WWW: Wonderful World of Wikis

Being new to the use of wikis, I was intrigued by the initial use. After the readings and viewing of the example wikis I am even more amazed at the various ways that they can be used in education. The idea of using wikis as student portfolios and science fair projects were two that really stood out to me.
The media center would be an excellent way introduce wikis to the staff and share ideas for the media center. I like the idea of teachers and media specialist creating pathfinders and having them posted on the wiki. I believe that teachers and media specialist have the opportunity for more collaboration by posting on the wiki since each person can add, edit, or modify contents.
Wikis are also a great way to communicate with other educators in the same field. The combination of pathfinders and wikis makes for an excellent research guide...especially if there are several contributorsOur county's media specialists have just started a Wiki within the last two weeks and I am looking forward to using this to aid in my instructional needs as well as communicating with other media specialists. I was excited to see that one of the wikis that I looked had links to how to find books and anther wiki highlighted things that are happening int he library. I would like to use the wiki to show teachers and students that the media center is not just a place to get books, but that it can be an exciting place to be.
To me, the most effective way that I see wikis being used today, is for collaboration with classroom teachers and with those in the same field as myself. The main drawback that I see to wikis is the fact the others have the ability to change and sometimes add things that may not be appropriate or suitable. Of course this can be avoided if only group members have the authoriztion to modify the content of the wiki. This can also be avoided by checking wiki regularly to see if anything negative has been posted.
I am genuinally excited about learning more about wikis and eventually linking it to our school's website.