Wikitravel example

Here's a draft of the Wikitravel project description for the article.

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The implementation of a project involving Wikitravel in recent Writing in Electronic Environments courses has proven productive in teaching of the course and with students’ engagement in public and collaborative writing. In addition, more than updating electronically traditional goals of writing pedagogy, the project also illustrates the revolutionary role of the networked computer in digital writing (Porter 2002). This project asks students to participate and create in a writing environment that parallels many other environments these “digital natives” (Prensky 2001) engage in regularly, from MySpace or Facebook to blogs to IM and video games. The following brief description outlines this digital writing project and the ways in which it follows Melinda Turnley’s (2005: 132) call for students to “intervene productively in relationships among technology, texts, and people.”

Wikis represent a set of webpages with an open-editing system; in other words, anyone can add to, delete, or change a wiki, making them highly collaborative. No knowledge of HTML is required, only a networked computer with a web browser. While classroom-based wikis present tremendous opportunities for collaborative writing, we aimed for a more public wiki, one which pushed students into the networked environment within which wikis flourish. In other words, we didn’t want the network to be our class.

The Wikitravel site started in June 2003 and represents a free, open, world-wide travel guide created and maintained by “Wikitravellers from around the globe.” With only 8,000 articles, Wikitravel presented a more manageable and productive entry into wikis for my students than the more popular Wikipedia. In addition, the New England area, especially Rhode Island, entries were particularly thin, holding no more than templates. After introducing wikis and Wikipedia, we asked students to explore Wikitravel, honing in on local New England articles. What became apparent was the empty and, at times, inaccurate information for the state of Rhode Island. Their goal was to begin building the Rhode Island aspect of Wikitravel.

The classes divided into groups based on local areas of interest, such as Block Island, Providence, or South County. While all aspects of Rhode Island required content, each group explored the existing or non-existing templates for their region, making decisions as to how and what they would contribute. As the groups quickly noticed, Wikitravel manages contributions by relying on standard templates, including categories for history, travel to and from, eating, and sleeping. Essentially, students were forced to make the choice between breadth and depth, depending on their approach. In other words, they could attempt to add content throughout the template or they could hone in on one or two areas and add substantial content to, for example, the dining section of Providence.

Additionally, Wikitravel has a thorough Manual of Style which outlines in detail the preferred form for entries, including the listing of phone numbers, hours of operation, and URLs. So, students were not only researching Wikitravel and its format, but they were also researching their regions. This research required a merging of first-hand experience with published reviews, articles, or information. Especially in the state of Rhode Island, local knowledge is valued over, and many times conflicts with, official knowledge or information. For example, South County is not an official county. It represents an imaginative geographic area in the southern portion of the state, including the official Washington County. But it also represents a rural and less-populated region complete with beaches, roadside garden stands, and an independent attitude. Students struggled with how to represent their regions accurately to potential travelers within a standard template--how do you make South County fit into Wikitravel’s model?

Unlike web pages, which are published and then frequently or occasionally updated by a webmaster, wikis are always in a state of flux, always being re-published. Students struggled with the collaborative and combative approach to writing Wikitravel required. As they researched, they published and they revised. Group members constantly mediated additions and revisions with fellow group members and the public at large. Ownership of writing was in flux as writers pushed towards a “final” developed node. Minor and major changes from classmates and anonymous Wikitravellers kept the audience and public nature of their writing at the fore as they pushed for a useful travel guide. With a goal of multiple outlet formats, Wikitravel requests that contributors avoid HTML. Instead, contributors are asked to rely on Wiki markup when editing a page. A straightforward table walks Wikitravellers through the process, illustrating “To get this output…use this markup” instructions. Granted, students only learn minimal HTML with this project. However, this contextualized writing for the web provides students with a situation in which they must adopt to their purpose to a prescribed and preferred format—a useful skill in any writing environment. Further, especially in the context of other projects throughout the semester that include web authoring software and Blogger markup language, the Wikitravel project exposes students to the code and structure underlying all writing on the Web. This process complicates what writing in electronic environments consists of and how writers mediate their purposes with preferences and technology.

As a public, technologically-mediated environment, Wikitravel asks students to consider the creation of knowledge in their digital-native culture that values and supports peer-to-peer, distributed networks. In terms of Wikitravel, editors and users must maintain the global picture while they work at the micro-level. Students, many of whom still operate under a Britannica-like knowledge structure, balk initially at the idea of others revising or editing their sentences or words. However, at the macro-scale, students see vast improvements and additions that are ultimately useful and robust. Sure, the Block Island node might have some grammar issues or even an inaccurate phone number for a hotel, but the overall node in the context of the Rhode Island site is a helpful, locally-created travel guide.