Chapter 4 Wikis: Easy Collaboration For All

     Chapter 4 is about Wikis.  The quote by Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.  That's what we're doing." made the value of wikis comprehensible to me.  I quickly realized that a Wiki is a website that allows every person who enters the website to input additional information.  Clearly the issue with such a website is that if every one can anonymously enter information there is no way to know what information is accurate and what information is not accurate.  However, the evidence shows that the information in Wikipedia is highly accurate because the pier editing causes the "bogus" information to be edited out.  I used Wikepedia to look up information about the town I grew up in (Carmel, NY) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmel,_NY.  I noticed that in the news and events information there is more about Carmel now and Carmel in the recent past.  There was very little information about Carmel from the more distant past.   This indicates to me that the people making the entries are younger and only familiar with the recent history and not familiar with the past from when I was growing up.  Also, it indicates that these people are not doing "research" to find out the full history.

     I like the idea of making a classroom wiki of 7th grade math information and problem solving.  The students can provide the input and pier edit the classroom wiki.  I love the idea that the students have to negotiate with each other on the validity of the information.  The wiki could become another resource for the students to use in addition to their notebook and text book.  The students could input "cool" math virtual manipulative and other videos or podcasts.  The students could input  problems that they want to pose to the class or questions that they have and concepts that they are not sure about.  Similar to a blog the wiki could become a great place for me as the teacher to assess what the students comprehend and what some of the students are still working on and need more time with.   Also, I could imagine that the classroom wiki could have a chat room box for on line discussions.