Going Wiki One Web Site at a Time

This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!

Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 2/3/2006

Quentin D'Souza wants the world—at least his school board—to go wiki.

The Toronto-based educator, who helps other teachers "de-geekify" and integrate technology into the classrooms, found it easier to make changes to an entry about his local school board on Wikipedia—than to get an error corrected on his school board's official Web site.

"I appreciate having Wikipedia around because the breadth of information is incredible," says D'Souza. "The number of people who can manage it is impressive. I myself could come along and correct the information but I can't do that on the board site because of the bureaucracy involved. I guess there's something to that, to protect it, but what happens when it's wrong?"

So some schools are playing with the idea of giving their staff, teachers, and even students the ability to edit, add, and delete information from an official district or school Web site. The Bering Strait School District in Alaska launched a working wiki site late last year to give teachers spread out across the 70,000 square-mile district a way to communicate about curriculum. "We think there will come a time when the official site will be all wiki, but only when we can make it more secure," says Rick Holt, the district's quality schools facilitator.

The error D'Souza located on the Toronto Catholic District School Board's official Web site involved the number of high schools that also teach middle school students. Wikipedia said three, while the board's Web site erroneously proclaimed it was two. A quick e-mail to the board's Webmaster got the site changed, but D'Souza still feels that the masses should have more ability to make changes. "If it can be moderated in some way," he says. "Like in Wikipedia."