How a wiki fits in education

Education is a process full of different kinds of interactions that are usually based on much information, from different sources. A wiki will do an excellent job to ease these interactions.

Daily tasks

Some of the daily tasks Educational Institutions need to perform:

Create Documentation
Keep track of documentation changes
Send documentation to different e-mail addresses
Let people know about future activities
Keep track of people attendance
Keep track of books and library materials in general

Using a wiki to create content

A wiki can be used to create content, as a replacements for word processors. Instead of each person fighting with different applications on different platforms, importing, exporting, loosing data, keeping backups, handling different versions, just work on the wiki.

The content is available from anywhere on the web
No special non-free software is required
Automatic version control, view changes and compare versions
Create final ouput right from the wiki (still limited now)

How is Moin better for this task, then?

Institutions have to deal with large amount of communications sent very regularly (so parents keep posted).

Easy! Once content is created/edited Moin can inmediately send mail notifications to subscribers, so that people can either just read the e-mail containing info about all changes, or visit the web page to read it on-line.

Some times, documents use very similar headings/headlines, we use OpenOffice.org to generate our templates

Easy! Moin lets you do that in a very similar way. In fact, you just have to create a MeetingSummaryTemplate (i.e.) only once. Then, next time you need to create a summary like this you use that template and parents get notified by e-mail or they can always read it on-line. When reading on-line, users can even see the differences (with colors and all!) in content between any 2 meetings already held.

But we would need to keep a hard copy backup, too

Easy! Just press the 'print' option from the toolbar placed somewhere on Moin pages.

We have designed a very good way to organize our documents in folders. We even have shared folders so we can always get the information some teacher has created.

Very good! Moin can do that even easier and more efficently.

Examples of Moin in education

I started use Moin to teach hypermedia language and criteria, electronic publishing (like content-presentation separation), and participative processes in my classes (hypermedia communication and interaction). Next year, I'll will try to add personal logbooks for the alumni and creation as a community process, and my own documents as the professor (notes, references, bibliography, etc.). -- EduardoMercovich, 02/12/04.

Discussion

I removed signatures and made the first section more general and less moinish. I think it will make it easier for other to participate. -- NirSoffer 2004-12-03 12:20:57