Wikis
A wiki is a type of website in which content is created and edited by a community of users, thus creating a shared resource (where "wiki wiki" in Hawaiian means "quick" or fast.)
Here are two great introductions to wikis -- both contained IN wikis: Wiki World and Wikis
Wikis should be the first place you start to look for info -- not the last.
Wikipedia
The most famous wiki, a multi-language free encyclopedia, developed collectively, and now boasting over 1 million entries (where print encyclopedias rarely exceed 65,000 articles)
Over the past six months Wikipedia has been both positively presented in the media (read the Dec. 2005 Special Report in Nature -- "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head: Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries") and negatively (the case of John Sieganthaler). The community vs. controlled encyclopedia controversy continues -- see this March 24th BBC article on Britannica hitting back, claiming the Nature research was fatally flawed.
Here are words of wisdom from Wikipedia and Britannica: The Kid’s All Right (And So’s the Old Man)
by Paula Berinstein (in Searcher Vol. 14 No. 3 — March 2006):
"Let’s act like careful, reasonable people. Wikipedia is a great starting point. It’s a lesson in research methodology, a fun way to share expertise, and a groundbreaking new way of working. Its consensus model represents a shift in management styles and away from hierarchical organization. You might say that Wikipedia is Zen-like. Its ever-changing nature means that when you read it, you are completely in the moment. And its collective brain is like a conscious universe in which we are all one. Britannica is a different animal. Flawed, yes. Behind the times with regard to non-Western and minority leadership, sure. Indispensable? You betcha."
-- \"heavy metal umlaut: the movie\"
This is a terrific example of the evolution of the editing process on a wiki page from April 2003 to January 2005.
Other projects sponsored by Wikipedia, e.g., WikiProject_Librarians, where librarians are actively applying their experience and entering the discussion about Wikipedia's structure and technology; WikiBooks, where free textbooks and manuals are available in an open-content textbooks collection; WikiNews, a free news source you can write; WikiQuotes, a free online compendium of quotations from notable people and creative works; Wictionary, a collaborative project to produce a free, multilingual dictionary with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations.
Examples
Wikis as a form of online SUBJECT GUIDES
-- The Biz Wiki, created by Chad Boeninger at Ohio University for business students
-- SJCPL Subject Guides at the St. Joseph County Public Library, Indiana
Wikis of WORKSHOP/PRESENTATION HANDOUTS
[http://davidwarlick.com/wiki-warlick/index.php?title=Main_Page|David Warlick's experimental wiki
, who blogs at 2 Cents Worth. See also his website Landmarks for Schools
Weblogg-ed Presentation Links wiki of Will Richardson, who blogs at Weblogg-ed: the read/write classroom. Note that Richardson recently published a book called \"Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms\".)
Wikis of LIBRARIANS' SHARED KNOWLEDGE
-- Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, created in July 2005 by Meredith Farkas.
"This wiki was created to be a one-stop-shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians."
-- LISWiki Library-specific wiki created in June 2005.
-- Teacher-librarian Wiki-- started by Joyce Valenza.
"Let's use this space to SHARE our best wisdom and our best instruction--the new understandings, lessons, units, handouts, rubrics, presentations, images, and teaching tips that have been either rotting in our file cabinets or posted and lonely on our individual sites."
-- SLIC-- School Librarians in China (project initiated by Beth Gourley)
Wikis about SOCIAL SOFTWARE
-- Introduction to Social Software by the Center for Educational Technology
-- Social Software and Computing Wiki
Wikis of COURSE/STUDY MATERIALS
-- Alice Yucht says she's created a Intro to School Librarianship wiki to hold the course materials for her Coordination of School Library Media Programs and Services online course.
Wikis created by STUDENTS
-- Researchstory-- IST gr.11 students (project initiated by by Beth Gourley)
-- Poetryacts-- IST gr.9 students (project initiated by Beth Gourley)
--Teen Poetry Wiki -- set up by the Internet Public Library as a community-friendly place for teens "to post their poems, receive peer responses, try their hand at individual and group exercises, ... and learn about some of the greatest poets from Antiquity until the 20th century".
-- Welcome to WikiVille-- 21st Century students building a world-story of life in their home towns.
OTHER wikis
-- 2006 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, created as a guide to the conference
--The Anti-Lessig Reader -- Lawrence Lessig, the author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace", "Free Culture", etc., has set up a wiki in order to get others to contribute criticisms of his work.
Wiki Tools
How to get started....
-- PBWiki -- this is the (free) wiki tool used to build THIS wiki
-- MediaWiki -- the (free) wiki software used to build Wikipedia
-- TWiki -- is a flexible, powerful, secure, yet simple and effective web-based collaboration platform.
-- WikiMatrix/Wiki Feature Comparison
-- Free hosted wikis: comparison of wiki farms
Read More and Explore...
JOURNAL ARTICLE: Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not by Brian Lamb, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004): 36–48.
BLOG: Using Wiki in Education
BLOG POSTING: A collection of links to various to Classroom Blogs/Wikis/Web 2.0 Projects -- from Jacquie Henry
WIKI ARTICLE: WikiAndCompositionTheory, published in the Texas A&M University wiki.
We make three assertions to begin:
Writing is messy.
Writing is a socially collaborative act.
Wiki technology is a tool that enables writers to get into the mess and the social nature of writing.
Action Ideas, or, why not try....?
Here's a new one: WikiBios where you can create or edit biographies of anyone.... (the advertising line is: "you don't have to be famous....")
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.