Thing #17 - Play in the Sandbox

Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the wiki website that should be used for pure play and experimentation. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole OCL WebChallenge Wiki for you to play with.

Our wiki is on the website Pbwiki.com which is a wiki site offering restricted wikis to individuals and businesses. This means you have to be invited to be able to edit or contribute on any wiki with a Pbwiki address like ours: http://oclwebthings.pbwiki.com/ The two types of invitations (a link to follow and the invite key) that allow editing privileges have been sent by email to everyone who registered a blog on the Web Challenge as of April 17. The information was sent to the email address you used when you registered your blog with us by sending an email to the committee's gmail address. The information was also posted on Ocean Net. See the OceanNet bulletin called: "Web Challenge Update: Thing #17 - what you need to know to play in the sandbox" for more details if you didn't get the email.

To mark your adventure on OCLWebthings wiki site, you will be adding a link to your blog to the page on the Oclwebthing wiki called OCL Webthings Blogs.

Discovery Resources:

PBWiki Video Gallery - Short videos of PBwiki features
PB Wiki Tips Discovery Exercise

Discovery Exercise:

1. Access the OCL Webthings wiki. There are two ways of doing this.

* Go to your email account you used to register your blog with the WebChallenge Committee and open the email you were sent about OCL Webthings wiki and Thing #17. Click on the invitation link inside the email.

or

*Go to the same email, write down the secret "invite key" to the OCLWebthings wiki, then go to oclwebthings.pbwiki.com, and click on the edit button. You’ll go to a page with the option to “Log in with a Password/Invite key.” Type in the invite key in the box labeled: Wiki Password/Invite key.
In the box labeled name, put in whatever name you want attached to your contributions to the wiki. It doesn’t have to be your real name. In the email box type the email you are using for the challenge.

Why all this bother? Pbwiki requires an share link or a invite key to keep the editing rights to only those people the Administrator of the wiki wants to have the power to change the wiki. Otherwise it is an open wiki like Wikipedia and the whole world can edit it. That's not a good idea for most wikis that are cooperative efforts within a specific group.

2. So to “explore-and-play-with-wikis” in this exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the Sandbox page on the wiki. The theme of this wiki page is simply “Favorites” : Favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything. All you need to do is add your favorites under one or more categories. You're also asked to play with the fonts and the formatting features.

3. Add your blog to the OCL Webthings Blogs page. That's how we'll know that you've been there. The instructions on how to add a link to your blog are posted on the Favorite Blogs page right on the wiki. They aren't complete. The final steps were left for you to figure out. Remember, if you have questions, or need a little help, email us at oclwebthings@gmail.com

4. Create a post in your blog about the experience. Here's a question you might want to blog about: What are the potential uses of a pbwiki for work?

Advanced Optional Exercise:

Add a computer tip, hint, recommended webpage or anything computer related to this page on our wiki: "Our Favorite Computer Tips" This page could be a start of a library best practices wiki of our own.

Technorati tags: oclwebthings, wikis

Thing #16 - Wikis

Wonderful World of Wikis

"Wiki, Wiki" in Hawaiian means quickly. A wiki allows you to work with others to write and organize information. Everyone can be both writer and editor. For your introduction to wikis watch the video from Common Craft below for a really simple explanation:




Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. The use and popularity of wikis in businesses, libraries and in online communities is expanding rapidly. 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 on what been changed and by whom.
* Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
* No technical background is needed. In most cases a simple editing procedure is used.

As the use of wikis has grown over the last few years, libraries all over the country have begun to use them to collaborate and to share knowledge. Among their applications subject guide wikis, book review wikis, ALA conference wikis, and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources:
Use these resources to learn more about library related wikis:

* Library Bloggers Wiki : a list of library blogs maintained as a wiki
* Nancy Pearl's Wiki : a true booklover's wiki from the famous librarian booktalker

* Albany County Public Library's Staff Wiki - a wiki created for library staff to track and document library procedures.

Discovery Exercises:

1. For this discovery exercise, visit the Library Success wiki. It is a best practices library wiki. Did you find anything useful? Did you find anything you didn't like?

2. Visit Ocean County Library's article on Wikipedia. Most people never notice the Discussion and History tabs at the top of each Wikipedia article. They give you important clues on the article's accuracy and currency. Clicking on the Discussion tab in the OCL article, you'll read that Wikipedia made OCL give permission before we could repeat material from our website in the Wikipedia article. Wikipedia really hates copying from other websites without permission.

Click on the history tab on top of the OCL article to see a list of every change made to the article's words or images. Any guesses on what edits were from OCL staff? One staff member changed the description of Sparks from a pink dragon to a magenta dragon, then another staff member added a citation to prove the change correct!

3. Share some of your thoughts on wikis on your Web Challenge blog.

OPTIONAL ADVANCED EXERCISES:

There are many wikis on different topics not connected to work. Examples include a wiki about Star Trek called Memory Alpha, one on cookbooks called Cookbook Wiki and a community based effort about Rochester, NY called RocWiki.

1. Try a Google search to see if there's a wiki on your interests. Google your topic and the word wiki. If you find a wiki that looks interesting, explore it and blog about it.

2. Explore behind the scenes of Wikipedia. Compare the arguments under the Discussion tab in the article on Cow Tipping to the discussions for poet Joyce Kilmer. Really strange things can appear under the discussion tabs in the articles on people in the news. Pick your own celebrity.

Does what you find under the discussion tab or the history tab of a Wikipedia article make you more or less willing to trust the material in an article?

Technorati tags: oclwebthings, wikis