I’ve decided that I’m going to take the plunge with wikis after the October holiday (I get 2 weeks - hurrah for Fife!). I’ve installed TikiWiki and am currently setting it up. It has thousands of options, some which should be really useful. It’s not just a wiki - you can attach user blogs, forums, comments, and more onto users and entries. There’s a lot to get through in terms of the technical aspects of it but I’ll spend the next few days to do that.

My plan with the wiki would be for each student to have an account on the wiki, and be able to:

- Add, edit and update pages
- Write in a blog (though currently need to think of what uses this could have)
- Comment on other pages and work

I want to try and bridge this with a Moodle site, which will have links to recommended sites, inter-linked glossaries to help with definitions, and maybe some lessons that students can choose to go through.

I’m going to use the Standard Grade arrangements as the basis for the wiki structure. It also allows me to make Moodle sections and filespaces that students can upload quizzes and revision materials they have made to.

If anyone is reading and has some feedback on what they think of this idea, please let me know. My main concerns are, at the moment:

1. How do I motivate the class to use this, and use it properly? I could cynically predict that some of the class will replace pages with expletives, etc, but I’m going on the basis that they have to understand that class rules extend to web pages. Would some sort of points/reward system make sense for contributions?

2. Pupils will need to make up their own definitions for the wiki, but can use my glossary and examples on the Moodle site to do this. The reason I want to give them this information is because of the not insignificant gap between real-world terminology and exam terminology when it comes to high school level Computing. Is this a naive way to view their use of the internet, or am I right to provide a solid cross-check for students to make sure they have the best of both worlds?