Creating a Wiki:

The following link has some great information about wikis: http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com/Articles+and+Resources 

 

I created a wiki tonight using wikispaces.  My original plan was to create this by next Friday February 17, but I decided to go ahead and start this week so I have lots of time to keep exploring wikis.  My only experience with creating wikis was last term in Libe463 all of our assignments had to be posted to a wiki, so it was  necessary to do it for that purpose.  What I find is that with technology, unless I do things multiple times I don't remember very much, so prior to me bringing wikis into a classroom setting I felt I better gain some confidence in how to create and work with wikis.  My wiki is going to be about growing food, as I would like to learn how to grow a vegetable garden.  In Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, it is stated that " Whatever topic might lend itself to the collaborative collection of content relating to its study, a wiki is a great choice." (p. 66).   I'm hoping to organize all the research I collect into my wiki in a very organized way, so that it acts as somewhat of a manual.  Although I don't really think others will collaborate on my wiki, the assignment is giving me experience and the general idea of how collaborative writing can take place through a wiki.  Slowly but surely I hope to build my wiki based on information gathered through an rss feed about gardening.  Setting up the rss feed is going to take place in the next few days, so I don't anticipate many additions to my wiki until at least the middle of next week. One new thing I learned to do tonight with my wiki is how to add an external picture.  I never knew how to do this before. Here is the link to my wiki: growingfood.wikispaces.com.  One more thing, I never knew how to add a link into a wiki like I just did, so that's a neat new thing for me to learn about working with wiki!

As mentioned above, my personal reason for creating a wiki was to both learn about wikis, and create a gardening resource for myself.  Professionally I could see creating wikis for a variety of purposes.  Firstly I could see using one as somewhat of a webpage for the library.  Also, it would be great to teach kids how to create group wiki's based on research topics, where 4-6 kids collaborated their knowledge of a set topic.  Also, in doing this, the students could learn the different tools within wikis such as creating a table of contents, separate pages for subtopics and how to attach links and visuals.