The evolution of the web
form 1.0 to 2.0 brought amazing changes in the way people work, communicate and
get informed. A new society has developed from the use of these collaborative
tools that allow people to communicate and work together without being in the
same place.
Among these popular tools the wiki is the
medium in which people’s creativity and collaboration play the most important
role in order to build up new things together in a fast and easy way.According to Cunningham (cited in LeBar, 2014) a wiki is a website that can be edited by its users and it is this specific feature that makes wikis so special. Because it can be adapted to different needs in different areas and everybody can work at the same time. Imagine how much information is being uploaded and corrected straight from the source, and how fast this new information can get to other users.
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Wikipedia is one of the most
popular examples of a wiki with educational purposes. It is amazing to see the
numbers of collaborators that work on it nowadays and the amount of unexpected
information that you can find in there. But, how can we include wikis in EFL
teaching? Only to find information about a specific topic or is it possible
that our students create and share their own information?
Well as the most relevant
characteristics of the wikis is that they are collaborative, communicative and
foster discussions, these elements make them perfect to be used in language
teaching because it represents an opportunity for students to interact in a
foreign language even after classes in an asynchronous way and a lot of
authentic material can be included on it.
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Moreover, the use of wikis in EFL
classes can develop that digital literacy that is so needed nowadays, because
wikis can be fed with almost all kind of technological resources that exist.
However, it is extremely necessary to train students in the use of the wiki and
other resources to avoid possible frustrations during the work. As any other
pedagogical activity the use of the wiki should be well planned and designed
with a specific purpose, otherwise all the potential of this tool can be
meaningless.
In my opinion, wikis can fit any
pedagogical purpose that we want to give them. If we want to give our students
external support or coaching after classes we can do it through a wiki, we can
also let them to create something through web based projects using a wiki, this
would be very interesting as everybody has a different background with different
experiences, they will have something new to present for the rest of the class.
The following video can give us an idea about the use of wikis:
References:
LeBar, Z. (2014) What are
Wikis, and Why Should You Use Them? [Online]http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540
Informative blog! it was very useful for me.Thanks for sharing. Do share more ideas regularly.
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