Tasks in Class : My 7th Discussion Forum

1. What is wiki? Why is wiki good for collaborative writing?
 
 Wiki is an online tool that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. Wiki supports hyperlinks and crosslinks between internal pages. Also, Wiki is a kind of group communication. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site, it encourages democratic use of the web page and promotes content composition by nontechnical users. Then how wiki can facilitate collaborative writing? As I mentioned contents in wiki made by various users, not by one writer. If few writers engage in the writing, wiki lose its distinctiveness. In addition, every users writing can be valued equally in wiki. In traditional writing activities, some students would probably worry about their lack of writing skills or quality of contents. But in wiki world, nobody worry about those things because their weaknesses can be compensated by other more superior writers. This is how wiki promotes collaborative writing.

2. Explain on your own words how the author used wiki for his class.

 The author planned to use wiki as a classroom writing activity. The planned wiki was consisted of 6 categories, and divided 6 groups take one topic of each categories. The 6 categories were all about students’ school life, and they were “special rooms and facilities”, “the school as a big family”, “interest clubs/extra-curricular activities”, “lunchtime and recess”, “the secondary one curriculum”, “adapting to secondary school life”. He applied process writing approach in this activity. Firstly, 10 days were given for making first drafts. They could log in the wiki system whenever they want, wherever they are. During the process, they were encouraged to read other groups’ uncompleted works. Then for 5 days, a lesson for revising their first drafts was given, and in the lesson they learn some strategies to organize ideas into coherent paragraphs, and to write topic sentence. Next, for 4 days, a lesson for proofreading was given. This lesson was made for giving them opportunity to correct grammatical and lexical errors of their works. The last stage is publishing. Their completed wiki announced to all teachers, students, and parents.