Applications and Capabilities of WIKI Technologies

I now have my own WIKI, Hooray!!! What will I do with it? I have decided to use it in the most practical sense and focus my WIKI around my year 8 science class that I will be student teaching in term 2. At the moment I have been told we are doing Acids and Bases. So stay tuned as term 2 commences I will start work on my WIKI and include a link in my blog.

WIKI Applications

I have recently looked at a few papers on the use of WIKIS and applications in classrooms. The first paper "Teaching and Learning Online with WIKIs" by Augar,Raitman and Zhou(2004), gives an example of using a WIKI as an ICE BREAKER in the class room. I think this is an excellent application of a WIKI. Students were grouped into teams of 10 and given a their own icebreaker document with questions like find someone with the same hair colour as yourself. Students were encouraged to post questions to fellow members to complete that task. They were also encouraged to upload photos and a brief description about themselves. A significant conclusion of the study stated that

"wikis were used successfully to enable hundreds of students to participate in a collaborative icebreaker exercise at Deakin University. This project illustrated how e-learning practitioners can use wiki technology to enhance social interaction amongst students online. However, wikis can also be used for the dissemination of information to the student body, for building information repositories or for the collaborative production of documents."

The second paper "WIKIS in Teaching and Assessment:The M/Cyclopedia Project" examined the development of a wiki as an "encyclopedic collection of information on new media concepts and topics" (Burns, Hmphreys, 2005 ).
Burns and Humphreys state ,

"Wikis present themselves as an interesting tool for enhancing social constructivist learning environments. As non-linear,evolving, complex and networked texts with multiple authors,they can provide a great opportunity for student collaboration, coproduction of texts, argument, and interaction. Most existing wiki systems are also flexible enough to support a variety of approaches for employing them in teaching, research, and academic administration and information settings (and even in all three at the same time)..."

This is only two case studies on WIKI applications but both are strongly supported by the learning design engagement theory (Kersely, Shneiderman, 1999 ) where students work together in a group, are project based and have an authentic focus. I am sure there are many more examples out there including the WIKI history textbook that Clay Burell's refers to in his key note speech. However, from my research so far WIKIS seem a great tool to use in our learning design. There are pitfalls of WIKIS but I'm not going to go into them in this blog. Both papers discuss some of these issues if you would care to take a look. The main point of this blog is to highlight some of the applications and capabilities of WIKIS. The following link provides more examples on the applications of WIKIS. WIKIS In Education

WIKI Capabilities

I know this post is long so I'm going to keep this short and sweet. So from my experiences so far WIKI capabilities include and are not limited to the following
- instant messaging
- creating multiple pages
- editing
- hyperlinks
- multiple users
- audio

For the moment I will leave it here and add more as my experience with WIKIs grows.

Overall I have found this exercise very interesting. Before this learning activity I didn't even know what a WIKI was. Now I believe I have a good understanding of their capabilities and how I can apply them in my teaching, learning and everyday life. Anyway that's enough from me for now! Hope you enjoyed my blog and feel free to comment.


Bruns, A. Humphreys, S. (2005). Wikis in Teaching and Assessment:The M/Cyclopedia Project Retrieved from http://snurb.info/files/Wikis%20in%20Teaching%20And%20Assessment.pdf.
Burell, C. (2009). 21st Century Teacher as Sorcerer's Apprentice. Reflections From The Rabbit Hole 5 Years In. Retrieved from http://beyond-school.org/
Kersely, G. Shneiderman, B. (1999), Engagement Theory: A framework for technology - based teaching and learning. Retrieved from hhtp:home.sprynet.com/-gkearsley/engage.htm.
Augar, N. Raitman, R., Zhou,W.(2004). Teaching and Learning Online with WIKIS Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html