Educators Experiment With Student-Written ‘Wikis’
Malleable, Open-ended Web Sites Seen as Aids to Collaborative Learning
By Rhea R. Borja
At the Neighborhood School, a public elementary school in New York City’s East Village,
students are creating and editing an online encyclopedia on pop-culture topics such as anime
and X-Men.
Students at East Side Community High School a few miles away have written and shared their
own versions of “Macbeth” and discussed them online.
And at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Ore., teachers can brainstorm and post their
meeting notes on a Web site that allows instant access to revision and feedback.
All three schools are using “wikis”—do-it-yourself Web sites that foster collaboration and
communication. A wiki, short for wiki-wiki, or “quick” in Hawaiian, is a new technology tool of
the Read/Write Web or Web 2.0—the second generation of Web applications that includes
podcasts and blogs.
Wikis are still flying under most schools’ radar screens. And educators who use them must
also deal with some privacy and security concerns. Still, education technology experts say
wikis show promise for K-12 educators.
“It’s a really easy way to organize stuff,” said Will Richardson, the supervisor of instructional
technology and communications at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Flemington,
N.J., and the author of the just-published book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful
Web Tools for Classrooms.
“It’s more collaborative than a blog”—a Web log, or online journal—“and can be a pretty
effective tool,” he said.
Accessible Technology
A wiki, simply put, is a Web site that allows anyone to add or change content, anytime. Wikis
are increasingly being used in the business world for tasks such as tracking projects,
brainstorming, and writing and editing documents online, negating the need for back-andforth e-mails and meetings.
Like other wikis, K-12 wikis let users add, edit, and delete content created by themselves or
others. Users can also see a history of changes made to the original material. The only
difference is that with many—but not all—school wikis, users must register before they can
make changes.
Wanna Wiki?
A variety of print and online resources exist to learn about and start wikis, collaborative Web sites that
allow anyone to add or change content. They include Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web
Tools for Classrooms, by Will Richardson, published by Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Selected School Wikis
• theneighborhoodschool.org/wiki
• schools.wikia.com/wiki/
• usd.edu/tet/undercontrol/
Information About Wikis in Schools
• www.weblogg-ed.com
• www.nycwp.org/paulallison
• technosavvy.org
• tim.lauer.name
Wiki Software
• www.pbwiki.com
• www.wikispaces.com
• www.wikia.com
• www.mediawiki.org
• www.instiki.org
SOURCE: Education Week
“It’s a free-form, open-ended sort of tool,” said Timothy Stahmer, an instructional technology
specialist in the 163,500-student Fairfax County, Va., school system, where some teachers are
experimenting with wikis. “It’s just a matter of teaching people what that power is for.”
The wiki concept was developed in 1995 by computer programmer and software consultant
Howard G. “Ward” Cunningham, and popularized by Jimmy D. Wales, the president of the St.
Petersburg, Fla.-based Wikimedia Foundation.
In 2001, Mr. Wales created the most famous wiki, the mammoth online encyclopedia,
wikipedia.org. At last count, that Web site boasted 2.7 million entries in 10 languages.
Now, wiki open-source online textbooks are being produced, such as through the California
Open Source Textbook Project. And the Cape Town, South Africa-based Shuttleworth
Foundation has created a wiki to house K-12 curriculum and lesson plans created for and by
South African teachers.
The popularity of wiki and other Web 2.0 tools speak to their accessibility to everyday people.
No longer do you have to be an uber-geek with a mastery of HTML or other computer
language to compose on the Web. Now all it takes is a few clicks of a computer mouse.
In South Dakota, for example, 12 middle schools participated last year in a monthlong history
and geography project on the Missouri River basin. The 400 students—some separated by
hundreds of miles of open prairie—communicated with one another via the wiki, titled Under
Control, as well as through videoconferencing.
The inherent transparency and mutability of wikis were unfamiliar to the dozen or so wikiproject teachers, said Mary E. Engstrom, the Under Control project director and an assistant
professor in the University of South Dakota’s school of education in Vermillion.
They received 3½ days of training, but the most successful teachers were the ones who
“embraced a more constructivist approach to teaching and learning, a more student-centered
approach,” Ms. Engstrom said.
Tricky to Use Well
Using wikis is not technically difficult, but they can be conceptually hard to use, says Paul R.
Allison, the technology teacher at the 500-student East Side Community High School. He
created the High School Online Collaborative Writing wiki, which is used by four public schools
in Manhattan.
Some of the questions he says his colleagues ask are: How do you grade students on a
collaborative writing project? Can you use the same project in consecutive years, and, if so,
how do you do so without erasing the work of the previous students?
“You can’t do the cookie-cutter essay anymore, because it won’t make sense,” Mr. Allison said.
Many students have taken to using his collaborative-writing wiki, which can be used for
expository writing as well more-creative compositions. For instance, on the “discussion” page
of the school’s wiki on “Macbeth,” students wrote 20 adaptations of the play’s opening scene,
in which three witches in a forest conspire on a coming battle.
In Shakespeare’s version, the first witch says, “When shall we three meet again? In thunder,
lightning, or in rain?” The second witch replies: “When the hurlyburly’s done/When the battle’s
lost and won.”
One student rewrote that exchange this way: “Yo, where we gonna meet at?/In the [sic]
Japan, Tokyo, or Mega world?” The second character replies: “When the grasshopper is
finished/And the battle is lost or won.”
Security and Privacy
The democratic nature of wikis can make them prone to abuse by both students and outsiders.
Technology directors should look for secure wiki software that can run with their districts’
technology systems, experts advise, and educators can protect their school wikis with
passwords and emphasize fair-use policies to students.
The Neighborhood School, a 250-student school in Manhattan serving prekindergarten through
5th grade, started its wiki in February. Within a couple of days, said Thomas E.B. “Teb” Locke,
the school’s technology teacher, students had posted entries on subjects they were interested
in, such as cats and alligators. But one jokester also posted an article on—and picture of—
“poop.”
Mr. Locke didn’t hit the delete button, reasoning that it’s important for students to feel a sense
of ownership of the wiki. But he did discuss the issue with the student.
“In one sense, it’s pretty inventive for a 4th grader,” Mr. Locke said. “I talked to him about it,
and said, ‘This is a community thing. Is it necessary for the [picture] to be there?’ So he took
it down.”
The wiki for Lewis Elementary School in Portland, which is used by teachers to post notes and
work together, as well as by students on class projects, is on the school’s internal, secure
wireless network. That way, teachers and students don’t have to deal with outsiders looking
in, said Timothy C. Lauer, the school principal, who also blogs about education technology.
But when it comes to fair use, he said, he stresses to students that posting inappropriate
content is similar to writing on a school wall.
“We express to kids that the expectation we have [online] is the same for the physical world.
We don’t expect you to go to Jason’s desk and scribble on it,” Mr. Lauer said. “There will be
consequences if you do.”
Vol. 25, Issue 30, Page 10
“Initiative Pushes ‘Open Technologies’,” March 22, 2006.
“With Technology Conference Blog, Mavens Practice What They Teach,” November 2, 2005.
“Justice Grant Aids Advanced School Communications,” October 26, 2005.
“Electronic Transfer,” May 5, 2005.
“Software Solution Saves Dollars,” September 29, 2004.
“High Tech Haven,” May 29, 2002.
For background, previous stories, and Web links, read Technology in Education.
The Wikimedia Foundation founded the online wiki-based reference project, Wikipedia. Like other wiki
projects, Wikipedia allows users to view changes.
The California Open Source Textbook Project and the Shuttleworth Foundation both support
education-oriented wiki projects. Learn more about Shuttleworth and COSTP wikis.