Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
-St. Francis of Assisi

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Wikis

At one point, I decided I'd like to be Vicki Davis when I grew up - one of the Women of Web 2 whom I consider to be a Wiki Queen. It was her presentation that introduced me to wikis, when I was attending the Adventure of the American Mind conference last February. The whole point behind a wiki, it seems to me, is to provide a web-based collaborative site that a broad or selected group might edit.

I had the opportunity to try one out this Spring, when one of our teachers celebrated 10 years with the school. Since most of her early students were in college, and presumably using the Web 2.0 tools, I established a wiki to which we invited alums and families to contribute. A friend who has been a part of the school as long as I called roughly 50 families, and got current e-mail addresses for students. She also put out word on Facebook and MySpace. In that two weeks, we uploaded pictures of the original classes and had over 30 contributions!

Since then, I have created a wiki to coordinate a conference, create a planning space for my library projects, and one for this course. I have found Wikispaces easier to use than PBWiki - and also less expensive for the no-advertising levels. My biggest surprise is the reluctance of those invited to get in and modify the space. Overall, it is surprisingly easy.

1 comment:

dew said...

Hi! I'd like to point out that PBwiki is free and ad-free for all educators. I'm really keen to know how we could help make the service easier to use, though! Please email me directly at david@pbwiki.com to let me know.