A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content. Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools.
With the benefits that wikis provide, the use and popularity of this tool is increasing.
Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:
Anyone (registered, or unregistered if unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up with what has been changed and by whom.
Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content.
In most cases simple syntax structure is used.
As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, organisations all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge.
Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more about wikis:
Tutorial on Wikis by Gabriel Avram
For information on how to create a wiki, using wikispaces, visit - http://www.wikispaces.com/.
This article from BusinessWeek magazine illustrates how companies are using wikis.
How to use wikis for business projects - gives advice about choosing the right wiki for your organisation.
Discovery Exercise:
1. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a look at some wikis and blog about your findings. Here are a few examples to get you started:
http://flu.wikia.com/wiki/Flu_Wiki - tracks the swine flu epidemic
http://wikileaks.org/- publishes anonymously leaked sensitive documents
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page - provides free geographic data about maps
http://visualblooms.wikispaces.com//- Bloom's Taxonomy of Hierarchy using web 2.0 tools.
http://www.idc.ul.ie/idcwiki/index.php/Wikis_for_teaching#Free_wiki_spaces_available - an example of a lecturer's teaching wiki.
2. Consider different ways your organisation could use a wiki and blog about your thoughts.
Optional:
3. Try setting up a wiki that would be useful to colleagues within your department.
Resource
7 Things You Should Know About Wikis
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