WIKI

A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language (eg BB-Codes - [b]Fool[/b]=Fool) or a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editor. Wiki's depending on the creators settings allow users to edit pages on a particular topic. The most famous wiki in this day and age is Wikipedia.org which boasts having 91,000 registered contributors working on over 16 million articles in more than 270 languages. Sites of this magnitiude can expect to see trafic of up to 78 million hits per month alone. On the net there are a few available websites that allow registered users to create and manage their own wiki's under a subdomain (eg http://schoolisfun.wikispaces.com) for absolutely free. A few examples are wikispaces and wetpaint.

I created my very own wiki which can be found at this url: http://csshipswiki.wetpaint.com. Its basically a database of specs for a game I play in my spare time. I found the tools of wetpaint to be very easy to manipulate it to what I want. It comes with a variety of page templates and the option of saving your own templates. New contributors can be invited to join.

In a teaching context wiki's I believe can be an excellent way to allow learners to Access information, Organise information, consolidate and refine knowledge and present knowledge to an audience. This is done through the use of animated images, embedded video , content and a blog that can be linked to the wiki. An example of this can be viewed at this url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmkqcp11pHM&feature=player_embedded

Comments welcome.