Wiki Q & A

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Here is the most common question I get about wikis as posted on the Westwood wikispace yesterday from a Michigan educator. It is a good one and this question keeps many people from using the most useful tool I have ever found for teaching!

beckyloose writes: Editing
I am a teacher in Northern Michigan and I am just learning about wikis. I have been studying your wonderful wiki page to learn more about it. It really seems like a wonderful tool, but I have a quesion that I’m sure you can help me with.
If anyone can edit the wiki how do you prevent someone from going in there and changing or deleting all the hard work that has been done?
Thank you for you help!

Here is my response:

brightideaguru writes: re: Editing
Great question! This is a wiki that has members so only people who I have invited can edit. The only members of this wiki are my Westwood students!
Although they could mess up each other’s work and it has happened sometimes, if you go to the history tab, you can revert back to any old page that you want to.
Any changes made to the page (including your question here) go to my bloglines account that the Westwood wiki has changed and I read it and can delete or edit it.
So, between using RSS to monitor changes to the page and the history page that lets me see changes, who made them, and revert back to an older page if necessary, I have a powerful, easy, pretty foolproof tool that I can use to teach.
In fact, it is the best tool I have EVER used in my classroom. I blog quite frequently about it at my teacher blog.

What is your wiki question? I’d love to answer it.

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis has been an educator and IT director in Georgia since 2002. Today, she also works as an instructional technology coach, staying side-by-side with active teachers and students so her work stays grounded in real classrooms.

She's a mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world.

She has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk (radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms), interviewing remarkable educators around the world. Vicki focuses on what unites us — a quest for truly remarkable, life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers, grounded in truth and shared with love.

If you talk to Vicki for long, she'll encourage you to "Relate to Educate," to "innovate like a turtle," or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and runs half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

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