here is an example. Divide the class into groups of three. Each student in the group can take responsibility for drafting each section of a project. Example:   Student 1 provides the problem, student 2 then offers a solution and finally, student 3 provides a comment on the effectiveness of the suggested solution. Each group can work together to produce the short essay before the next lesson. You may wish to appoint a group leader whose editorial decision is final.

How to do it

Start with a simple project – Here is an example Give students six words to define using resources on the net so that they can understand the emerging concept of Web 2.0. Tell them you want them to think about how these technologies can be used to enhance understanding of the visual arts. Split them into teams of 2-3 students and gave them each a word to investigate.

• blogosphere
• wiki pages
• social bookmarking
• podcasting
• RSS Feeds
• folksonomy

You can see one teachers example at http://westwood.wikispaces.com/Web+2.0

Give them several guidelines:

1. Ask them to post meaningful, relevant information on their topic.
2. Ask them to summarise information they find on a site such as  www.http://pbwiki.com and make links to it.
3. Ask them to continue to read their topic and ask themselves -- "What do I not understand about this topic?" and then to proceed to answer that question and post their findings.
4. Ask them to use some of the websites that they read about.
5. Do not allow them to delete information of another unless it is redundant or they have paraphrased/edited it to make it better.
6. On the third day, give each team 5 minutes to present their topic -- summarise and demonstrate the use of their term in action in reference to the visual arts.
7. At the conclusion of the presentation, ask all students to post a comment on the page providing feedback or asking questions. (This introduces them to the feature and to keeps them focused on the task at hand.)