I just took a quick tour of Wikia and reading a couple of articles (SearchEngineWatch & NYTimes) and I’m both intrigued and skeptical. But this and other things that are happening keep reminding me that there are some pretty concrete and fairly well articulated models out there for engaged learning — where students and teachers might work their learning.
In brief, Jimbo Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, is trying to invent a collaborative search engine, where users improve the quality of the tool by interacting with the service. I agree with the articles that this sort of system would be susceptible to people trying to game it for their own ends. But what if we had a curriculum that was open and inviting to being gamed by the learners — in a good way?
I want to do that!
A Bit Later
I’ve spent a little more time wondering around in Wikia and there appear to be some functions of social network here. You can link to friends, set up a profile, include a photo gallery. What intrigues me about this is,
What if Wikia Search might utilize what it know about you to improve searches that you conduct?
What if your school library might make itself more useful to you, based on what it knows about you?
One thought on “School Wikia”