Thing #15 - Wikis and how libraries are using them

I have been gradually finding out about wikis for a few years, starting with Wikipedia and then some workshops that touched on educational wikis. My main focus in the past has been to understand whether they were good sites for students to use for research. Now I see that I need to consider the creation of wikis by students and/or teachers/librarians as a useful learning tool. I was interested in the many ways that wikis are used: for online conferences, discussions, class projects, pathfinders, policy and procedure manual, subject guides, just to name a few. I'm glad to see that educational wikis can be ad-free. I liked both pbwiki and Wetpaint. They both looked easy to use and maintain.

I like the idea of creating subject guides for a library. Students many times have good suggestions for web sites for specific topics. I can also see a use for classroom teachers who are trying to cover various aspects of a broad topic. The class as a whole could have a wiki, with smaller groups assigned to create a page where the member update specific details on their sub-topic. An example could be World War II, with pages for specific battles, people, photos, timelines, etc. In Science, students could create a wiki with parts of a cell, or body systems. This would be a way to make learning more fun, more interactive and give students personal responsibility for the "teaching" in a class.