My first exposure to a Wiki was through a workshop at a language conference in 2007. Andy, the presenter who is a principal at an online school taught us that:
- The word "wikiwiki" means quick in Hawaiian
- Wikipedia is the Wiki that everyone knows about
- Creating or editing a page online using PBWiki (the website he was promoting) is easy and quick (just like making a peanut butter sandwich - hence the "pb").
- Students (or teachers) can all collaborate on at page simultaneously by clicking on "edit", typing their contribution and then clicking on "save". The page is immediately live.
- Planning a meeting with a Wiki page is much better than emailing an invitation and then going through all the replies.
In other words... what I learned in that workshop mirrors Richardson's discussion in the text.
Below is part of an email that I sent to Andy shortly after my first attempt at using my Wiki for planning a meeting. It's power impressed me a lot, and certainly impressed the members of the board that I was on. While a member of that group's board, I used a closed (password-protected wiki) to post meeting minutes, lists of member contact information and even solicited newsletter contributions online. I shared editing duties for the newsletter, and both of us edited those contributions together on the group's wiki.
Up to this point, I have described what I have already done with Wikis - and conceptually, this tool is really quite simple. I revisited the site www.PBWiki.com, and found that it now automatically forwards to the new version of the site www.pbworks.com. The first thing that I noticed when I got there? There is no longer any reference whatsoever to the word "wiki"!! Sites are now called "workspaces" for personal sites, "online platforms" for business use and "educational workspaces" for collaborative educational sites. However, these are all collaborative spaces and they all work the same way. Personally, I'll continue to refer to them all as WIKIS!
My attempt at a Wiki on Moodle
http://byng.vsbeducation.ca/moodle2/course/view.php?id=35&username=guest
As an experiment, I decided to try out the Wiki that is one of the Activities available within Moodle. You can see my attempt if you click HERE. (please click on the "login as guest" button to see the Wiki). If you'd like to post, you'll need to sign up for an account on Byng's Moodle. Feel free to do so - the course enrolment key is "LIBE".
How did I set this up?
Here are the steps that I took:
- Turn on Editing
- Click on the drop down "Activities" list and select Wiki.
- Choose either Personal Wiki or Collaborative Wiki.
I suppose that the difference between the two is simply the purpose of each one - personal being much like a Blog while Collaborative ... well... more collaborative. This form of Wiki may not have all the bells and whistles of PBWorks, but it is certainly functional, and is in a controlled environment.
Issues...
Enabling guest access
I found that allowing guest access to this course was different for Moodle 2.0 than for Moodle 1.9. (we have just upgraded our Moodle this year). I had to use my role as site administrator to turn on "Guest Access" before I could allow you to even view the course. It is turned off by default. I had first tried to allow "Guest Access" in my role as course creator, the Guest button did not appear.
Even with guest access, of course guests cannot change the Wiki... for security, I don't want to change that. For students enrolled in the course, they of course can make edits.
What to do with the Wiki?
A few ways one could use a wiki:
- Have students present their research projects on personal wikis instead of using posters. If the project involves groups, they would choose a collaborative wiki.
- Use a wiki for writing drafts. Both the teacher and the students can see the changes made during the writing process - no need to hand in a second (third, fourth... ) time and the teacher can make comments inline.
- Plan a project - students keep track of their roles in the project, meeting dates, drafts, etc.
At the beginning, I would probably prevent students from seeing the work of other groups. After their work has been completed, I would allow access to all students as sort of a celebration of learning. This can be done with "Groups" and "Groupings", two powerful features of Moodle.
