The power of wikis
By Lee Davis • Dec 12th, 2008 • Category: Teaching and learningSome extraordinary work has been done recently by Richard Allaway, Jim Williams and Natasha Winnard on a wiki to support the new IB Diploma Geography guide being launched in February next year. Drawing on their considerable experience in the subject, they have put together an outstanding resource structured around the forthcoming syllabus content. Full of web links, textbook references and the application of geographical skills, the wiki is constantly being updated as Richard et al come across new resources on the web.
How does it work? Well, they all have Delicious accounts and as they come across something useful on the web, they simply tag the resource using a previously agreed taxonomy and it automatically displays on the wiki via RSS. Thus a web link for Disparities in Wealth and Development could be tagged with ibgeog2009 and disparities_indicators or disparities_patterns for example.
It demonstrates the enormous power for social constructionism that wikis have and also how communities of practice can take a basic document like a subject guide and add real value to it for themselves and others. I encourage you to take a look when you have time, and if you’re a geography teacher, you can suggest resources or discuss an issue with them too. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for the blog link, Anton, and the reference to Zotero. I have the plug-in and found it to be very useful indeed.
Cheers,
Lee
My comment does not properly belong here but I have not found a way to make it in a better place.
Firstly I would like to compliment Lee for the great and informative posts, keep it up!
I would like to draw your attention to a recent post by Olivia Judson on new tools for organizing research which I find promissing for teaching. A special attention deserves a plug-in for Firefox called Zotero. I have already installed it and I believe it is something worth showing our students. The blog itself is a good resource as well.