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Ten reasons why your next pathfinder should be a wiki
June 20, 2007
Pathfinders lead researchers through information jungles. They make sense of the huge variety of information buckets.
They can suggest keywords and tags and call numbers. They can suggest books and journals to browse. They link researchers to critical readings and websites and blogs and wikis and portals and databases. They suggest strategies for searching and for documentation.
In the voice of the librarian, they make sure that student researchers know about the very best tools in their information toolkits. Pathfinders allow us to intervene in ways that offer learners they independence they crave.
In the 70s we created them in print. I suspect some of us still do.
In the 90s we began publishing pathfinders as webpages.
Now, I am convinced that wikis are the way to go and I plan to spend some of the summer converting my Web pathfinders to wiki pathfinders.
And here are ten very compelling reasons why you should too:
1. You too can get your colleagues to fall on the floor laughing by overusing words like
wiki in pretty much every conversation you initiate.
2. You can decorate wiki pathfinders by uploading beautiful, copyright-friendly images
3. Wiki pathfinders allow you to link with ease. Link to your style sheet, your other wikis, to specific websites, to media in all its glory and all its formats, to e-books, audiobooks, wikibooks, subscription databases, etc. (If not for my pathfinders, my e-books and my databases would go unused!)
4. Wiki pathfinders allow you to easily upload documents. Your pathfinders can now host your presentations, your handouts, your rubrics, your organizers, as well as models of student work.
5. You can easily create a wiki index to keep track of your growing collection of wiki pathfinders.
6. Wiki pathfinders are splendidly organic. You can edit them anywhere, on the fly, whenever you discover a new resource. FTP is so 1.0!
7. Wikis require no knowledge of HTML code. My favorite wiki creation tool is
Wikispaces for teachers. The folks are Wikispaces give teachers free, ad-free wiki sites. Just remember to click on the button that identifies you as a K12 educator to remove the pesky ads.
8. Wikis are collaborative documents. They make a party of the pathfinder experience. (Do I need a life?) Now, you no longer have to do your pathfinder thing alone. Wikis allow you to invite individual collaborators (teachers or students or mentors or experts) or, if you are brave, to allow the world to collaborate. You can easily track edits and changes. (It’s all very 2.0.)
9. Wikis will allow us to build together if we choose to. I can imagine beginning many a wiki pathfinder this summer. I can imagine all of you millions of readers, who share our school’s curriculum interests and needs, collectively working to build
uberpathfinders. (Imagine all the people, building pathfinders together. You may say I'm a dreamer. . . )
10. And, speaking of 2.0, wiki pathfinders are the ultimate illustration of exploiting new tools for authentic and highly useful purposes. Our wiki pathfinders might just be another opportunity to showcase the work of the critical efforts of teacher-librarian in the 2.0 educational landscape!
Write if you come up with any more reasons. I will share my work as soon as I am more proud of it--that means post-NECC.
Please also share any models in the comments.
Posted by Joyce Valenza on June 20, 2007 | Comments (6)
