Wikis in plain English and in the news

Lee LeFever at CommonCraft has created an excellent animated video demonstrating the concept and use of wikis in plain English. They have other videos to watch as well as this explanation of social bookmarking.

Elsewhere on the Internet was this article in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding a productive use of wikis and Wikipedia. As described in the article University of New South Wales Associate Professor Andrew Collins undertook a 10-week project with his advanced immunology class. The students had to identify and correct errors as well as eliminate gaps in Wikipedia articles related to immunology. AP Andrew Collins built a specific wiki website. He named the site "Wikimmune". The students could then copy in entries from Wikipedia and collaborate on them. As written in the Herald by "the end of the course the revised versions of each entry were posted back to Wikipedia. In total 2500 edits were made to around 150 Wikipedia topics by the class of 60 advanced immunology students".

And, finally, there is a ppt on the Educause site by Martha Groom of the University of Washington-Bothell where she describes the experiences of her students in creating entries for Wikipedia only to see them subsequently deleted by members of the Wikipedia community who were not impressed with the content. Andy Cravin at learning.now wrote an excellent analysis of Martha Groom's presentation. There is an alternative overview of the presentation at this site.