Dear Carla,
I've been browsing through those sites for two days now. Wikis lend themselves to endless possibilities, be it language learning, personal/professional development ( I checked the LWC - sooo cool!) or collaborative projects. They are about sharing and generating knowledge but what I found most impacting is what Dana Boid says, 'social software is about a movement, not simply a category of technologies... It has to do with attitude'.

You got the spirit of the Social Web, Cláudia. It's exactly that! It's about attitude, openness, willing to dare, collaborate and share. I'm glad that through these examples you could see the endless possibilities for wikis. And let me tell you, this is just a microsphere of the wikiworld! We'd spend a lifetime exploring them and still we wouldn't be over!

Well, with wikis we can continue "our classes" at home. They are tools that increase motivation and I'm not talking about only the students' one. No no no, sir. This IS interaction because everyone can comment, create. Wikis and creativity are good friends and walk side by side. There's a whole world to be known and explored!

I haven't been able to browse as much as Maria Claudia, but what I have seen so far has been quite a teaser. Using Wikis seems to be on of the most interesting tools, due to its highly collaborative character. I believe it would be a good idea to start the semester presenting learners with a wiki page they can use through the whole semester. This could be motivating and engaging. Of course, like blogging, it will take them a while to become involved with the idea, but once they do, I think the effort will be worthwhile.

@Marina So true, Marina! Wikis are the possibility for creative classroom beyond the brick and mortar.

@Ana Remember, you always have choices and you have to choose according to your interests and time constraints. So, you go as far as you can in this Wikixploration. Wikis give tons of collaborative possibilities for the classroom, Ana. In fact, I can picture it as a wonderful TDC hub for peer feedback and digifolios, the students keeping what they produce on a wiki. Also, it gives this sense of ownership, this sense that you're part of something bigger. Wikis show people that they belong and that they are important to make a blank page a space of learning and collaboration. Just like you mentioned, yes, it is a matter of habit formation, which is not changed overnight. Learners will only embrace it if they see value being added to their learning journey.

I am excitied to see how I can make the best of wiki in our final project.
Kisses,
kelly

You'll see its potential, Kelly!

Dear friends, I'm proud of such a great job! I 've been late, but somehow I decided to embark on this wiki journey! Let's see if I can manage my "gringos" work, they are a bit reluctant, but I will try anyway...
bjks,
Chris M.

Browsing through some of the websites suggested here led me to realize the real power of wikis in education as a potential tool to enhance social learning and teaching environments – facilitating the dissemination of information, the exchange of ideas and group interaction.
Typified by non-linear networked texts with multiple authors, wikis can be used by students to create a set of documents which reflect the shared knowledge of a learning group – a great opportunity for students’ collaboration, co-production of texts and interaction. “The most powerful experiences are those in which the interaction occurs throughout the group instead of between one participant and the facilitator” (Pallof and Pratt, 1999:19).
For teachers, wikis enable them to work together, writing lesson plans, developing assignments, etc. They also enable teachers to follow what students are doing as they are doing it, to follow their interaction and their contribution of content in the wiki – and if there’s someone absent from contribution, the teacher can interfere before the end of the course, when they turn in the ready assignments, and when it might be too late for the teacher to interfere. The history of a week page enables the teacher to see the number of contributions each student added (and the amount of content they added in each contribution), which results in deeper and more accurate assessment.
Finally, wikis can also have an administrative use in education, such as enabling staff-to-student interactions.

To sum up wikis in general we can say that they are a pretty exciting technology for classroom teachers, see below some itens:

•Students, teachers, and even parents could collaborate to gather, edit, and present information on a wiki.
•A wiki could be used to build a classroom dictionary of terms in a subject area. For example, students could build a list of historical or literary definitions for a course.
•Students could also use a wiki as a class notes page that serves as a study guide for tests. Each student could contribute a set of notes and add comments to existing notes.
•Another idea is to break kids up into small groups for a project or activity and have them paste their work on a wiki. One could then invite other student groups to comment.
•Wikis could also be used to enhance professional collaboration. For example, teachers in a department or district could build a curriculum unit together or simply post their lessons and assignments.
•A teacher could post words for students to expand into definitions.
•Students could research new topics and contribute their findings
•A wiki could be used as a portfolio showing development of a project
•Teachers could develop and edit curriculae

That´s why, we may say that more than social interaction, wikis are now, a new way to integrate people with the same needs and wishes, helping lots of internet users to be more linked to the information and communication, no lack of acquaintance of the events anymore as long as everybody has the access to the wiki page according to the video that joined all the folks who wanted to go camping and sharing what someone dos and dont´s, ending in the complete harmony with the collected stuffs got, so everyone was ready to go...

Has anybody got a bad experience with wikis? I mean, does anybody have any disadvantage of using this tool? Well, I´m afraid not... (:

Wiki is a fascinating world of possibilities that leads us to knowledge, opportunities and sharing!!! I´ve been browsing through these wonderful endless source of information and could see how effective this tool is... besides making the teachers´ works easier, it also provides students to an organized simple way of accessing learning and sharing.

Dear Márcia, Moacyr and Kamyla, I'm really glad you've found wikis useful for collaboration, knowledge management and construction.

Moacyr, you've asked about a bad experience. The one we've had so far was a teacher that, by accident, deleted a page on our school wiki! This is the only thing that can't be undone on a wiki, so we learned to keep all the teachers as writers, but not editors. They can created, edit, but not delete it!

Carla,

Thanks for the reply, wikis are very good and I couldn´t realise any possible mistake unless the one you´ve mentioned before, I didn´t foresee any complications so long as we use wikis so far, just the fact that we have a lot to explore in this vast resource.

Wowwwwwwwww!!! The wiki works as part of the teaching learning process, and added for this big topic are: collaboration, autonomous and critical thinking, reflection, sharing, exchanging ideas and information, with a language purpose and it is more than a simple landscape of an activity/project, there is a social function, which is extremely important to the students, to be conscious of their purposes as a person, who act in the world and to know they are responsible for the actions with other people, the environment and themselves.
Therefore, this great tool can contemplate every step to be a better person and be able to understand and act in the world!

A wiki is a web site where anyone can become a participant. Students can edit the site content, create and help develop a wiki. Wikis are used by teachers to conduct classes and make students practice their writing skills. Teachers can stimulate students to contribute with the content of the wiki. Students can post comments in a wiki. A wiki allows students and teachers to change what they have written previously or what others have written. Students can communicate, express themselves, collaborate with learning and share information online. Wiki is a powerful tool that can be used in education.

Educators can use wikis to teach content and establish interaction between the students. Wikis can be used to integrate people with the same needs and interests and they can be used as a tool in learning and teaching. It is a great way of exchanging ideas, knowledge and information !!!

What makes wikis to be so powerful as a web tool is the capacity of making room for sharing information and knowledge, besides providing learners with a virtual space for developing collaborative projects. It means different internet users or students may contribute to the same assignment or project at the same time by posting comments, videos,etc. Actually, I am not able to talk more consistently about those amazing tech resources as I have just started learning about them.