Thing 10 - Wikis

Those Common Craft video clips are really great -- they get the point across without lots of fanfare or wordiness!

I've been using a wiki for work since last Spring. Our consortium posts User Group (and other) meeting agendas and minutes that way. I was a minute taker this fall, so I had the opportunity to get in there and post the minutes. It was pretty intuitive, although I do remembering not hitting save once and about pulling my hair out when I lost all of my work!! I'm using that wiki again this Spring to post the meeting agenda. This is a collaborative effort between the Acting Convener(me), members in the consortium submitting agenda ideas, and the PALS office. We have edited the agenda a few times back and forth -- with only one phone conversation to clarify a few things. Slick!

I'm going to ask the group I'm Audio Conferencing with on Friday if they'd be interested in using Zoho or a Wiki to edit our final report document...hope they are willing!

I did go in and edit on the 23 Things on a Stick Wiki, although it is much different than others I've seen/used. It's not really organized in a useful fashion - at least as far as I could tell it was basically a scrolling list of comments rather than organized into a few major areas (e.g., some people were asking for marketing ideas, others were giving quotes or pictures, etc. but they weren't grouped together on different pages).

We do have instructors who ban Wikipedia based on it's unreliability/verifiability. Why not find the information in a more reliable place? Just because Wikipedia comes up first in a Google search -- that's the most common answer I hear for why students use it. I think it's a cool tool to learn about new concepts and ideas, but I'm not convinced it's the best source to use in a paper.