When people hear the term wiki they generally think of Wikipidia. Wikipidia is a wealth of informational content on the web. But one of the drawbacks to Wikipidia and of all wikis is the accuracy of the content. This stems from the ability of anyone to edit the content. With this ability, there is the possibility that someone may place unreliable content in the wiki. Most of the time inaccuracy is due to oversight error but at time it may be intentional, but the latter is not very common. In either case the error can be easily and quickly fixed when detected. This editing feature weak-point is actually becoming the wikis strong point as collaborative editors take ownership of the wikis and watchdog for errors.
But wikis are developing into another online tool apart from just a collection of information. With more people online and the web becoming a dynamic read/write platform, wikis are evolving into a very powerful collaboration environment for learning. The following chart points out this wiki power.
Comparison of Asynchronous Communication Tools
- Wikis: Collaborative Authorship; Dynamic; Nonlinear and Multiple Construction
- Blogs: Single Author; Static; Linear Construction
- Threaded Discussions: Multiple Authors; Static; Threaded Construction
West, J. A., West, M. L., (2009) Using Wikis for Online Collaboration. The Power of the
Read-Write Web. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass p. 5.
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