Volume 56, Number 2 TechTrends • March/April 2012 31 Wiki: Using the Web Connections to Connect Students By Vicki Donne Robert Morris University Abstract Te present study reports on action research conducted using a resource wiki. Participants included 48 certifed teachers and pre-service teachers enrolled in a face-to-face graduate course supplemented with online activities. Data collected include student refections that indi- cate the use of a wiki at the university level is a feasible means of online collaboration, facilitates constructing new knowledge, and provides a me- dium of modeling technology integration into the classroom. Keywords: wiki, teacher preparation, online collaboration he last decade has seen a 50% increase in the number of masters degrees in education awarded in the United States, with 175,800 awarded in 2008-2009 alone (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2011). Tese educators must meet the standards of competencies set by states and numerous educational organizations that refect quality aspects of teachers, and many of these involve knowledge and use of technol- ogy (Council for Exceptional Children, 2010; International Society for Technology in Educa- tion, 2011). However, results of a national sur- vey indicated that teacher preparation programs did not teach pre-service teachers the necessary technology skills and that university faculty failed to model integrating technology into their classroom (Moursund & Bielefeldt, 1999). Over the past decade, many federal, state, and local initiatives have emphasized the integration of 21st century skills in K-12 and much progress has been made (Partnership for 21 st Century, 2002). In addition, university teacher prepara- tion programs are aligning their programs and standards to include information and com- puter technology literacy (Greenhill, 2010; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010; Teacher Education Accredita- tion Council, 2010). Integration of education content and in- formation literacy can be achieved through the use of Web 2.0 technology. Recent research in- dicates 65% of university faculty reported that online collaboration techniques would be more widely used in the future (Kim & Bonk, 2006). Collaboration “requires individuals to work to- gether towards the achievement of outcomes such that the end result is greater than the sum of its individual parts” (Towndrow, 2007, p. 102). Online technology tools such as Google Docs, wikis, discussion threads, and blogs can facilitate such collaboration. Te wiki, origi- nally attributed to Ward Cunningham, is a Web page that can be built, viewed, and modi- fed by anyone or a community of users (EDU- CAUSE, 2005). Te wiki itself develops as a result of users sharing experiences, knowledge and resources, and expanding on information posted by peers. “Wikis don’t impose structure up front. Instead it lets the structure of the col- laboration emerge as a by-product of actually doing work” (Dye, 2007, p. 34). Wikis have been used in education since 2004 and they can address a range of objec- tives. Engstrom and Jewett (2004) conducted a study on the use of wikis to facilitate geography inquiry-based learning in four middle schools. A second study reported on a wiki developed by 17 language teachers in one high school T