The Implementation of the Wiki as a learning tool:

There are many well supported examples and suggestions of how the wiki can be used as a beneficial educational tool. However, there are also a number of issues that have to be addressed or at least considered when implementing wikis as an educational tool on a classroom level.

At a very basic level, the collaboration element that the wiki offers has been shown to be highly advantageous in nature due to the work of Lev Vygotsky and the Constructivist educational paradigm. It exemplifies “Writing to learn” in a highly relatable medium. To reach this potential it requires a commitment of time and effort on the part of both the teacher and the students as all parties must possess the basic technical skills required to successfully use the wiki and also the energy that must be expended to update it for the students, and the requirement to check on the progress of the students and provide any necessary assistance. Time is also required to gain experience in a new medium as students gain mastery and move from producing wiki entries that are superficial and shallow to those that are in depth in the same way that they develop their essay writing or report writing skills.

To this end, a successful implementation of a wiki in the classroom needs to start slowly and ideally will combine multiple disciplines and strands. It is necessary to teach students the basic mechanical skills of adding pages, modifying entries and linking pages. Teaching these mechanical skills would need to be tied into the ICT curriculum due to the time sink that would take away time from dicipline specific content. Once the basic mechanical skills are in place, it would be necessary to ensure that students were in the right mind frame. They need to be open to the idea of group work, collaboration and the higher order thinking skills that are required to produce entries of the desired depth. The teacher can assist this growth by comparing conventional assessments to the required abilities in the wiki creation. Finally, time is important. The whole educational community, teacher and students alike need to have time to adjust to this new type of education and slowly realize the potential. A small start, sufficient guidance and a measure of patience are all required in the execution of the wiki as an educational classroom tool.