Wiki - WHAT is it?

If the above YouTube link is blocked in your browser, click here to see the video at TeacherTube.com.

Another short and sweet video from Lee Lefever on wikis, which is a common space that can be edited by several people and therefore promotes collaboration. Wikis can be used for students and for professionals. TechLearning had a great article on how wikis can be used in the classroom, and Ben Wilkoff has a very powerful way to utilize wikis with his students in The Discovery -Ism Project and The Discovery Utopia project. Both are work checking out.
Ben Wilkoff is a perfect example of how we can channel the energy of our digital learners.

Our technology department in our school system uses a wiki to post news, updates, and forums. Since anyone can edit the pages, it makes for a great collaborative tool. In addition, I have used wikispaces.com to host resources and information for technology classes that I teach in the county.

Veropedia: New spin on wikis

Veropedia provides a new slant on wikis. Why? Veropedia claims:

“Veropedia is a collaborative effort by a group of Wikipedians to collect the best of Wikipedia’s content, clean it up, vet it, and save it for all time. These articles are stable and cannot be edited, The result is a quality stable version that can be trusted by students, teachers, and anyone else who is looking for top-notch, reliable information.”

“Our material is written by Wikipedia contributors. The role of experts and academics will be to check it and, ideally, approve it. The work to improve the article takes place on Wikipedia, and the newer version is imported back to Veropedia. In that way, both Wikipedia and Veropedia benefit from better quality content.”

I have yet to browse veropedia to compare with Wikipedia, but it’ll be interesting to see how this develops over the next year. Will it be accepted by the educational world or rejected because of its wiki relative? Hmm. Only time will tell.