Creating a Wiki

As part of our ongoing assessment for EDED20491, we needed to create a Wiki. This was an entirely new concept to me. I have seen Wikipedia, but had no idea what a Wiki was, or that you could create one yourself. I was quite overwhelmed and feeling lost, however once I experimented and looked at the examples, I was able to see tha this could be a useful tool for group project work. Engagement theory provises that learners are engaged when when work is based on collaboration, project work and providing authentic focus (Kearsley & Schneiderman). Once I thought about how I could provide a real world focus, I was able to relate this to an interest that I already had and I found I was able to start creating the Wiki site. I am a member of a book club, and I have created my Wiki site to be a place where we can have online discussions and reviews. This will allow us to keep in contact and provide an open forum for dialogue. In the classroom, I can see that a Wiki would be very useful for students to provide them with a site for collaboration on project work, school activities, creating online textbooks, etc. They could discuss their work and provide images, audio and/or links to further information.

Reference:

Engagement Theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning.
Greg Kearsley and Ben Schneiderman.

http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.html