Sunday, June 5, 2011

They are all right...Wikis are powerful tools


The recent convergence of advances in technology for educational purposes makes a wiki a powerful tool to learn and teach collaborately. Having a brief look at wikis, it can be said that these web pages contain a flood of possibilities for enhancing EFL context. For instance, introducing students to many abilities of academic research writing (Tardy, 2010) may lead learners to work together and produce high quality texts (Peachey, 2008).
On the other hand, other perspectives are also very valuable when considering the use of wikis as a special contribution to the field of EFL teaching. This is the case of one of Peachey’s (2008) article which showcases an array of issues to learn how to use wikis for teacher development. In this sense, this author states that wikis can be used as a sort of scrapbook to collect together possible ideas that educators have on teaching, such as links, articles, teaching tips, lesson plans, among others.
As beneficial as wikis seem, the use of this powerful tool may not be easy to achieve. The first pillar to be built relies on training potential wiki users on how to use these web pages for varied purposes. This is the first step to foster collaborative and cooperative learning.

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