Webwatcher 52

Advertisment

spot_img

Russell Stannard finds wikis easy to work with.


A wiki is a collaborative website. Instead of just one person being able to add content, many people can. You might start making a site and then send the address and password to other people, inviting them to collaborate on its development by adding text or pictures; they can even delete or change what you have done. Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia, is a great example of a wiki produced by collaboration between an enormous number of people. Wikis are popular with teachers because they are very good for groupwork. A wiki can be set up which allows a group of students to collaborate on a project. They don’t all have to be in the same place – they can work remotely and still create the site, project, essay or whatever as a group. From the teacher’s point of view, wikis are very useful for control purposes, too. A teacher can go to a wiki and access information about how it was created, who added what, who deleted what and when. This makes it very easy to check on students’ work and see which members of a group have made the most significant contributions.  

Getting started  

There are many websites that you can go to in order to set up a wiki. One example is http://pbwiki.com. Here you will be asked to create a name for your wiki and give your email address. You will then be sent an email. Open it and click on the link given. You will be asked to set up a password and then you are ready to start. It really is that easy!  

To make things even simpler, I have put some learning videos on the internet where you can watch and listen to me working with PB wiki. Go to http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com. Then click on ‘How to make a wiki’ from the list on the left.

Making a wiki  

If you have followed the instructions above, you should be on the ‘Getting started’ page. Now click on the ‘Edit page’ button. This will open up a text editor and you will see some text in a box. Select the text and delete it. You can then add your own text and pictures to create the first page of your wiki. It is best to decide in advance what your wiki is about. Try to pick a topic that other people can easily collaborate on. For example, the topic ‘Our class’ will encourage students in the class to log in and add information. Once you have inserted everything you want, click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom and this will take you back to the home page. To add another page, click on ‘New page’. You will be asked for a name for the page. (The first page is always called ‘Front page’ by default so you don’t have to name it.) You need to name subsequent pages in order to link them together so you can move from one page to the next. Name it ‘Page 2’ and add whatever information you want. You then need to create a link back to the front page. At the bottom type ‘Home page’ and select this. Click on the ‘Link’ button in the control panel and you will see two drop-down menus. You can link to a page on your wiki, or create a link to a page on the internet. From the first menu choose ‘Wiki page’ and then from the second choose the wiki page you want to link to. In this case, it should be ‘Front page’.  

Tips  

  • You can insert a picture very easily. Just use the ‘Insert image’ button.
  • The plug-ins are great. You can add a calendar to your site, a video and even set up a chat room which all your students will be able to access.

Sharing your wiki 

Sharing your work with students and colleagues couldn’t be easier. You can choose whether to allow people to be ‘readers’, ie they can only read your page, or to give them full access so that they can contribute to it. Once you have made your choice, click on ‘Share this’ to the right of the home page. A dialogue button will open, and you can add the email addresses of all the people you want to give access to in the left-hand side. Now click on ‘Share my wiki’ and they will receive an email with the link included. Another way is simply to copy and paste the link (you can see it in the right-hand side of the screen) and then send it to the people you want to give access to. They can then click on the link and access your page.

An ETp readers’ wiki  

I have created an ETp site and put some information on the opening page. Please add your pages to mine and let’s see if we can build an ETp readers’ wiki. Just go to the link below and then click to enter. Add a new page, but don’t forget to put a link to it. Perhaps you could write about yourself and recommend one good website for teaching and learning English. Remember you should create a link from my page to your page and from your page to my page.

https://russelletpro.pbwiki.com/shared.php?aph=9c94c48fccd6a065c4735c231cc3032c1e7b0dba

There are a lot more to wikis but this should get you started.

I have also launched a series of free learning videos showing you how to use technology for teaching English. Take a look; they are all free:  

www.teachertrainingvideos.com.


Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer in ICT and Multimedia at the University of Westminster, UK. He is currently working on the CD-ROMs and Teacher’s Books for Hello English, published by Balberry.


This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 52, 2007


More articles

spot_img

Recent articles