Learning 2 - Activity 7

Page history last edited by Robert 2 yrs ago

 

 

Activity 7: Wikis

 

1. So what’s in a wiki?

 

A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content (in fact, this Learning 2.0 site is a wiki). Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

 

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

 

  • Anyone (registered or unregistered, if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.

  • Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.

  • Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.

  • And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

 

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are pathfinder or subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

 

Discovery Resources:

 

Use these resources to learn more aboout wikis:

 

 

Discovery Exercise:

 

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some school wikis and blog about your finding. Here’s a few examples to get you started: 

 

 

Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within the classroom might work well with a wiki?

 

So what's in a wiki? Find out by doing some exploring on your own.

 

 

 

2. Playing around with PBWiki

 

"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the website that should be used for pure play. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole Learning 2.0 Favourites wiki* that’s for nothing but play!

 

For this “explore-and-play-with-wikis” exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the PBwiki Learning 2.0 wiki. The theme of this wiki is simply “Favourites” : Favourite books, favourite holiday spots, favourite restaurants, favourite anything …whatever you want ... all you need to do is play and add your thoughts. To mark your adventure on this site, you should add your blog to the Favourite Blogs page.

 

Discovery Resources:

 

 

Discovery Exercise:

 

  1. Access the Learning 2.0 wiki, click on the "Edit Page" button and log in with the password (hint: he's an archangel!)

     

  2. Add your blog to the Favourite Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there. It’s easy to do if you follow this simple syntax

     

    Example:

     

    [ URL | Title of blog]

     

    [ http://stmbtech.pbwiki.com | Learning 2.0 ]

     

    With brackets [ ] and just a little typing, you’ve added a link - it’s as easy as that!

     

    OPTIONAL: Add a favourite or two to a few other pages (Favourite music, favourite sports, etc.). And, if you feel up to the challenge, you might even want to create a separate page for a review or short report and link up to that.

     

  3. Create a post in your blog about the experience.

 

 

* NOTE: The Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki was created using the free version of PBWiki, a tool that lets you create webpages that anyone can edit. 

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