#17: Tee, hee, hee -- what wiki variety

Listen to our podcast [2:00]:

Wikipedia gets most of the media attention these days*, but in our explorations, we have found lots of other kinds of wikis, including the following:

• Wikibooks (a collection of open-content textbooks)


• WikiTexts (a different collection of open-content textbooks)


• The Flu Wiki and The Lostpedia (a genre of Fan wikis


• Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia

GCC launched a wiki pilot last year. You can read it without an account. If you'd like to play around by editing or adding new material, let me know and I'll create an account for you. GCC's wiki uses a different piece of software, Confluence. If you explore enough different wiki sites, eventually you'll be able to recognize the different kinds of wiki software.

Discovery Activity

1. Explore the 23 Things wiki. This wiki has an editing password to reduce the amount of spam we have to deal with. It is learning2.0


2. Feel free to edit any page. That's the whole point of a wiki! You can add information, re-organize material that's there, change anything (especially if there's an error).


3. [Optional] Create a new wiki page in the 23 Things wiki.


4. Write a blog post about anything related to wikis. Share ways in which you think you could use a wiki for personal and professional activities.
   

Most wikis have some kind of notification mechanism that can alert you by email when a page has been changed. Scroll down to the bottom of the home page and click on notifications to set up an email alert. The RSS option is located on the bottom right of the page. (You know how to use that, right?)

Tags are important parts of wikis too. Use the [tiny, tiny] + sign on the bottom left of each page to add tags to each wiki page. You can add tags even when the author didn't.

* If you are interested in the controversy surrounding Wikipedia, we are building a collection of resources about Wikipedia itself in the GCC wiki. You can also read the Britannica Blog's Web 2.0 forum, although remember that they an interest in encylcopedias.

#16: Making collaboration easy with a wiki

Listen to this podcast [3:13]:

Two important features of Web 2.0 merge in this week’s thing: the read/write web and social tools. Blogs and Flickr make it possible for anyone to contribute to the web easily, and tools like tagging and social bookmarking help us leverage the wisdom of crowds, or at least winnow what we find. Now – hold on to your boots, folks – we’re going to examine a Web 2.0 application that combines all of this: the wiki. Don't be fooled by the strange, slightly silly-sounding name; this is a serious application that allows anyone to write, edit, or remove content on the web. It's quick and easy.

There are both free and buyable wikis, but all of them share four important capabilities:

• Anyone can add, edit or delete content. Sometimes you may need an account or a password in order to reduce the amount of spam.


• Tracking tools (often combined with RSS) help you keep up with changes.


• Reversion capabilities allow anyone read or return to previous versions of a page.


• Users can compose pages using simple editing tools. No HTML needed!
  

Discovery Resources
Because of their growing popularity, you can find lots of resources on the web about wikis. We've collected a few, but you can find more using any search engine.

1. Here's a video from Common Craft:

Click To Play

2. From EduCause, "7 things you should know about Wikis," a simple 2-page handout in portable document format.

3. Read Jay Rosen's statement/manifesto published a year ago, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience."

Discovery Activities

We created a wiki for 23 Things several weeks ago; some of you may have found it linked on the left side of our 23 Things blog. (This wiki uses pbwiki, a free site on the web.)

1. Take the PBWiki Tour to learn how PBWiki works.


2. Explore this PBWiki Video Gallery of PBWiki features


3. Write a blog post about what you've learned about the use of wikis.