#16 Week 7 Wikis

I really think, no surprise, that the wiki is the best tool of all. Yes, I like blogs too, but a wiki makes managing a website a whole new experience. I found that I just had to accept that a wiki is not going to be as fancy as a regular fully developed website, but I don't need or have time to mess with bells and whistles anyway.

I have wikis on both pbwiki and wikispaces.

Wikispaces for teachers is add free and allows you to lock pages. This is a great feature if you have content you don't want others to edit. (You have to pay for this on pbwiki) Wikispaces has very basic editing menu. No fancy stuff here! The other great feature on wikispaces is that it has a real navigation bar. A unique feature is a discussion tab on each page of the wiki that allows threaded discussions. Need wikispaces account to join and edit.

PBwiki-- just came out with a 2.0 version. This version requires user accounts to join, The old version, 1.0, uses "Invite key" as a password for users to be able to edit by just entering the invite key. Right now you can create either version, but I don't know how long that will be available. PBwiki has a robust edit menu with many tools. I don't really like their menu, but I know there is a way to modify it if you can research and figure it out. And, as mentioned above, you can't lock pages without paying $25 a month.

So think about your needs before you choose which will best suit your needs. There are other wikis I'm sure, but these are the two that are most visible on the net.

You can check out a couple of wikis I manage
Colony Middle School Resource wiki - we also have a staff wiki, but it is not public. the staff has been very slow to jump in!

Alaska Association of School Librarians- askal2 -- this is a second wiki for AkASL- the problem when a group tries to maintain something and looses the person who was responsible and the access goes with it! akasl2 actually is 'owned' by akasl instead of a person. Oh-- the invite key is .... puffin

There are great resources on wikis linked in Raven About Web 2.0--- it pays to look at quite a few to see how others are using wikis. It is also good to link to examples of wikis if you want teachers or students to join in the fun.

Las comment-- don't get discouraged if people don't just jump right in. Keep working and promoting... It's still the easiest way for you to get content on the web!