Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching 3rd edition (Teaching Techniques in English as a Second Language)

• Wikis

            The prefix  ‘wiki’  comes   from    the Hawaiian    expression  ‘wiki   wiki,’  which   means

‘quick,’ and it refers to a quick way to create and edit web-documents. Wikis can be
very useful in collaborative writing tasks. Multiple authors—a group of students—
can write one text together. A good wiki-tool will keep track of authorship of the
different versions/parts of the document that the students are creating. In this way
the teacher can have a record of the students’ writing as a process. The other
concept associated with wikis is wabi-sabi. It refers to things always being
changeable—never finished, never perfect.

            Wikipedia   is  a   shared  online  encyclopedia    (for    web address,    see page    218).   What

makes it unique is that anyone can contribute information on a topic, so the
information is always being updated.

Screenshot 14.3 Example of a Wikipedia page

            Not everything  that    is  published   on  Wikipedia   is  accurate;   however,    information

and knowledge about a topic change, and the good thing is that wikis are able to
reflect these changes.

            For example,    for the concept of  global  warming,    a   user-participant    begins  by

describing what he knows about the topic. Within days, several other participants
add to what was shared by the first. Over weeks and months, the information about
global warming becomes richer and deeper. Then, participants add links to other,