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ICT in Education
Blogging and Wikis
What is a Wiki?

What is a Wiki?

📝 Cheat Sheet
  1. Wiki: web space where many users can create, edit, and link content
  2. Most famous example: Wikipedia
  3. Other wikis: Notion, OneNote, Moodle wiki, MediaWiki, Fandom, Confluence, DokuWiki
  4. Three defining features: open editing, version history, internal links
  5. Differs from a normal website: every reader can also be an author
📝
A wiki is a website that approved users can edit together. Many people build and improve the same set of linked pages, and the wiki saves every change in a history, so you can always see who edited what and go back to an earlier version.

A wiki is a website where many users can create, edit, and link pages together. Anyone with access can add content, fix errors, or improve a page. The most famous example is Wikipedia.

❓ Pop Quiz
What single feature makes a website count as a wiki?

How a wiki is different from a normal website

On a normal website, the author writes, and the reader reads. On a wiki, every reader can also become an author. The wiki keeps a record of every change so the teacher can see who added what, who fixed what, and how the page grew.

Three features make a wiki special:

  1. Open editing: any user with access can change the content.
  2. Version history: every edit is logged with the user’s name and the time.
  3. Internal links: pages link to other pages, so a class wiki forms a connected web of knowledge.

These three traits are the test of whether a site is really a wiki. Many popular websites look social or busy but fail the test.

❓ Pop Quiz
Which of these is NOT a wiki?
Flashcard
Is YouTube a wiki?
Tap to reveal
Answer

No.

Viewers add comments and uploads, but adding a comment is not the same as editing a shared page.

On a wiki, any approved user can edit the content of any page.

❓ Pop Quiz
Why is YouTube not a wiki?

Examples of Wiki

Many other well-known wikis exist too:

Classrooms can run their own private wikis using tools like:

📖
In education, a wiki shifts students from passive readers to active co-authors. They read what teachers write and also build the content together.

Once you know what a wiki is, the next question is what to do with one. The next article covers the educational uses of wikis: collaborative writing, a class knowledge base, project work, peer review, and more. After that, read the benefits and challenges of using wikis and when to use a wiki instead of a blog or a portfolio.

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Read in 🇵🇰 Pakistan
Last updated on • Talha
Blogging & Digital CitizenshipEducational Uses of Wikis