pbwiki

The pbwiki for the team I am involved in is here: http://edugroupies.pbwiki.com/

I have found pbwiki very easy to use and think that students would also find it easy to use. It provides an interactive way of keeping notes (in someways very similar to a blog); however, the wiki allows for many people to contribute, rather than having just one person do all the research, or web editing.

As a future IT teacher, wikis are a tool that I will use in the classroom to help learning, especially when it comes to group work.

I do not really like the idea of how pages become ‘locked’, but I understand why this is and this is a point that would have to be explained in the classroom. The easy way around it is of course just to type up all of the information in Microsoft Word (or similar program) and copy it in quickly and save.

I think that in a classroom sense, wikis can be fine – students know that their wikis will be monitored and that information they put in must be correct to ensure they score high marks. The downside I see to wikis is that anyone can post anything. This can be both intentional (someone just wanting to make information incorrect for ‘fun’) and accidental (someone not realising their information is incorrect). This is of course more of a public sense, and again, I think in the classroom scenario, wikis would be less likely to have that sort of problem.

I think students would enjoy building a wiki in any subject. The main advantages I see of using a wiki:

* It is interactive

* It is a team activity

* No web editing skills required

* It is free