Wikis archive
Human-Powered Search: Just What the Teacher Ordered?
Educators have lamented the quality of search results since the invention of the first search engine. All too often the results pages are littered with links that are useless in the classroom - or worse. But what if those search...
MediaWiki Embraces Social Networking
MediaWiki, the wiki tool used by Wikipedia and thousands of other wiki sites around the world, just got a lot more powerful. The for-profit companion project to Wikipedia announced this week that they were releasing free tools that will allow...
It’s Time for a More Open Timeline Tool
There’s no shortage of online services offering free tools for building your own timeline. But what potential do they have for use in the classroom, and how might they be improved?...
More than Just Blogging: the 2007 EduBlog Awards
It’s that time of year again - the winners of the annual Edublog Awards have been announced. And despite the name having the word “blog” in it, the awards cover a whole range of educational projects, including wikis, social networks...
Identifying Best Practices for Student Wikipedia Projects
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of educators assigning students the task of creating Wikipedia entries as a way of teaching them about research techniques, while at the same time involving them in the...
Bringing the Universe - Real and Imagined - Into the Classroom
The rest of the universe got a little closer to your classroom this week when Google announced the addition of high-resolution space images to its Google Earth tool. And if the real universe isn’t good enough for you, there’s even...
Could Wikis Help Achieve Consensus on Edtech Policy?
If you had the opportunity to help craft federal education technology legislation, would you participate? The idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds, as politicians are beginning to explore wikis as a tool for collaborative policymaking. And educators could become...
Wikipedia’s New Competition: Citizendium
Move over Wikipedia, now for something meatier! Or at least that’s the idea behind Citizendium, a new wiki created by the co-founder of Wikipedia, who hopes the online community will use it to build an online encyclopedia without as many...
When is an Expert not an Expert? Ask Wikipedia
Just when you thought Wikipedia could get through a month without another controversy, one of its most well-known contributors is outed as a fraud. The incident raises questions - yet again - on how to balance the values of expertise,...
Course Forge: Posting Your Entire Curriculum Online
Last week a Washington state school district announced an ambitious plan to put its entire curriculum online for public access. They’re one of the first K-12 districts to follow the lead of higher education’s open courseware movement, which is changing...
CyberOne: A Glimpse of the Future Classroom?
While there is no shortage of educators experimenting with interactive tools like blogging, wikis, immersive virtual environments and the like, Harvard Law School’s CyberOne course is throwing the entire Web 2.0 playbook at one group of very eager students. Does...
Blackboard, Lawsuits & Wikis, Oh My!
In case you’ve spent most of August relaxing on a beach somewhere, you might have missed the lawsuit that causing a firestorm in the edtech world and beyond. Let’s take a quick look at Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn, and see what...
Will Wikimaniacs Change Education -
Or Are They Just Maniacs?
I’ve just spent the last four days at the second annual Wikimania conference, an international gathering of hundreds of wiki enthusiasts (“wikimaniacs”) associated with Wikipedia and its various offshoots. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, used the occasion to announce several...
Wikipedia in the Classroom: Consensus Among Educators?
Last summer, after writing about the role of Wikipedia in education on my personal blog, I got an email from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who disagreed with me when I suggested that many educators were hostile to the online encyclopedia....
The Wild World of Wikipedia:
A Study in Contrasts
With more than one million entries, Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia on the Internet. But is it reliable? To begin exploring that question, we’ll first have to talk about the JFK assassination and an English duke....
Getting to Know Wikipedia
Last week we took a look at the role wikis are playing in promoting educational blogging. Today I’d like to introduce you to the mother of all wikis: Wikipedia....
Using a Wiki to Promote Educational Blogging
Steve Hargadon is a man with a mission. A blogger, computer entrepreneur and parent of four school-aged children, Hargadon recognized the potential of blogging as an educational tool, yet worried the hype over sites like MySpace was scaring some teachers...
