Here’s a very short video explaining wikis, from the clever folks at Common Craft:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY[/youtube]
Common Craft has many short videos explaining things like RSS, social bookmarking, twitter, blogs, sharing photos online, and more. You can also get them through YouTube (a search for leelefever gets a list).
Now, why do you want to know about wikis? You may want to use one! They are tools for collaborative group work that can cut down on email among group members. Also, if a group at work has a shared drive where the documents and folders are out of control and not searchable, putting them into a wiki can keep them in a central place while making them searchable too. Everyone in the group can both view and edit the pages.
There are articles about the usefulness of wikis for education and training online. The University Library also has a few books, such as Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd-floor Main Collection, LB1044.87 .R53 2006) and Wiki: Web collaboration (3rd-floor Main Collection, TK5105.888 .E2413 2006).
The most well-known wiki example is of course Wikipedia. But UWW has some wikis too. Go to https://wiki.uww.edu/ to see the list (click “Directory” on the left). There are several set up for specific classes, and for faculty there is an Academic Misconduct Wiki (under the “Other” part of the wiki directory) where you can talk to each other about concerns and share suggestions. It’s protected so that only UWW faculty can use it.
