Saturday, March 7, 2009

Thing #8 - What in the world is a wiki?

Ward Cunningham was a smart cookie! I know there is hype about/against Wikipedia, but I will say they have greatly increased their accuracy and reliability over the last few years and for my lack of technology I can really get carried away with the links and trying to remember how to get back to the main subject at hand (I need some bread crumbs).

After watching the video Wikis in Plain English, I think my family could use a wiki quite successfully. There are times when we have emails flying like in the beginning of the video. At some point no one really knows who or what they are responding to. Since a wiki can be private I think we could have some real fun in that department.

I glanced at several of the educational wikis listed, but the ones that really caught my eye:
Go West--the flow chart was clever and the history of the westward movement always fascinates me.
Holocaust Wiki Project--another of those fascinations for me and the depth of the project was intriguing--tracing family names, etc.
Kindergarten Counting Book--cute!
Welker's Wikinomics--anything to help the study of Economics (not my favorite subject)--the ski mountain concept was clever, even the pronunciation of the words.
Wiki Wiki Teaching--she is great, young and enthusiastic--I get the distinct impression that in the beginning she was flying one step ahead of the students. I like that honesty. We have all been there. I really like the dog and cat graphic.

PS The word Wiki really disturbed my computer’s spell checker.

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