In case you haven’t noticed (or subscribe via RSS), the “Pages” part of my blog layout that was absent from my last theme is now back, located in the upper right hand side. I’ve updated the “My Wikis” page, and I think it could be a useful resource for folks who want to dip their toes in the wiki-water, but might be overwhelmed by the enormous list of examples over at Wikispaces.
If any of your colleagues are considering wikis as part of an upcoming project, please feel free to direct them to my little annotated wikiography. Although the wikis there deal primarily with English literature, the ideas and examples can certainly be applied to other disciplines.
Hope you find this to be a useful resource.
Thanks for the link love. Looks like you’re putting wikis to good use. I’ve been curious, though: Are there some wiki platforms out there that turn off some users more than others? Sometimes, when people try something new for the first time, they can be easily dissuaded by a bad experience. When I’m showing fellow educators an important piece of technology, I like to find the path of least resistance for them. That way, they can get that positive first experience that makes them want to come back for more.
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I’ve found Wikispaces to be a relatively resistance-free path for the teachers I’ve trained. I tell them about the many services out there and show them some examples, but I focus my sessions on Wikispaces simply because it’s the most user-friendly service I’ve used. Some teachers have expressed a preference for PBWiki, but those preferences are almost always based on aesthetics rather than functionality.
I really like the look of Wikidot, and I use it for my professional portfolio, but I don’t think it’s a service I’d recommend to folks just starting out with wikis; similarly, I don’t think I’d have inexperienced folks use MediaWiki, either.
Wikispaces has a nice gentle learning curve, easy-to-understand menus, and I play it up to the teachers by saying it equally caters to brand-new users and power users alike – at it’s most basic, you can have a person or group publishing to the Web in minutes, but the options also exist to really trick it out with embeddable audio, video, widgets, etc.
Wikispaces seems to be the go-to wiki service in the online circles I travel in, but I’m curious if anyone works at schools that use services other than Wikispaces or PBWiki extensively. Maybe Wetpaint?
Damian
Good luck on Monday!
Brian