From WikiSym 2008

Tuesday, September 9, 15:30-17:00

Wikis are being used for educational purposes in several levels of education, ranging from high-school to university, with a lot of success and benefits, on gathering information, sharing knowledge, and promoting collaboration.

This session discussed the question

What about using wikis for younger users, such as, 6 to 10 years old children?

In concrete, we tried to answered the following questions:

• which kind of application do wikis will be good for?
• what would be the benefits of using wikis for children?
• which skills do wiki usage may develop?

We had a fruitful discussion and agree on some aspects for which wikis can be for in such ages (6-10 years):

• creative and collaborative writing
• web page creation
• provide a good context for collaboration,
• promote feedback, commenting, and self-criticism

It would be good if such wikis to provide features for:

• coloring
• simple drawing
• simple story-telling games
• support easy photo-uploading, maybe from cameras directly...
• simple mechanism for switching between editing/viewing modes... maybe no viewing mode and adopting a sandbox/snapshot mechanism instead

Participants

• AdemarAguiar
• Konstantin Kolomeetz
• Ana Ferreira
• José Carneiro
• Anne Goldenberg
• Nikolay Yaremko
• Gabriel David
• José Bonnet