Religion, is a Smile on a Dog!....My Wiki blog.

I suppose I should explain my title. As I researched the history of the wonderful wiki, the origin of the name came from the hawaiian word for fast, or quick, presumably because of how fast people can get in there and add or edit the work. Now since then it has been given the backronym of , what-I-know-is, WIKI. So when I saw that I instantly had Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians song, "What I am" stuck in my head. I had a bit of a crush on Edie Brickell so that song has stuck with me for the last 22 years. 'Religion, is a smile on a dog', is a line from that song, and I have been singing it around the house for the last 5 days driving my wife and kids completely mental. It was worth it. Hopefully some of you know this song and can see where I made the connection, or I've just dated myself.

1. My personal knowledge of wiki, was wikipedia. Actually I didn't realize that wikipedia was a form of wiki. So pretty green as always. Once I delved in and found that wikipedia was not the only thing out there, I came across wikispaces which was an incredibly easy and excellent site for a newbie like myself. There is a tour you can take before subscribing, and then once you have signed on, they walk you through each application step by step. So nice, the experience was so painless and quite rewarding. Instantly you had a wiki set up and you knew how to upload images, invite guests, change the template, a number of things. The basic set up is free but if you wanted to pay monthly or yearly you can increase your storage size, your custom options, security, etc. After reading our text, Web 2.0 for Schools, Will Richardson's chapter on wikis, and an article I found in the Medical Teacher; 12 Tips for using blogs and wikis in medical education, I grasped the concept of the wiki. Its main key attribute to me is the collaboration. This aspect is perhaps also what leads to its greatest downside, security, and biased/agendized material. I always questioned wikipedia, probably because if I used it, I always got reprimanded, "you don't know who puts that stuff on there, you can't trust it!" The usual response, but I think differently now, I know that there is still some chance of mis-infromation, but I believe it is the collaboration aspect that will keep the gargage out. Too many people have put there time and effore into these things to allow one bad apple to spoil the work. Richardson (pg. 64) mentions this in his book as well, saying the editorial control given to the students will embed a sense of responsibility and ownership in the students, minimizing the security risk.

2. In terms of personal use, to be honest at first I wasn't sure if there was any real use of wiki personally. I mean besides using wikipedia. Once I went through the common craft video and its camping trip example, my mind started to see the personal use. That example was great in showing the ease of use between multiple people in multiple areas attempting to set up group trip, project, conference, etc. I have been apart of a couple committees and getting together with people was the greatest pain, this idea could  alleviate the need to get together. Also I read Nicola's blog on wikis and she had a fantastic and fun idea to use wikis to trace her relationship throught the years, that never crossed my mind but now it has opened up another avenue that I could explore. There are so many useful wikis out there that can help with all sorts of personal things: Do-It-Yourself repairs, adolescents, and even travelling in Wales (wikitravel). So I've definitely changed my tune to the personal uses of wikis, now that I actually have an idea what a wiki is.

3. As far as in terms of my professional use, there is great opportunity to use wikis in any classroom as far as I am concerned. Using wikis in the classroom allow the student to be participants in their learing as opposed to information sacs that we are supposed to fill and then push out the door. It allows the students to embrace their thoughts and share/collaborate with fellow students. One articel I read called Wikis for Teaching and Learning summed it up best, "the instructor's role is to facilitate information sharing among learners rather than simply transmit knowledge from themselves to their students as a one-way mechanism." This is what wikis allow, shared knowledge, also a feeling of working together and comraderie from all members of the class making contributions including the instructor as co-learner. One point that Davies and Merchant make in Web 2.0 for schools (pg. 96) is that because wikis are authored by many people with varying degrees of knowledge it teaches the students to read more critically of all written work. To realize that all authors are culpable and should be read with a critical eye.
In keeping with my desire to attempt all of these great tools on my own, I started a wiki space for my students this week. I was subbing for a co-worker in a course I had taught before. When I taught it previously I made up a jeopardy review game for the renal section, as this is one of the larger more difficult modules. The current instructor does not have that game, so I developed the wiki space and included the jeopardy game on there. So now the students can access the page and open the game for review. I've invited a few of them to join just to see how it will work. I've added some images on there and the hope is that they will go on there and discuss what is being shown, and then comment and edit the page. My idea in setting this up is that it will supplement their studies at the end of the term, also that if they are contributing to the wiki on a regular basis they will be continually studying and be better prepared for the final. This is but one option for wikis in the classroom. Entire courses could be facilitated in this manner, with close supervision and interjection from the instructor, exam reviews, book reviews, projects, the list goes on. For me professionally the study guide aspect is huge, I want to show the students new images and give patient histories and let them work through the problem. Just like in ultrasound you may see something one place, but then you have to work it out in your head where else you better be checking in the body. This is why I like this set up, they can go in and work through it with each other, solve the problem, not sit there and wait for the answer to be handed to them.

Notes:
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
http://www.techterms.com/definition/wiki
http://dmsstudyguide2009-2011.wikispaces.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms.
Mindel, J.L. & Verma, S. (2006). Wikis for teaching and learning. Communications of AIS, 18(1), 1-38.
Sandars, J. (2006). Twelve tips for using blogs and wikis in medical education. Medical Teacher, 28(8), 680-682.