Definition:
Wiki is a “collaborative workspace in which information can be gathered, shared, evaluated, organized or used to produce something new.”
Advantages of Wiki in Education:
Free: Most of the Wiki hosting platforms are for free.
No Need to Learn Coding : Creating and editing Wikis are very easy and user friendly. They do not require HTML or other programming languages.
Anyone from Anywhere: Anyone can access as well as manage Wikis from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Collaboration: Students and educators from all around the world can collaborate and work on the same document.
Instantaneous: As Wikis can be modified by anyone, students always get instantaneous information through them.
Encourages Non Technical Users: Non technical users can also create and publish content with ease. There are people who have a great expertise in a particular area of interest but they can’t showcase their skills due to lack of technical knowledge. Wiki encourages all such users and widens their Web usage.
Connects Multiple Resources: Wiki is a combination of Web pages linked together. Educators can provide students with as many resources as they can. It helps them learn in a detailed way.
In addition to the above mentioned advantages, Wiki can be used in many applications in the educational field. Let’s learn how educators and students can use Wiki.
Create a Wiki for your Classroom:
As we know many educators create blogs for their ideal classroom to encourage online presence of students and their parents, Wiki is a much more effective way to engage students. Select a great Wiki host, create a Wiki and explain to your students its usage.
Share Resources:
Educators can use Wiki as an online resource platform where they can share numerous links relevant to the current lesson topic. Students can also suggest their researches here.
Educators can provide students with docs, media, and PDF files on their classroom Wiki.
Students and educators can share their presentations using Wikis.
Post Lesson Activity:
Ask students to write summaries on Wiki for every lesson they’ve learnt. Allow students to share feedback on every lesson. By reviewing them, educators can assess students’ performance and design individualized instructions.
Wiki for Editing:
Wikis can be used for peer editing, for example, students can edit each others work for spellings, grammar, or anything else educators want them to learn. This helps them learn better by helping each other.
Collaboration:
Wiki is a great collaborative platform for many of the students and educators involved in a learning process. Ask students to post their works and allow others to give feedbacks on them. Students can collaborate with other students to exchange and explore information. Educators can also use Wikis for professional development, to connect with other educators from other places to discuss, share and learn from each other.
Motivation:
Teachers use Wikis to motivate their students to get involved in a learning process. Wikis enable students to collaborate with others on class assignments and activities. As learning through Wikis is a new way, students will surely be excited about it.
Turn students into experts:
The ideas and opinions that are written by students are accessed by many people, gradually students improve their writing, learning, communication and research skills. Wikis allow students to teach others about what they know about a topic.
We’ll discuss about the best tools to create Wikis in our next post. We hope this information is useful for you to know about a few benefits and the ways of using Wiki in a classroom. We’d like to hear from you more ways of using Wikis in education. Please feel free to share with us in the comment box.
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