Wiki Wiki is a Hawaiian word meaning “fast” and a wiki is a website that allows people to create content and display it online quickly.  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is the most well known wiki but there are many others.

When I first heard about wikis it was quite hard for me to get my head around the idea but looking at a number of sites for science  has helped me understand the potential for use in school.

Class Wikis

Some teachers create wikis with classes about specific topics they are studying.  Here is a microbiology wiki created by teacher and students in Utah as “a place to learn about microbiology from a human health perspective”. http://microbiowiki.wetpaint.com It is powered by wetpaint a piece of free webware that allows teachers and students over 13 years of age to create wikis. http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/

One of the main reasons cited by teachers for using a wiki is that students try harder if they know they are writing an assignment for their peers to see as well as their teacher.

Other teachers use their wikis to upload their programmes of study and manage assignments in the same way some teachers in our school are using moodle e.g a wiki by Gene Gordan a Physics teacher in Maine. http://dragonphysics.pbwiki.com which is powered by pbwikis http://pbwiki.com/academic.wiki

Professional Wikis

Proteopedia is an amazwing 3D  interactive encyclopedia of proteins, RNA, DNA and other molecules http://www.proteopedia.org/ that has been produced by over 300  science academics from around the world. Educators and their students are welcome to join and contribute by creating “green links” that change the way the 3d image is displayed.

Similarly the Moon Wiki http://the-moon.wikispaces.com/ has been produced collaboratively to list the individual features of the moons surface,