2.+What+is+a+Wiki?

Martha Ross January 12, 2010 ** 1. Introduction ** Who hasn’t heard of a Wiki with the news media discussing the famous site, WikiLeaks, publishing top government secrets? Wikis are websites created to be used in a collaborative setting and allow multiple users to create, edit and save changes to websites. These changes don’t need any specialized programming language but can be done as easily as creating a Word document. The ease to create these websites and share and change information had lead them into the classroom where even the younger students can feel successful in creating a web page. ** 2. Impact on Education ** Wikis have had a positive and profound impact education. The ease at which a teacher can quickly set-up a web-site that all students can gain access to and edit, is revolutionary. Wikis give students ownership of their own website without any serious prior programming knowledge. Students can access these websites from school or home which makes them even more desirable when it comes to group projects. Another major impact on education is the web-site called Wikipedia. This web-site is like an on-line encyclopedia that gives students a ton of information on just about everything a student could ever need to look up. But there is a catch with this site; it is editable by the public which means that this site might have some misinformation on it. As a teacher should the students be able to site Wikipedia in research papers? This wikispace called wikipedia has definitely had a profound impact on education today. ** 3. Issues and Implications ** There are various issues with wikis. If you take a look at the critical thinking process of student’s wikis help to facilitate the student’s knowledge by allowing them to “do” instead of being a passive learner. But at the same time the students might be editing their wikis with incorrect information. As far as the web-site Wikipedia, there are implications that develop when students only use that site as a resource. The “doing” becomes too easy for a research project when all the information is handed to the student from one web-site. Of course, along with this information from Wikipedia comes the inaccurate data that the site might contain because it is editable by the public. ** 4. The future ** The future for wikis in the classroom setting is just going to grow stronger. The access to technology will allow more students gain access and experience the ease and flexible use of wikispaces, especially with regards to group projects. The future of Wikipedia is unknown. The site has an amazing amount of information that when compared to “real” sites truly very little of it is incorrect. But how do you eliminate the mistakes and make it an editable site that only contains true information? That is the question that needs to be addressed in order to determine the future of Wikipedia. If students had a say I am sure they would only want to access Wikpedia and forget all the other sites but for the time being it is not appropriate. ** 5. Report three web resources or journal sources that you used for this assignment. **   Future of Wikipedia (2011, January 12). In //Berkman//. Retrieved January 17, 2011, from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/Future_of_Wikipedia#Issues_in_Education Gonzalez, W. (2010, October 31). Wikipedia's Impact On Education. In. Retrieved January 17, 2011, from http://www.articleonlinedirectory.com/Art/528878/275/wikipedia-s-impact-on-education.html Grant, L. (2011, January 12). Using Wikis in Schools: a Case Study. //FutureLab//, 1-10. doi:http://rhazen.edublogs.org/files/2008/01/wikis_in_schools_futurelab.pdf (n.d.). In //WikiLeaks//. Retrieved January 17, 2011, from http://213.251.145.96/
 * __ What Is “Wiki”? __**