This page is designed to get you acquainted with the wiki. Below are several resources that should help you better understand how you can use wikis. We have created a few short video tutorials to help guide you. They are all around three minutes long.

Video Tutorials

Tutorial One: Learning the Basics

Tutorial Two: Understanding Versions

Once you've watched the videos, go play around.

Wikis: A Critical Look

At first glance, the wiki may seem like "just another new technology." On the contrary, its potential impact on the way we construct and consume information has led many in the academic world to consider its critical applications in the classrooms. Below are a few of those considerations. outsourcing

Excerpt: "...this required negotiation of space (within a wiki) can lead to a better understanding of the social processes that underlie any collaborative activity. In these ways, wikis not only build constructive communities of writers, but also accommodate differences among members of these communities, which in turn can allow all voices to contribute to the conversation.

Excerpt: "In the past year, more and more professors have started talking about wikis, which are, in essence, communal Web sites that can be edited by anyone who visits them, and some wikis keep logs of past changes. Once the domain of technology enthusiasts, especially advocates of "open source" software that is jointly created by volunteers, wikis are growing increasingly popular in some unlikely corners of academe."

Excerpt: "Once we consider writing as more than generating words to suit, once we consider it forming meaning, relating pieces, connecting, establishing relations... Once we consider composing more dynamic than the page, it becomes clear that a wiki can encourage this fuller sense of what writing entails."

Excerpt: "The strength of the wiki, then, is its presentation of a document as a process of rational-critical debate towards a specific goal."

Additional Resources

• For Teachers New to Wikis* Wikipedia
• Wikis
• Wikibooks
• Wikitionary
• Thesaurus
• Wikiversity Online university in a wiki; really amazing

Some interesting background on Wiki's from http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki, the original WikiWeb:

• Wiki History
• Introduction to Wikis
• Wikis put to good use: examples
• Getting a Wiki Adopted
• Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not

Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham <-- creator of wiki