August
2007
wikis, wikipedia?0
As we’ve been continuing on in the semester, i’ve been exposed to quite a few new concepts in e-learning, one of those being “wikis”. On first glance and thought of the word, i immediately think of wikipedia- the free online ‘encyclopedia’ that allows people to create pages of information on topics, people…about anything actually. So upon instinct, my first source to turn to was wikipedia (not surprisingly) and from a thorough read, i gathered that “wikis” are basically databases where people can collaboratively create, store, browse and retrieve information. It sounds all pretty simple but looking through explanations of actually creating a wiki, it appears to be quite daunting and tedious. Seems to involve alot of html, javascript and coding type of work which is so not my forte but i’m trying to keep myself open minded.
The most simple and straightforward definition that i found concerning wikis was from http://www.answers.com (some may not consider this the best source for information but i personally think its pretty cool as it displays definitions/results from external sources as well as its’ own). Some things that stood out to me included:
- ’wiki community’: individuals or groups with common vocabulary or interests sometimes consider themselves as part of a wiki community
- a wiki can be edited and have pages added by anyone with access to it
- it was initially created by Ward Cunningham in the mid 1990s as a means of creating collaborative discussions
My only concern about wikis is the idea that anyone who visits it or has access to it can edit it quite easily- is there password protection or any other security/privacy measures for wikis?
As part of an assessment, i will also be creating a wiki with two of my friends (Jason and Georgina), where we will research on a chosen topic and add information or relevant material on to the wiki which will allow all of us to view each other’s findings. It shouldn’t be too difficult as i don’t have to tackle this new technology by myself and can tire my group members out with endless questions of what, why and how =). We’ve chosen privacy/security issues as an area of e-learning that we would like to look into but haven’t settled on a more refined aspect yet. We could leave it as privacy/security issues for online learning but that within itself is such a big field to explore and it can be researched from so many different angles. I don’t think the assignment requires us to go to such lengths and depth as the lecturer mentioned about looking into 2-3 articles? We’re thinking of privacy/security issues when it comes to blogs at the moment, that’d be quite interesting as i have a blog myself and have never actually been too worried about it. It all comes down to common sense, i think anyway.
