WikiTips

Model Collaboration
Don't expect that the novelty of using a wiki in your classroom is going to motivate your students to continue to use it. Model the type of collaborative behaviour that you would like to see your students exhibit through the use of the wiki. Students might start almost in a discussion type of building experience, where students ideas and opinions emerge, and are consolidated as the content is forming. You might consider the organic growth of a wiki as new ideas are developed from older ideas, as one of the most beneficial aspects of using a wiki in the classroom. Think of [|Wikipedia] as a model, whose content is constantly being refined, reshaped and improved. Examine the writing style that is being developed as students' use their group voice. You might encourage your class to moderate their own spelling and grammar, rather than something that's teacher directed. Keep them enagaged with the topic of the wiki, while focusing on their ownership of wiki content. The tone of the wiki is set up by the teacher through discussion both online and offline, and the "Style Guide."

Assigning Roles
Assigning specific roles to students which might also help to ease students into the use of a wiki. The role might be assigned, with the understanding that these students are still free to contribute to the wiki in any of the other roles outlined. A few examples might be:


 * **Innovators**: Find new ideas that relate to the topic and include those ideas into the wiki.
 * **Debaters**: Challenge the information presented in the new ideas through discussion, in order to help legitimize or debunk new information.
 * **Researchers**: Look at connections between the wiki content that has been created and provide links to research that discusses that content. Check that the facts that have been included in the wiki are correct.
 * **Protectors**: Stop spammers or editing that detracts from the content being created, and check for plagiarism in order to protect the integrity of the wiki.
 * **Editors**: Formating the text so that it is more appealing. (i.e. blod, italics, font size) Correcting spelling and grammar errors in the text.

Assigning Tasks
Another way you can help students to engage in the wiki is by assigning a task list to students.
 * **Formatting**
 * **Fact Checking and Plagiarism**
 * **Linking the Wiki**
 * **Create New Content**

Looking at Contributions
A wiki offers educators a look at how students contribute to a working document. It also gives the educator the ability to see how students can work together on a document and what their contributions are.
 * By looking at the recent changes section in a wiki educators can see where and how students have collaborated in the wiki.
 * By selecting **(diff)** beside the recent changes, educators can see what students have contributed in comparison to the original text.
 * By selecting **(hist)** beside the recent changes, educators can see what students have contributed in comparison to any other changes that have been made to the text.

Recording Accomplishments
Be sure to establish the appropriate conventions of co-authoring texts since students names will not appear on the last draft of the front-end of the wiki. You can help students to record their contributions to the content of the wiki. One way to do this is have them electronically sign pages that they contributed to.

Publishing Controls
The amount of publishing control a visitor to a wiki will have depends on how the wiki administrator has set up the software. In general, the wiki administrator can make changes to the user interface of the wiki. This might include different wiki themes, the navigation and other customization features. This is usually on the outside or around the main text of the wiki. The inside area, or the area where the main content is located is often set-up so that others can edit and add content to the wiki. Publishing controls can take many different forms, here are a few examples:
 * **Personal Publishing:** A wiki can be used as a personal brain dump, where one user (the wiki administrator) has access to the wiki and everyone else becomes a viewer of the content.
 * **Group Publishing:** A group of people have access to the wiki - usually dome through user-names and/or passwords that are given out by the wiki administrator. Few have access to edit, change and add pages on the wiki, but all can view.
 * **Public:** Changes can be made by anyone who visits the wiki, changes and additions are monitored by the group as a whole. A good example is wikipedia. This type of permissions allow you to collaborate with the world.
 * **Private Wikis**: Wikis may be used for a number of different purposes which limit access to the wiki. For example, if the wiki is located on an intranet you are automatically limiting access to the wiki. Access may also only be granted with username/password to all of the content of a wiki. Or you may not want to have contributions from anyone else, but a select group of people.

Rules and Guidelines
Hopefully school and school district "Acceptable Use Policies" will be able to inform school and educator developed wiki policies and guidelines as they are developed. In general a district wiki policy should cover issues related to student identity on the World Wide Web, in order to prevent students from including specific identifying information in classroom wikis, such as full names, photos and emails. A district wiki policy should also include guidelines for posting information on a wiki that is inappropriate, inaccurate or where postings may bully another student. It is a good practice to develop the rules and guidelines for your wiki with your students and ensure that they have a positive tone. As in a traditional classroom, students are more likely to abide by rules that they have developed than ones imposed on them. This is also a good time to layout any rules or citation guidelines that you would like student to follow when referencing other content whether online or offline. Example:
 * 1) Understand that this site is an extension of school. All school rules apply, even if you come to this site when you are not at school.
 * 2) Use the name that you were assigned by your teacher.
 * 3) Never, ever, put your last name on this site.
 * 4) Never, ever, put your e-mail address, home address, phone number nor any other means of contact on this site.
 * 5) Never make any changes or add any sorts of content to the site that are inappropriate.
 * 6) Do not make changes to this site that are outside the instructions and intent of this wiki.