Wednesday night at EdTechTalk the discussion focused on a different type of application for wiki technology. Mark Hemphill from the University of Prince Edward Island examined the possibility of wiki books from a cultural angle and, as an old storyteller, my mind raced with the possibilities.Â
Like wikis, folktales, folk music, oral histories, in fact the oral tradition, are all embedded in their own kind of open source environments. Developers build on the work of those who come before.  These folk products are collective and dynamic, often in the public domain, and generally enriched and happily modified by contributors who follow.
Perhaps wikis are just the right space for such collections as:
- a community’s oral histories contributed by its seniors, its veterans, others . .
- a region’s archive of stories in authentic dialect
- variants of folktales from different cultures
- variants of folksongs as they’ve been adapted through time and the different groups who have used them
- understandings of the jargon of a discipline or classroom or organization
Any other folkwiki ideas?
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