MATC Libraries

What’s a Wiki?
A good definition of a wiki comes from the famous (or infamous) online collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki:
The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie) which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast.” Here, a wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing.
The first wiki was developed by Ward Cunningham back in 1995.

Why Would I Want To Wiki?
An article in the 7/15/05 Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “Romantic Poetry Meets 21st-Century Technology” describes how an English instructor at Bowdoin College named Mark Phillipson uses a wiki called the Romantic Audience Project http://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/innovations/rap/index.htm.
For examples of how to use wikis in online education, plus a discussion of the pros and cons of wikis in online education, take a look at this University of Illinois site: http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Wikis_in_Online_Education.

What Kinds of Wikis Are Out There?
A very good directory of wikis is the Wiki Index http://www.wikiindex.com/Wiki_Index

Where Can I Wiki?
An annotated list at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms offers free and commercial wiki “farms” for people to host their wikis. Some of the more popular wiki farms include SeedWiki http://www.seedwiki.com, PeanutButterWiki http://pbwiki.com/, and Swiki http://www.swiki.net. A common wiki “engine” which implements the wiki technology is MediaWiki. Here at MATC there is a possibility that a wiki may be offered through Blackboard for instructors to use with classes.