The Use Of Wikispaces

Wiki's

In a PMI

Plus

• Wikispaces are a great place to express yourself
• People can give helpful and interesting feedback
• Like a forum (Many opinions shared)
• Great tool for learning, interaction between students and schoolwork
• Text can be edited by followers of your own wiki
• Embed tools are widely available (Eg. Youtube, vimeo, photobucket, saved images)
• Wikis are free of charge, no payments made to create your very own web page
• Can be privatised in settings
• Only one follower can edit the wiki at any one time
• Great tool for teaching in classroom (Private)

Minus

• Because Wikis can be edited, information or parts can be deleted from your page
• Not private (Unless privatised in settings)
• If many followers are commenting or editing information on the wiki, it can become very confusing and disorderly
• People can access your ideas, information and files
• Any content can be uploaded, making it unsafe for children

Interesting

• There are many interesting things wikis can be used for
• Wikis are becoming a widely used tool around the world for gathering and sharing information
• Others can share opinions about your information
• Used by teachers and students (Never heard of a wiki when I was attending primary school and high school)
• Works in a great way of learning from other peoples knowledge and previous experiences

When my wikispace was first created, I was very confused as to how it worked and the capabilities it could achieve. Since reading short tutorials on the Wikispaces site I have found that wikis are a truly wonderful web tool, they can be used for endless possibilities but are an interesting and fun place to learn.

Since using wikispaces, my knowledge and thoughts on ICT's have broadened. Wikis are much similar to a blog like the one I am reflecting in now. Although wikis can be edited by members or followers who decide they are interested or like the wiki page. This feature of a wiki works well, because followers of the wiki can add information and give feedback on posts, this is a efficient way of learning. Giving information and receiving feedback on that information is a good way to broaden your ideas on a specific topic. You can add pictures, embed your own videos or youtube/vimeo videos, music players, and many other interesting web tools. Wikis can and are being used in classrooms worldwide to teach and incorporate ICT's. An example of wikis being used in the classroom to teach children could quite possibly be to have the students each create a PMI on a specific topic, inside the wiki page. They can then discuss and edit in their own opinions using creative thinking.

Wikis will most definitely be a webtool used throughout my university and teaching years.

Here is a great video we watched in this week's lecture about the use of wiki spaces

Enjoy