Educational benefits/classroom applications:
* Students have ownership of the knowledge. They actively seek it, and they create it.
* Students are given the responsibility to look after a publication with a global audience. It's not just their teacher reading their work.
* High-level critical thinking is developed as students critique others' contributions for accuracy.
* Increased information literacy skills are required as students check their facts for accuracy and correct errors discovered by their peers.
* Create an online text for your curriculum that you and your students can contribute to.
* Engage in collaborative projects with other classrooms and other schools.
* Create collaborative stories and books.
Since 2005 when I first started using wikis in education, I point out how students should remain anonymous online, I advise them never to post any pesonal information whatever online, and finally, for their wiki postings, I have used a simple, randomly generally student number for them.
You post using a random three-digit number. For example, a student in first period, who sits in the first seat, in the first row, is #111. A student in the 7th Period, who sits in the seventh row, in the seventh seat, is #777. Each student then can determine their unique, anonymous, randomly assigned three-digit number.
N.B.: you should never post any personal information online, there should be nothing online that really identifies your actual name, address, or any other personal information. The randomly assigned three-digit number keeps you anonymous online.
Students can safely post using wikis. The added bonus for a teacher is that I quickly get to view the most highly motivated and active students, I have many students who are quiet by nature and will not ask a question in class but they become inveterate posters out of the public eye, and I discover which students need more prodding to get them active as well. My students eventually create a monitored class notebook or textbook. It is not unusual to end a course with around a 100 pages of hard-copy student generated content.
Once you are more comfortable with the concept of wikis, you can explore some of the many services that offer free wikis to educators, including Wiki Spaces (wikispaces.com), Wikis in Education (wikisineducaton.wetpaint.com), and Pbwiki (pbwiki.com).
