One part of the podcast of Alan November’s “Using Technology for Building Learning Communities” presentation caught my attention because November highlighted an aspect of wiki educational practice that I hadn’t really consciously thought about before: the use of the history mechanism to extend the educational moment.

In describing a third-grade (!) Wikipedia project, November explained how for months after the students had gone on a field trip and documented a historical landmark, the teacher was still using the history to engage students in the project, asking them each time if the change was one that belonged in the article or not and editing as needed.

Of course this kind of evaluation is something that we expect will happen in wiki projects, but for some reason I’d never really thought about the potential utility of the length of engagement. Most writing projects, even as the result of collaboration and peer editing, are pretty much done when the document has been produced. In my own use of wikis I’ve focused student efforts after the main production on preservation (or creation of new articles) rather than growth and continued use of what they have already made. It’s obvious, I guess, that with living documents, the teachable moments extend beyond the usual frame… and sometimes beyond the bounds of the particular class or course itself. But I hadn’t really thought about it before.