Wikis

"Wiki" is a Hawaiian word meaning "quickly" and quickly making edits on a web-based platform is one of the things making them so exciting! Users can easily create a wiki, using it for their own purposes, or share it and invite collaborators to add or edit it.

There are a variety of ways wikis are being used, but the simplest is to use it as an online collection area for things of interest to you. Such a wiki can remain private or it can be shared. Students can create their own study guides for school, for instance.

Using a wiki as a collaboration tool is probably more exciting for educators. Teachers can create a wiki on a subject, say Ancient Rome, and students can work in groups to create and edit pages on different aspects of it. In this way a class can create their own "Wikipedia" on a subject.

But wait... there's more! Several great features of wikis make them even more useful for education. One is that they time and date stamp edits so you can easily see what students are creating, or if they aren't creating at all! Another feature is the discussion tab at the top of every page that allows people (teachers or students) to comment on the content of pages.

Wikispaces and PB Wiki are two of the most common wikis available for education.