Hello! My name is Amy and I will be your Wiki guide. This week you can learn:

• what a wiki is
• the parts of a wiki
• why you need to learn about them
• how you can use them

As a final assignment, you will need to post to the collective wiki that we started for SPLAT 101 that is about Idaho's towns. This fun assignment can show you what happens when people from all around the state collaborate into one document.

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a bunch of web pages that anyone can edit freely. You don't need to be tech savvy to edit and change a wiki. The best known wiki is wikipedia. With Wikipedia anyone can get an account and delete, add or change the information. Wikis have links, and people can add and delete freely.

Have you ever heard of the read/write web? The term means that users can interact with what they are reading creating an atmosphere of collaboration and community. Wikis involve, engage and facilitate collaboration among the people who use them.

• The Montana State Historical Society put together a wiki on the history of Montana to allow users to easily quick in a hyperlinked set of articles: Montana History Wiki: Fur Trade
• Here is the Every Child Ready to Read wiki which hosts a set of best practices: Every Child Read to Read @ your library wiki
• Library Success Wiki

The Parts of a Wiki

Add a New Page: this button allows you to add a new page to a wiki and when you click on it will open up a window where you can edit how the page will look. You can choose to do this in the editor you see (called a What You See Is What You Get editor WYSIWYG), or you can edit it in HTML.

WYSIWYG Editors: Scary acronym! It means "What You See Is What You Get". It's an editor like when you open up Word. You type, and can choose bold, italics, underline, just like in a typing program.

Edit Page: If you click on Edit on the top of any wiki page you have access to you can change the information on the page. Play with this! Click around and add or delete! Have some fun! Then hit....

Save: The save button is very important and is on a different part of the page depeding on the brand of wiki you are using, usually at the top or the bottom of the page. When you hit the save button

Revision Comparison: This is a feature that will show you a list of all the edits made to a wiki. That's why you can't "break it" because any wiki user can always look at the recent changes. You can revert to old versions, or look to see what edits someone made.

Show all pages: Clicking on this button will show you an alphabetical list of all of the pages within the wiki.

Files and attachments: You can upload a file for others to view. There tends to be a file size limit. This is really helpful if a group is collaborating for a manual or knowledge-base.

Preview: Some wiki brands offer you to preview the page. You'll have to save it to accept the edits you've made, or hit cancel to go back and make more changes.

Why do I need to know what a wiki is?

Wikis are perfect for collaboration with committees. They allow for everyone to have a voice, and they allow for asynchronous communication. You can easily edit sets of best practices and easily work with shared documentation. They are effortless to use for collaborating and knowledge sharing.

• Seven Things You Should Know About Wikis by Educause
• Wiki 101 by Paul Bernard
• Wiki Overview Powerpoint from ala.org

Use A Wiki of Your Own!

I use wikis all the time to collaborate on teams and groups of people who are not all located in the same place. These people also don't have access to the same programs. For example, some people can't open up a docx document. Sometimes this information can be put into a wiki and then changed so that we can all have access to the same information, at the same time, edit it to create a better document, and know who made those changes.

There are many applications of a wiki. BSU uses a wiki to update their Frequently Asked Questions page: http://libraryfaq.boisestate.edu/

The Boise Architecture Project, a school based project, uses a wiki to save information on houses and buildings in Boise: http://thsaphistory.info/Architecture/

You can compare and contrast types of wikis at http://www.wikimatrix.org Try these brands of wiki software:

• PB Wiki
• Wet Paint
• Wikidot
• JotSpot
• Social Text

Class Assignment

The best way to learn about wikis is to play with them, and have fun. Play, play & more play. You can't break it. So I set something up for you to use! I created a wiki called My Town, Idaho. You can access it here: Idaho Towns http://idahotowns.pbwiki.com/

You will need to create an account for PBWiki. Please do so and log in. Please add a link to the town that you live in, if one doesn't already exist, and tell us about some good restaurants, libraries, parks, or cool places to visit. You don't need to sign in. Just click "Edit" and add a page for your town in the right side bar where it says "Insert a link to a new page" or... Navigate to your town by clicking on the name, and then click "Edit" and when you're done either way click "Save"

Email me with questions! amyvecchione@gmail.com

Comment and discuss below!