Friday, February 1, 2008

How to use a Wiki

What is a wiki and how could I just it as a teacher? First of all wiki is Hawaiian for quick, in this use it mean quick edit. You and a group of people can quickly edit a web page and collaboratively make changes to the site. Here is a quick example of a use. A Boy Scout troop wants to plan a camping trip but they do not have a pack meeting for a month and they want to go before the warm weather of summer is gone. So Joe the pack leader creates a Wiki site a PBWIKI. He titles the page Troop 589 Camping trip and list these Items. The first column is Items he has for the outing, the second column is items need for the outing. Under the have he has tent, cooking gear, matches. Under the needed he has hatchet, three days of food. Next Fred goes to the site and places in the have column places hatchet he then goes to the needed and place snake bite kit, flash light and batteries. Eric then goes to the site and places in the have column snake bite kit, 3 days of food and batteries. He adds no new items to the needed. Jake logs-in and places in the have column flash light and no new items in the need column. So they now have all the things they need with no other communication then just the Wiki. So they now need to pick where the camping trip will take place so any one of them can start by adding a new page of title where to go camping and start a list of places and a column for suggestions. It is that easy and quick. There is also a short You tube video that will graphically show you an example of how a wiki works. Well go and give it a try I think you will find it fun and an easy way to collaborate.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

http://pbwiki.com/

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