Wetpaint is a wiki site that enables people to create a wiki site that can be edited by anyone, or by only certain people. Those who are in education know of the most popular wiki site, Wikipedia. Well imagine if you could create a wiki site that only can be viewed and edited by the staff at a school. This could be used as a great tool for administrators to communicate to teachers or vice versa, or empowering staff at a school to collaborate on how to solve problems or improve the quality of education.

One of the drawbacks is that people in the community will have to visit the wiki site in order to see messages or information posted by others in the community. That makes is less effective in communicating urgent messages than email. Also, having a school wiki requires participation by the community. The wiki is only as valuable as the amount of participation by the community. If teachers don’t take time to respond to discussions or post ideas, it will not be very helpful.

There are however, compelling advantages that could help a school improve internal communication. For example, instead of calling everyone together for a meeting to discuss the absentee problem, the Principal could instruct everyone to visit the school’s wiki and post ideas on how teachers can improve attendance. There are also applications for communicating to students in a classroom, for instance a teacher setting up a Chemistry 101 wiki. Students can post questions on the wiki that the teacher or other students could answer. Wiki’s are a valuable tool that can be used in many different ways, and Wetpaint is free, so it is definitely worth checking out.