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Four Letter Words - How wiki and edit are making the Internet...

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Saved by 21 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-11-05


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on 2008-04-30 by peter_johansson

This is a book that you can read the first chapter of

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The first powerful element of the wiki is ease of editing, and the second is its ability to keep track of the history of a document as it is revised. Since users come to one place to edit, the need to keep track of Word files and compile edits is eliminated. Each time a person makes changes to a wiki page, that revision of the content becomes the current version, and an older version is stored. Versions of the document can be compared side-by-side, and edits can be "rolled back" if necessary.

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Copyright law is detailed, lengthy, and difficult to understand, so most teachers don't have the time or expertise to understand it.

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Since the tools to create content have been had fairly moderate learning curves, most teachers haven't been inclined to create their own materials, even when they have the knowledge and expertise to do so.

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Coupled with the wiki, the growth of Creative Commons licensing is a critical catalyst because it provides an "in-between" full copyright and public domain, and a recognized way to give authors proper credit while legitimizing community editing and improvement so content stays fresh, comprehensive, and useful.

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Now imagine using the wiki for this document. The original author might write the first draft on a wiki page, and share the address (URL) of that page with the other collaborators. Now, rather than "pushing" separate copies of the document to each person, all collaborators are "pulled" in to a central place where everyone sees the same text. In order to keep the revision process organized, the wiki keeps a revision history of the page containing the document so users can see the evolution of the document over time.

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Before the wiki existed, collaboratively writing and revising a document might have gone something like this: one person would write a first draft, then email a word document to each collaborator who would in turn make revisions and email her copy back to the original author.

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Speaking of community, what makes a wiki unique is that it enables multiple people to see and collaboratively edit the same document, in the same "place"

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connectedness is more important than boundaries.

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boundaries are being erased to make way for greater progress, stability and cooperation.

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so must we become fluent in the language of technology and use its various tools for greater connectedness, collaboration, and construction of knowledge.

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Students might use a wiki to collaborate on a group report, compile data or share the results of their research, while faculty might use the wiki to collaboratively author the structure and curriculum of a course, and the wiki can then serve as part of each person's course materials.

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All are elegantly simple so that working with a wiki is - true to its name - quick.

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The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast. If you think about this visually, the email/Word scenario has limited periods of creativity separated by the logistical and socially sensitive task of combining edits:

The wiki completely changes this by shifting logistics to the shortest possible segment of time at the outset, leaving a much greater period of time for collaborative creativity and knowledge construction:

Highlighted by christyinsdesign

One of the biggest barriers to involving teachers in technology-enabled curriculum development is how to solicit their input and build it into the curriculum in a meaningful way that makes the curriculum richer. Most technology tools only attract adventurous, early adopters because:

  1. Copyright law is detailed, lengthy, and difficult to understand, so most teachers don't have the time or expertise to understand it. The gray areas in copyright law are so misunderstood and murky that if you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers, and each one will likely be to the benefit of the person answering you. This is a reflection on the complexity of the issue, and makes it really easy to see why people don't know what to do with materials.
  2. Since the tools to create content have been had fairly moderate learning curves, most teachers haven't been inclined to create their own materials, even when they have the knowledge and expertise to do so.

Because of its natural ability to let authors focus on content over technology, almost-transparent yet familiar operation (uploading an image is like attaching a file to email, creating a link involves a syntax that looks more like natural writing than machine commands), and very low cost compared to most software, the wiki is showing potential to change how information is handled and built - potential whose precedent seems second only to the Internet itself. At its core, it really does enable people with knowledge and expertise in an area to focus on sharing their knowledge and collaboratively authoring materials. Coupled with the wiki, the growth of Creative Commons licensing is a critical catalyst because it provides an "in-between" full copyright and public domain, and a recognized way to give authors proper credit while legitimizing community editing and improvement so content stays fresh, comprehensive, and useful.

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request accounts to use The Science of Spectroscopy, which allows us to screen out vandals and those looking to improve their own site rankings in search engines by randomly posting links wherever they can.

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