The last e-tivity Sarah proposed the class, was that of contributing to a wiki: EduTech Wiki . It is a wiki about Educational Technology and related fields and was built at an educational technology research and teaching unit at University of Geneva. Everybody, after having registered, can write in the pages that already exist or create new ones. I decided to contribute to the Tagging page and in the last weeks I tried to complete it.
Last semester, during Sarah’s classes, we worked using a wiki, therefore we have already experienced this collaborative writing. There is, however, a big difference between these two wiki experiences!
The Tulanepadova was “our” wiki for some specific reasons:
- we (students and Sarah) were the only ones who could contribute to the pages,
- we all more or less knew each other and our language skills, technological experiences, “cultural” background,
- we all knew what we were supposed to do in that space,
- we always had the possibility to talk face to face in class about the e-tivities we had to do using the wiki.
On the other hand, I found some difficulties in contributing to an open wiki, such as the EduTech one, because it is very very different from our small Tulanepadova! The most important differences I found are:
- really everybody can contribute and the only way for knowing something about them is to check their profile, if they have written it,
- you don’t know what the others want to say about the topics,
- although there are some rules for the writing, not everybody follow them.
As for the editing of the pages, I didn’t feel good in changing or deleting what my peers wrote in the first semester in our wiki, and in the EduTech Wiki I found it even more difficult. If I find grammatical or typing mistakes, I will correct them, but if I think that something is wrong or inadequate, I won’t have the courage of deleting or changing it, mainly because I don’t know who wrote it (and he/she could have a greater knowledge than me about that topic!).
All considered, the world of wikis is very interesting but very dangerous as well. You can exploit the sources wikis offer you, you can contribute if you think your knowledge could be useful, but you have to pay attention both in using the information you can find in them and in writing something to develop some topics.
Last semester, during Sarah’s classes, we worked using a wiki, therefore we have already experienced this collaborative writing. There is, however, a big difference between these two wiki experiences!
The Tulanepadova was “our” wiki for some specific reasons:
- we (students and Sarah) were the only ones who could contribute to the pages,
- we all more or less knew each other and our language skills, technological experiences, “cultural” background,
- we all knew what we were supposed to do in that space,
- we always had the possibility to talk face to face in class about the e-tivities we had to do using the wiki.
On the other hand, I found some difficulties in contributing to an open wiki, such as the EduTech one, because it is very very different from our small Tulanepadova! The most important differences I found are:
- really everybody can contribute and the only way for knowing something about them is to check their profile, if they have written it,
- you don’t know what the others want to say about the topics,
- although there are some rules for the writing, not everybody follow them.
As for the editing of the pages, I didn’t feel good in changing or deleting what my peers wrote in the first semester in our wiki, and in the EduTech Wiki I found it even more difficult. If I find grammatical or typing mistakes, I will correct them, but if I think that something is wrong or inadequate, I won’t have the courage of deleting or changing it, mainly because I don’t know who wrote it (and he/she could have a greater knowledge than me about that topic!).
All considered, the world of wikis is very interesting but very dangerous as well. You can exploit the sources wikis offer you, you can contribute if you think your knowledge could be useful, but you have to pay attention both in using the information you can find in them and in writing something to develop some topics.
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