Wikiweb

Friends of The Web, LLC

Free

Available on iOS

This tool shows the web link connections between Wikipedia articles.  Enables the user to gain an understanding of information is interconnected.  The user can see visual array of how pages and how each subject are interconnected to the original search, as well as the original Wikipedia page for the original searched topic.  Users can click on connections to reveal next layer of interconnections to sub-topics, see figure 1.

Figure 1: Example Wikiweb search results on iPad

Wikiweb is very similar to another concept mapping tool C-links developed by University of Braford, [1-2].  C-links is another concept linkage search tool of Wikipedia accessible from a web browser.   This is tool similar to Wikiweb in that shows interconnections in Wikipedia, but user specifies two subjects to be searched for the interconnections, but output only Wikipedia definitions not the original wiki page.   Therefore the user has to have some initial peripheral knowledge to be aware that two subjects could be interconnected.

The benefits of Wikiweb for students it provides wider picture of a subject area, concept mapping; an insight to what, where and which subtopics they need to read around to build up a broad and deeper understanding of a subject access to original Wiki page and references.  As academics per say Wikipedia is not something we tend to recommend as a primary secondary research source to be cited, however it is practical starting point.   I tend to recommend to students that they should read the original references cited in the wiki pages to layer and deepen their knowledge and understandings; these are the sources they should be citing as knowledge evidence to support to their communications.

Reference

[1] Cowling, P., Remde, S., Hartley, P., Stewart, W., Stock-Brooks, J., & Woolley, T. (2010). C-Link: Concept Linkage in Knowledge Repositories, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Spring symposium, Stanford University, Stanford, California, March 22-24, 2010, last accessed 3^rd June 2013 at http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/SSS/SSS10/paper/download/1046/1442

[2] Hartley, P. (2013) Effective Learning Resources, in Producing engaging and effective and effective learning materials, Webinar 5 OcTEL, ALT, 6^th May 2013