My Wiki

https://amanda-e-learning.wikispaces.com/




A wiki is a website that allows others to contribute and update to the site. According to Cunningham, (1995) "a wiki is a collaborative, community website where anyone can contribute, a wiki is software that handles complex problems with simple solutions. A wiki invites all users to edit any pages or to create new pages within the wiki Web site".
"A wiki is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape" (Cunningham 1995).
Wiki’s are open to the general public and edits are in real-time and will show up immediately. Due the collaborative nature of a wiki there is a tendency for them to evolve from low level ideas to high order and more sophisticated ideas.
Within a classroom a wiki is a great way to promote classroom collaborate learning and enhance higher order thinking. Students will tend to edit others spelling and grammatical errors as they go and add their own ideas and thoughts. Using a wiki in a classroom is a great way for students to connect with each other in ways they could not do using traditional non-ICTs.
A great way for a wiki to be incorporated into the classroom is when they are working in groups to present information to their peers. For example if they are researching an animal from the wetlands and they are looking at habitats, diet, threats and characteristics of this animal then they have a perfect opportunity to create a wiki to present all their information in a logical and user friendly way. They can dedicate one page to each of the above topics and include images and video to compliment their work. They can also use one page dedicated to the reflective and evaluation of their project. The task has now been turned into an authentic rich task which will meet the Essential Learnings outcomes as well as be engaging and have real life context that can be used outside the classroom.To view how a Wiki can be incorporated into the classroom please click on the link below to view a lesson plan at http://s0154220amanda.weebly.com/wiki.htmlThe difference between a blog and a wiki is a blog is more of a on-line journal which is updated daily or when the author chooses to. A wiki is a platform where anyone can update information as it becomes available. A blog is owned by a person whereas a wiki is being updated by many people all around the world. Blog posts are usually one person’s opinion with others commenting agreeing or disagreeing whereas a wiki’s articles represent consensus, but can have an associated discussion/talk page. A wiki can host a blog but not viceversa. A wiki works in a more collaborative way than a blog which is mostly one person guided with postings from others. So a quick summary
wiki
· Multiple Authors,
· Edited by a group or team,
· Contains links to other Wiki pages,
· Continuousy changing and growing rapidly,
· Many-to-many communication.

blogs
· - Usually a single author. Sometimes can
· have multiple contributors,
· Author posts, user comments,
· Opinion Sharing ,
· One-to-many content.

References
Cunningham, W (1995. What is a Wiki from WikiWikiWeb. from
http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki, retrieved July 2010.
QSA.(2007)Essential Learnings. retrieved July 2010.

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