Wikis - the tyranny of the blank page

One thing oft repeated in the LCLC is that the instructor needs to initiate the structure, format, and content of a wiki. It is important for us to get the ball rolling. Without directly teaching students how to use the technology, modeling the kind of content we hope to see, helping them to better understand and exploit the advantages of the medium, or helping them to structure the wiki in an intuitive way - we can expect a lot of blank pages or artificial display content. These blank pages wouldn't be so different from the kinds of blank stares we would get from students if our only instruction to them in listening/speaking were "OK, talk". The media we choose should be ideally suited to the activity itself, and this marriage of activity and medium is one that needs to be evident to the students. The structure we are able to provide makes their production possible. Jazz allows for improvisation around the chords of a pre-existent melody. Most tunes start and end with this melody itself. For real collaboration in which the sum is greater than the parts, we need to hand out the sheet music and run through the changes. The rest should be up to them. For examples of formats that are well suited for wikis in language classrooms, please see our wiki page at http://wikilanguagelogic.wikispaces.com/