To quote wikipedia (more on that in a sec), a wiki is “a website that allows a user to add content … but also allows that content to be edited by anyone.” I’m learning more about them as I co-teach MLIS 753 “Internet Fundamentals and Design” at St Kate’s. We’ll be using a wiki in the class.
At first I didn’t get wikis. I think I saw one about a year ago when our systems team started one for internal documentation. I thought, “this is weird. anyone can edit it. were’s the control? who is the main authority?” But now I see how useful it can be and how it can be a catalyst for knowledge-building.
Wikipedia is an interesting example. It has some really good information on virtually any topic. But I’ve been reading a lot of blogging noting how academia views it with fear. One blog notes a recent paper on wikipedia. Wikipedia is a really good opportunity to teach students about information literacy — just because a lot of people wrote it together, does it make it right?
Using a wiki on a department level for collaboration on documents or general knowledge-building is quite exciting. Wikis use a sort of shorthand for basic formatting tricks — no HTML knowledge needed, though you can use it if you know it. This makes them easy to dive into and work in. But it always hard to get people to try something new and different, just like me when I first saw them. I hope that as I co-teach this class I’ll be more fluent in wikis and can better express their advantages to faculty.
Leave a Reply