Ohhhh, so THAT'S what a Wiki is!

Okay, time to be honest.  I had no clue what a wiki REALLY was up until about 3 weeks ago.  I know.  That sounds ridiculous, but it's true.  I've heard of Wikipedia, obviously.  And I probably use it weekly.   When people first started using Wikipedia, I remember them saying it was a source you can't technically trust since anyone is free to put whatever information they want on there, but I didn't really listen to that.  Not that I ever cited anything for a paper or project from Wikipedia, but I will admit that I get plenty of information from there and for the most part, I go by whatever it says.  Probably not such a great idea, but I know I'm not the ONLY one.  So when we started learning about Wiki's a few weeks ago, of course, that was the only knowledge I had of what a wiki is, and even then I still didn't know that much about it.  Now I get it! It's not as complicated as it sounds.  Before this semester started, someone asked me what I would be learning about in my classes and I told them "wikis, blogs, and podcasts" and they asked me what that meant.  The only part of that question I could answer was about blogs because those,  I am actually familiar with.  They had me stumped at wikis and podcasts.  The other day someone asked me the same question and I actually gave them a relatively knowledgeable (at least, I think) answer about a wiki.  I explained to them how a wiki works and how you go about adding/editing information to wikis and told them about the affordances of collaborating with others when using wikis.  I'm not going to lie, I felt pretty smart!  That person even admitted to me they didn't really understand how Wikipedia worked and I was able to clear that right up for them!  I think my next step is figuring out how to use a wiki in my classroom.  With a lot of technology, it takes me some time to figure out how to incorporate it with the little guys since they are so limited with their capabilities.  Sometimes it ends up being more work for me but I think this is doable.  I just need to figure out what the affordances are of using a wiki in my classroom and find the best way to use it to enhance their learning so that it actually makes a difference.  I think it can be done, it will just take a lot of thought and experimentation!