Collaboration Through Wikis

Our group first started by editing the web development page of the writing technology wiki. The previous group did a nice job of giving a brief introduction of web development. They also incorporated history of web development into the wiki. There was a lot of information already present, so there was not much to add with that respect. They also split the categories into general uses and uses in the classroom. We all agreed that this was a beneficial arrangement to the page. We split the uses in the classroom category into uses for teachers and uses for students. We thought this would be useful for anyone visiting the wiki for quick ideas on how web development could be incorporated into the classroom.

Then I began editing the wiki page. The person that developed the page before had a lot of text and information on the page. I first added a picture to add to the visual appeal of the website. It breaks up the text on the website, which I thought would encourage people to read all of the text. The previous editor wrote a good introduction for the page. She also split the page into many smaller categories. These categories were about wikis, strengths for writing classes, and weaknesses for writing classes. I thought this was a good way to separate the categories.

I edited a lot of the content of these categories. I changed some of the subcategory titles so the wiki had better flow.  I also split the strengths into strengths for teachers and strengths for students, as we did on the web development page. I thought this would be useful and would interest the visitors of the page.

The previous editor also had a category for examples. I thought this was really useful to the page, so I just added a few small changes. She also gave links to sites to start your own wiki, which was also really useful for the readers.   

 Overall, I edited a lot of the content and grammar. I corrected a few spelling and grammatical errors.  I also added to the introduction in order to give a better overview of the webpage. I added more about collaboration and editing, as the previous editor did not mention them a lot. I think both of these aspects are very important to wikis, so I added more content about them. I also added more to the strength section because I think wikis can be very helpful in the classroom.

The wiki page has been edited only by two students. I think that continuing collaboration on this page will give better resources and information on how the technology can be used in the classroom. I also believe that continuing collaboration will add to the entire website. These technologies will continue to change, so having a consistent source for updates, namely the students, will be very beneficial to the content of the wiki.