Wikki in the classroom

From taking part in Managing E-learning I've realised that a blog is an online journal with sequential publications and generally only has one author. Madder (2008) explains that a wiki on the other hand can be viewed and modified by anybody and is similar to a whiteboard except it records everything that is written on it. New work is continually being added by users onto the wiki and therefore it is a continuous work in progress. The most famous and obvious example of a wiki is Wikipedia which has millions of articles written by volenteers world wide.

After reading about wikis it is my belief that they would be of great assistance to students and teachers in the contemporary classroom. For instance when students are assigned group projects/assignments the wiki would provide oppurtunities for students to post materials, ideas, share links and work together online. It also would benefit us as learning managers as we would be able to easily check the progress of our student's group work and offer feedback since the student's work is all in the one place. Basically wikis are an excellent tool which can be used to support all forms of group work for students. Although highly effective, there are issues we need to be aware of. That is the age old issue in that one student is doing all the work on a collaborative project. Therefore it is the responsibility of the learning manager to closely monitor the changes in the wiki using the wiki history feature to be informed of the student contributions.