Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, was in Australia recently doing a number of workshops around the country. The events were organised by education.au, an organisation involved in the promotion of ICT in education."What's all the fuss about?" you might ask. Well, Wikipedia is fascinating for those of us involved in education and research in information studies. In a very powerful way, Wikipedia demonstrates the potential of online spaces for a collaborative and consensus-based approach to the creation and management of knowledge. The technology platform, the wiki, that is the foundation for a large-scale (global) project such as Wikipedia has grown from the open-source software movement. Various flavours of wiki software are freely available for download and implementation.
Here in the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University we're thinking about how the potential of the wiki environment can be harnessed to faciliate group learning within Higher Education and as a tool for knowledge management.
