Wikis and Getting my Geek on

The first time I came across a wiki other than the actual Wikipedia.org, I had no idea that wikis were something that people could create themselves. I thought that was just one really amazing site and not a type of open-source software that others could use. And then the student technology group at my undergraduate college started Willipedia, the "unofficial, collaborative source of information and diversion written by Williams people." The site has information about everything from the different dorms, professors, classes, and the like to definitions for "Williamspeak" ("your mom," "breakfast points") and the humor-driven pages for "my dad" and the Moocho Macho Moocow Military Marching Band. This is a rather long way to say that before this class I knew about and recognized the value of wikis (I've used the Star Trek wiki as well, which Will Richardson referenced).

However, despite my recognizing their usefulness, I never considered their use in the classroom as a way for students to (re)construct their own knowledge. The whole idea, from student websites, to watching their edits to Wikipedia posts, to South Africa publishing their entire curriculum in a wiki, has me just amazed and excited. Wikis can revolutionize - are revolutionizing - the way we think about knowledge. It gives us all power; we are the constructors of knowledge, the owners of knowledge, because every single person has equal power over the editing and writing process (well, not entirely, as access to the internet is class-based and, in some cases, culturally based). It's just mind-boggling.

By using this technology in our own classrooms, we would be informing our students that they are not empty vessels to be filled with information by their teachers but teachers themselves, competent beings who are repositories in their own right, people who have something valid and valued to share. Communicating this idea to our students is what makes them true learners, it's what make confident enough to engage with a material and be able to truly understand it (I mean being able to do more than just parrot it back). It sends the greater message that we want to send to our students - we're all learners and all teachers - and that is just amazing and wonderful.