Six Degrees of Information: The Potential of Wikis

For a while the difference between blogs and wikis has been apparent to me, but the purpose behind each on in education has taken some time for me to work out.  I think the key is really seeing great examples of each medium and going from there.

Wikis, for me, are pretty exciting because they are truly a blank slate or playground for developing content and building on that content.  When I think about Wikipedia and other wikis, it reminds me of the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”  If you’re not familiar with the game, the challenge is to think of an actor and try to link him/her to Kevin Bacon through their roles in movies and their relationships with other actors.  The idea is that any actor can be eventually linked to Kevin Bacon even though the two may not have ever been in a movie together.  In the end it paints a picture of interconnectedness.

As it applies to Wikipedia and wikis, the degrees are all there for you (albiet more than six degrees).  In school we tend to think of things in isolation.  For example, math and science are dealt with in isolation with some overlap, but in looking up an entry about gravity I can click on mass then kilograms, then SI Base Unit, then second, and then see a table of conversions from minutes to seconds.  The degrees of separation from math to science are there, but rather than separation it comes across as interconnectedness between two content areas we typically view as individual.

The potential of any wiki is that–all though it needn’t–it could eventually meet the goal of Wikipedia…. to catalog–and interconnect?–the whole of human knowledge.  If there’s any power in a wiki, it’s the power of growth and making otherwise opaque relationships apparent.