Thing 21 - Wikis

I have always been a bit confused about the difference between blogs and wikis- but I guess it is just that the wiki is more "group-owned" and the blog has generally one author who receives comments from others. I guess another way to describe a wiki is that is is like a google doc, except that it is a website instead of a document. Again, as with podcasts, I don't see myself searching out wikis, but it is useful to see what is out there and what potential there might be for my creating one on my own. I looked at the educational wiki search engine, and was disappointed to see that they were organized in alphabetical order by title (NOT useful!!!), although a keyword search could be used to narrow the search. In my exploring, I did see one obstacle that I first witnessed on the Arbor Heights elementary school site- when looking through discussion and history, it became very apparent that one guy is handling most of the work. It seems that in many cases, it may start out as a collaborative idea, but may end up being on the shoulders of one person. The wikihow site seemed silly to me- perhaps it was just the ones that I clicked on, like "how to get your boyfriend to read". I sometimes cannot get past my need for authority on the site: I keep thinking, "who wrote this?!" I did see a nice collaboratiove project on the comparison of the seasons of the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere with an American School and a New Zealand school: this, it would seem, is an ideal use of the wiki.