WIKI EXPERIENCE II



This week we worked again on the contributions we did last week in edutech wiki. It was our first experience as wiki-authors and as such we still had to learn some things. Our teacher Sarah gave us some links from the Purdue University’s online writing lab (OWL), which I found very useful for the kind of mistakes we all did in our contributions.
First of all, one of our main problems was quoting. Personally, I already knew how important it is to use your own words when writing. But I always had difficulties doing it and thanks to some pages on ‘paraphrasing’ and ‘summarising’ in the OWL site, I learned some tricks to paraphrase or summerize effectively my sources. In my contribution I had quoted three or four entire sentences and after reading these hints I was able to eliminate some quotation marks.
Another problem I had was the one of the references to websites or Internet articles. Always in the OWL site there is a clear an exhaustive page on this topic. After reading it I corrected my bibliography and now I know how it must be done.
Furthermore, I learned some more essential characteristics of a wiki text, such as, for example, the internal links to other pages in the wiki, which I had not added in my contribution of last week, and the highlighting of important words in bold to make the reading easier.
So even if my last week’s fear of not being good enough to write on a wiki has know just reduced a little but not gone away, now at least I am sure of doing correctly the things I learned this week.

Isabella

My Wiki Experience

This week our task was to write a contribution of our own on educational technologies for a public wiki, e.i. edutech wiki. It was the first time I did something similar and I must admit it was exciting, especially when I went back to see the page I had edited and found my own words!!

Before publishing my work on edutech wiki, I had to follow some steps:
- first of all I went to look at the pages of the wiki and found the one on websites, which still did not have an article on the educational usage of websites. So I chose to give my contribution.
- then I went to google to search for some articles on the subject and found some interesting ones, which I decided to quote. Reading these and other articles I realized, more than I did before, how much the Internet is becoming part of our life and culture and how many learning possibilities it offers, becoming therefore an essential learning tool for any student.
- after I had finished my research and taken notes, I began to write my contribution to the edutech wiki on words.
- the result of this is what you can see on the page 'website' under the title Educational Usage

Among the articles I found during my research, there was one which described the experience of a class in Southern Taiwan which used the Internet and above all Esl websites as an integration to traditional English lessons. The esl websites had been recommended by their teachers and what was nice was that they were some of the sites we had found in del.ici.ous!! Moreover, the article was interesting because it analysed, through some tests given to the students, the effectiveness of this type of language instruction. The result was that "the students found that learning English through Esl/Efl websites was interesting" and motivated them to learn the language.

On the whole, I found this wiki experience valuable. In the beginning I was a little scared because I had never written something in a wiki and I did not know if I was able to do it. Now that I have I still do not know if I did a good work but I tried. What I do know is that I like the idea of having contributed to this edutech wiki and of learning how it works by using it directly on my own.

Isabella

article: Chuo, T.W., & Kung, S.C. (2002). Students' Perceptions of English Learning through ESL/EFL Websites. TESL-EJ, 6(01). Retrieved December 10, 2006, from http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/TESL-EJ/ej21/a2.html

WIKIS!!!

In the Internet one can find many different types of websites and a type that is worth analysing is the one of wikis. A wiki is a space in the Internet in which people can work together in order to write one or more texts on any sort of subject. It is characterized by certain features and tools which make this collaborative authoring possible. An example of a wiki website that almost everybody knows is Wikipedia.

Taking a look at Wikipedia’s articles and pages one can see what the main purpose of this wiki in particular is. First of all, as I have already mentioned, the main purpose of wikis is to create a space where people can collaborate in writing the same text on a single argument. This collaboration is carried out thanks to the possibility of adding, removing or editing what someone has already written and another person wants to give his/her contribution to. What is particular about wikis is that these procedures can be done very easily and quickly. In fact the word wiki comes from the Hawaian expression ‘wiki wiki’ that means fast. The other main purpose of wikis is that of sharing knowledge for a common good.

The audience of wikis is therefore made up by anyone in the world who wants to participate. Particularly in the case of Wikipedia you can divide audience into two groups: on one side there are the ones who visit this website just to get some information about a particular subject, on the other side there are people who not only consult the site but also contribute to add more information in it. However, there is no need of signing in, not even in the case you edit something. And everything is done anonimously.

The language used in wikis is mainly formal. In Wikipedia, for example, the fact of using formal language is justified by the fact that it is a virtual encyclopedia and therefore it handles specific subjects in a scientific way. And this requires a formal language, differently from other kinds of websites, such as blogs.

There are other characteristics of wikis which you can easily find in Wikipedia. For example, there are no advertisements because it is a non-profit endeavor. The layout is characterised by many hyperlinks, by the division into sections and by the presence of photographs. There is a socalled ‘wikiquette’ which looks forward to give a ‘good manners list’, but there are no firm rules and wikis are not censured. Therefore, unfortunately there have been some episodes of vandalism.

On the whole, wikis are websites where anyone can share his/her knowledge with the rest of the world and compare it with the knowledge of others, who can easily edit what they read by adding or removing information. It is free and anonymous. It is a place where you can find a lot of interesting articles. However, you must always keep in mind that there could be some people who do not follow the main purpuse of sharing knowledge for a common good and therefore you must always be critical.

Isabella