cogdogblog: Where the Wikis Are or Where Are the Wikis? Comments and Trackbacks

CDB Entry: Where the Wikis Are or Where Are the Wikis?

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 13:54:54 -0700

I believe in wikis.... but they are very strange internet things to wrap your head around. I met today with David, one of the co-chairs of our ePortfolio Ocotillo Action Group and we had an interesting discussion on how to...

comment by: Tom Hoffman

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 17:05:18 -0700

I agree that this is the most damning point for grand visions for wikis in education.

comment by: James

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 17:22:09 -0700

Hey, comments RSS.. nice :o)

Dunno if you've seen this but my guess is that you're going to like it if you haven't:

A Catalog of CoWeb [Swiki] Uses
ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/gvu/tr/2000/00-19.pdf

Including 'how successful was it' comments :o)

Cheers, James

comment by: Brian

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:23:53 -0700

WikiFish at Auburn University (http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=WikiFish&wikiid=123) is a good example of how a student-owned site can foster frank communication among its participants. Its stated mission is �to protect the delicate collaborative environment of�Design+Construction School culture, and to serve as a protocol and reference guide to keep these balances in check.� Students critically examine the school�s methods and its underlying ideologies, often by posing provocative queries such as �If Architecture School were an organized religion, what would our core beliefs be? What would constitute a sin?� or �If you had to �get rid of dead weight� in the curriculum, with which courses would you start?�

A more scholarly example is the Romantic Audience Project at Bowdoin College (http://ssad.bowdoin.edu:8668/) , a collaborative study collecting entries focusing on poems, poets, and topics related to Romantic literature. The students chose the wiki framework because �such collaboration, [by] dynamically and unpredictably highlighting certain terms as representative of communal interest, is of particular interest in a study of Romanticism.� The �interesting ways in which the software itself provides order� from apparent disorder, via linking patterns and other contextualizing elements, prompted insight into the process of the research. For instance, �posting tendencies emerged that were worthwhile pondering as a class and could be framed as the expression of this group of students. This discussion attracted elaboration; this poem went unlinked; this author attracted biographical elaboration; this entry was cited often by other entries; etc.�

A lot of people complain about how ugly wikis are, but there�s no reason that more pleasing fonts, colors, and layouts can�t be accommodated through the judicious application of CSS. Matt Haughey, for one, has done an exemplary job of demonstrating the power of CSS to tailor the look-and-feel of his wiki-driven site. (http://haughey.com/matt/home)

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Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:08:15 -0700

Excerpt: Big IDEA � Is a specialized wiki the way to go? So this is my thought about wikis: maybe they need to be really specific to a small set of people to be successful. (Wikipedia, then, would be an exception.) This kind of jibes with some ideas I’ve been...
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Mon, 09 Aug 2004 19:35:33 -0700

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