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| Wikipedia, 2014 |
This week we looked at wikis, I tool that I am sure
almost everyone is familiar with. However if you have never heard of a wiki do
not worry, the concept is actually pretty simple. A wiki is just a site that
lets users edit documents collaboratively. Wikis pose a number of benefits in
education however they often tend to get a bad name. I am sure in high school,
and throughout university everyone has heard their teacher or professor say “I
better not see Wikipedia on in your resources”. As soon as you hear this you
think “oh these wikis must provide false information”. This is not true at all,
and they can actually be quite useful when doing research. Wikipedia which is
one of the words largest Wiki, provides easy to find, and understand
information that is quite valid. Many people in the community work to make sure
this information is true, and free of profanities. Wikipedia can actually be a
great place to look when doing a research assignment, because although you may
not be able to cite it directly, like other curation sites there are a number
of links to scholarly articles which support what is being said on the wiki
page. For more information on using Wikis in education check out "It’s a wiki wiki world” and when reading wikis always keep in mind anyone can edit a wiki,
regardless of their level of knowledge on the topic.
Wikis
can be helpful as a quick way to learn about a topic, or find out where other
people are getting information but they can also be extremely useful as a collaboration
tool. I have the most experience using wikis for this reason. Prior to knowing
about Google Docs when I was part of a group project wikis would be used quite
frequently. Wikis often took off the pressure or stress I associate with group
projects because each member could work on the project when they had time,
there is not physical meeting needed when using a wiki. A side from making
working together easier it also helps de-clutter and organize everyone’s
information as mention in the video “Wikis in plain English”. From my experience
wikis are much more effective than email. This is because with the wiki
everyone can see when changes are made, but with email the changes are not seen
until you send the email back to your group. Nothing in my opinion is worse
than when you spend a few hours working on a section of a paper, and then forget
to send it to your group and you find out they were working on the same thing.
The wiki eliminates this issue though because you can see every change that is
made right away.
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| uwstoutinnovations(CC) 2014 |
As I mentioned earlier, although wikis are a great
tool I much prefer to use Google Docs. As we learned last week Google Docs
works similar to a wiki, but has a few features I prefer. I really like the
comments tool on Google Docs and I like how you can chose different types of
documents, such as word, slideshows, and spreadsheets. Wikis also limit the
amount of editors to one at a time, where on Google Docs everyone can be
working on a part at the same time and see changes as they are being made. Lastly
Google Docs are much more private and allows users to limit who can access and
view their document, unlike wikis which allow any user to edit the document. I know
it can get pretty confusing when trying to choose which platform you should
use, is a blog, wiki or Google Docs best for what you are trying to do? Each
person has their own preference but if you are interested in learning the key
differences between the three you can click here for a great chart that helps
clear things up! :)
On my Feedly reader I subscribe to numerous
newspaper websites around the world, one being the Sydney Morning Herald (I
really want to move to Australia haha). A few weeks ago an article came up
titled “Wikipedia 'edit-a-thon' writes women into history” and although the
article was interesting, they made a claim in it that less than 13% of
contributors on Wikipedia are female. This led me to do some research, and
brought me to the article I have chosen to share this week, a New York Times
article titled “Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List”. Click
here for the full article.
Thanks
for reading,
Olivia
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