Impressions on Wikis

After reading about wikis and setting up my own wiki, I realized that wikis can be useful in a wide variety of manners. In a school setting, wikis can be used for group projects and class projects. Each student can collaborate, adding files, suggesting links and altogether creating a document that is comprehensive and up-to-date. Wikis promote a constructionist style of learning which is especially useful for students as they can build new ideas based on their previous knowledge. Wikis can be used to keep track of homework, tests, assignments and school events. They can also be used as personal workspace. At the same time, faculty members can have great use of wikis as well; they can create lesson plans and update curriculum as well as develop school policies. Wiki pathfinders can host teacher presentations, handouts and rubrics. They can also link researchers to important readings, thereby saving time and energy. Wikis can be useful in many other settings as well. For example, classroom communication, sports teams, community groups, book clubs and committees can greatly be enhanced through the use of a wiki. In addition, to-do lists, checklists, event planning, trip planning and party planning can be done through a wiki as well. As a business student, I find that wikis can be especially helpful in companies. They can be used for internal documentation but, more importantly, they can be used for collaborating on business projects and business proposals. Each member of the team can add to the project or proposal at his or her convenience. Earlier versions of the project can be seen at any time. With the aid of a wiki, the work done on the project or proposal does not need to take place solely in meeting; it can now be done whenever its members have the time despite their varying schedules, which can greatly enhance productivity and efficiently. In other words, members do not need to be at a meeting to contribute. Of course, business project or business proposal wikis are best when kept private to avoid leaking sensitive information. In addition, wikis can be very helpful for project management – from the conception to the finished project. They can also be used as operation manuals for workers or FAQ’s about the company. In fact, wikis can help the user organize almost anything. Finally, a student, employee or business person can always use a wiki as his or her personal workspace!

There were several things about wikis which surprised me. First of all, it is quite simple to develop a wiki. I had always thought of wikis as complicated and difficult. In reality, when working with a wiki sites such as PB Works, the process is easy to master. That is not to say that wikis are not time consuming, but wikis can add a tremendous amount of organization to any project. At the same time, I was surprised to realize how easy it is to edit a public wiki. Uninformed or uneducated people can easily modify the content of a wiki or, worse yet, put up false or misleading information. While it seems that the information on Wikipedia is fairly accurate and, when getting information from any source, one should verify it before believing it, I still find the fact that anyone can modify information rather worrisome. The reason is because, with most encyclopedias or information, there is an author who is writing or posting and that author is responsible for its content. In the case of a wiki, there is not one but many authors creating and modifying information. That means that anyone can edit the content without being responsible for the outcome – which may make people less wary about posting inaccurate information or pushing a certain viewpoint when stating facts. I have previously stumbled upon inaccurate information on wikis, probably posted by people who may not have known better. That being said I, like many students, use Wikipedia to learn more about subjects before researching them and I have found wikis extremely useful.

Some of the information in this post has been taken from Web 2.0 by Ann Bell.