Wikis in Education

A popular form of sharing group projects online are Wikis. Wikis allow collaboration, editing, and sharing of information to a defined group of people. For a class project in a PhD course titled "Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction," my group set up a Wiki. First, we participated in a brainstorming discussion on how we would approach our topic. Next, we created an accompanying Word document to keep our ideas organized. Both phases went well and Wiki-collaboration was an excellent way to keep all group members informed of progress and needed changes. Our final project was a PowerPoint presentation with audio. We had difficulty getting the PPT to upload to the Wiki. We ended up emailing it back and forth. One of the group members was unable to download the finished product. She emailed her scripted portion of the PPT and I recorded my voice for her portion. Technology in education can be wonderful and it can be a disaster. None of our group members lived in close proximity. It was winter and we had a terrible snow storm that resulted in cancellation of classes. We could not meet the week of submission face-to-face to finalize the project. Although we ended up getting a good grade, some of the members of the group (especially the person who could not download the final audio version of the PPT) felt left out.  As technology becomes more prominent in education, it is important to recognize students who may not be as "tech-savvy" as others as well as students who may not have access to necessary software to participate 100%. We cannot limit our teaching with technology efforts to those with the most "software knowledge." As educators, we need to make a conscious effort on making sure everyone can use the technology we choose or instruction will surely fail. One of the aspects of the courses I've taken in ITEC is that the professors always make software requirements known. This is very helpful. :)