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Originally uploaded by tsheko

I’ve planted my wiki seeds and I’m waiting for them to grow. I know it’s winter so I’ll have to be patient. Once the exams and report writing are over, I’m hoping to see the miraculous organism taking shape and increasing in size. My art wiki is in its formative stage. I’ve started the growing process by adding pages within topics and raising questions for discussion, I’ve emailed art teachers within and without my school, added a couple of artists and brilliantly creative people for a bit of spice, and it’s just a matter of time before the living organism I call my wiki starts to mutate. My wiki will be a classroom without a room, a global community of critical readers, bravely discerning correctness and relevance of information, sculpting information into knowledge. It’s just a matter of time…

In his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson imagines the possibilities of the wiki in the classroom – students could create book report wikis, what-I-did-this-summer wikis, brainstorming wikis, poetry wikis, notes-from-class wikis, year six wikis, history-of-the-school or community wikis, formula wikis, wikis for individual countries they might be studying, political party wikis, exercise wikis… and so on. As Richardson says, wikis are ideal for ‘whatever topic might lend itself to the collaborative collection of content relating to its study’.