What's a Wiki??!

In the world of technology Wiki is a great way to foster teamwork and provide a framework for collaborative problem solving. In Ciesielka’s (2008) article, the author describes using Wiki to promote community health planning in her community class. Students assembled data and synthesized it to come up with innovative community interventions. The author claims that students were more apt to come up with projects beyond the typical undergraduate health fair solution.

This link will take you to Ciesielka’s Wiki: http://614comm.pbwiki.com/

Wiki is a new concept for me and sparks some ideas that I can implement quickly. One that comes to mind is a general on-line presence for school nurses to post innovative practice.
In the large inner city district where I work, nurses rarely have time or opportunity to network; many of us have great ideas about organizing our work as well as innovative community health interventions. Wiki would be a great framework to use for this work! I think we would all enjoy a way to interact between our yearly meetings.

As an educator I can envision using this format to engage students and teach them the collaborative process. Ciesielka (2008) described a community assessment project, but any group work could be accomplished with Wiki as the tasks can be separated out, assigned to group members and assimilated on-line with one web site. It seems that this type of group work would appeal to students who have difficulty coordinating calendars to meet as a group. I like the fact that Wiki sites can be seen by the public if desired, which I suspect might encourage students to hone their professional writing skills, knowing that a large audience could be reading their work.

What’s a Wiki? Like a blog, but for multiple users!

Ciesielka, D. (2008). Using a Wiki to meet graduate nursing education competencies in collaboration and community health. Education Innovations (47)10, 473-476.