What's in a wiki?

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
  
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
  
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
  
• And users do not need to know HTML code in order to apply formatting to text or add and edit content.
  

Discovery Resources:
Watch the video and read the resources below to learn more about wikis:

Wikis in Plain English:

• 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis (pdf document)
  
• Wild About Wikis

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look at three wiki examples and three wiki hosting sites:

• Flat Classroom Project (a wiki to connect classrooms around the world)
  
• Biology 101 (a student created wiki)
• Westwood Schools (a teacher created wiki)
  
• Wikispaces (create your own wikis for free!)
• Pbwiki (it's as easy as peanut butter)
• Wetpaint wikis in education (another free wiki site)

2. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What was challenging? How can educators use wikis in the classroom? How can we use wikis in our programs?