Week 4 Thing 5 Learning 2.0
After watching the video http://www.commoncraft.com/video/wikis about wikis (by the way I love how creative yet simple these videos are), I realized the concept of a wiki is just to be a tool for quick and accessible information.
The word "wiki" is actually from a polynesian language. In Hawai'i "wiki wiki" means fast, speedy or quick. You'll usually find tourist shuttle buses in Hawaii called "wiki wiki buses etc. Just FYI :)
I created my wiki at http://librarypalooza.wikispaces.com/
I found that creating the wiki was simple, but it didn't have a lot of options aside from the text editor which is similar to a word processing editor. I did like the ease of adding widgets and links. I haven't fully explored options to create page templates and customizing my wiki page. I used the given templates and that was easy to do. I usually like to add personal customized colors or schemes, but that is limited as well unless you download your own graphics. I did download a few graphics but unlike some programs that let you click and drag your graphics to reposition them, the graphics are limited to where the cursor in the document is.
I can see the usefulness of a wiki for a specific topic or purpose vs. a blog. I think the concept of having pages that can be edited by anyone invited to your wiki is pretty new to me and one has to be open to the idea. There is "lock-out" features for pages from what I saw so I guess there is some control.
I can see why educators and libraries use wiki's because it allows student involvement that evolves the wiki. It's an open electronic billboard/forum/scrapbook per se that grows and changes according to who (it's audience) is using it. I do find the blog a bit more open to design elements, but I haven't had enough experience with wiki's to say it can or cannot do the same.
I did like the link to http://schoollibrarywebsites.wikispaces.com/home It has a wealth of collected information about all levels of school libraries from all over the place! It was easy to navigate and the graphics were simple.
