Wiki

I’ve created an account with wikispaces & have been experimenting around with wikis. But first, a little discussion about what wikis are & how they work. A wiki is a website where multiple users can edit one document or documents together simultaneously. This is different from a blog where each user contributes his/her own ideas and then others add their own comments, but do not change the original author’s work.  A wiki has multiple users working on the same document(s).

Users can edit the content, format the layout & style, and add files such as documents, pictures, music, videos, etc.  It is easy to add pages & create links to pages. On Wikispaces, there are also tabs for “discussion” & “history”. The discussion tab works just like a discussion board where a user can create a post & other users can comment. The history tab keeps track of which users made changes to the wiki & when.  Wikispaces now offers widgets such as a table of contents, references, discussion areas, page history, tag clouds, etc. They even offer widgets for embedding video, audio, calendars, polls, slideshows, maps, etc. 

The wikis have several security features. The administrator can decide who will be able to view, edit, & join his/her wiki. They can choose to lock certain pages to prevent edits. Wikis maintain a history to track all changes, so if a mistake is made you can return to a previous version of the document.  The administrator has a “notify me” tab & can be notified through email when a user makes a change.

Need help?  This is a great video that was shared in a professional development meeting as a  basic overview of what wikis are.  This is a website called Wiki Walk-Through that helps a first time user understand wikis & how to use them.