My ICT Course Blog: Week #5: Web 2.0

As this short video shows, a wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for personal note taking, among others.

Many things can be included in a wiki such as photos, videos, widgets, podcasts, etc. For educational purposes, in our case English Language Teaching, wikis work as a collaboration tool that teachers and students can use to contribute to building ideas together as a group. This tool allows everything (information, ideas, files, links) to be in one place and all members can have instant access to that place.

A Wiki is a portal for learning that:

promotes collaborative work
facilitates and develops the creation of group projects
allows edition. Anyone can make changes - (no more waiting for the Webmaster to get around to your requested changes)
encourages students' participation
improves the relationships among the members as well as communication and interaction

According to the creator of Wiki, Ward Cunningham, a wiki a) invites all users to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki Web site, b) promotes meaningful topic associations between different pages by making page link creation almost intuitively easy and by showing whether an intended target page exists or not and c) is not a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the Web site landscape (1).

In our ICT course we just learned what a wiki is and we are currently working and developing our personal wiki projects. Mine refers to English for Scientists and it is under construction but if you are interested in its progress you can visit the following link: http://englishforscientists.wetpaint.com/