Wiki what is it

Associate professor of English at Barnard, Derrick Higginbotham, used his course wiki as a presentation space and tool for text analysis for students. His course assignments included a close reading of texts within the wiki followed by student discussion in the discuss section of the wiki page.

In the discussion section of each page, students responded to each others thoughts and analysis of the text, thus creating discourse outside of class and fueling the discussion in class. Why use a wiki? How to get started with wikis There are a variety of free and easy to use wikis that make it quick and easy to get started using wikis. Share content and files, capture knowledge and manage processes. Use of wikis in graduate course work.

Journal of Interactive Learning Research , 17 1 , Deters, F. Cuthrell, K. Why Wikis? Participants in the study were 40 students enrolled in 1 of 3 graduate level social studies methods courses.

Data were collected using surveys and written reflections. Though students reported initial hesitation at learning a new technology, their overall experience using the wikis was positive. The students felt that wikis were a great collaboration tool. Principle themes that emerged from the data were the potential uses of wikis as instructional tools, potential uses for information dissemination, benefits or advantages to using wikis, and limitations regarding the use of wikis. The authors provide a list of questions developed as a result of the study that, when used prior to implementing wikis as a learning tool, will minimize the limitations associated with their use.

Elgort, I. Is wiki an effective platform for group course work? Australasian Journal of Educational Technology , 24 2 , The results highlight the fact that student attitudes to group work, in general, are mixed, and that the use of wikis per se is not enough to improve these attitudes. On the positive side, students found wikis useful for arranging information and sharing knowledge, while instructors thought wikis made managing and marking group work easier and more effective.

Other issues related to using wikis as a collaborative learning tool in higher education are also considered. Ioannou, A. Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, 1 1 , Researchers used a wiki with 15 graduate students in an online course.

WikiLeaks is a site that obtains and publishes secret and classified material in a way that protects its sources often whistle-blowers, journalists, and activists. The site operates as a nonprofit , and in its early days, it functioned as a collaborative and communal wiki with more than 1, volunteers.

WikiLeaks considers itself a library , as its site claims to have released more than 10 million documents. This site is no stranger to news media. Founded in , the site began to receive coverage—and plenty of criticism—when it leaked a Army manual detailing interrogation techniques at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Other famous leaks include the release of stolen Democratic National Committee emails that some claim irrevocably altered the course of the election. Despite the similar name and look of its website, WikiLeaks is not affiliated in any way with Wikipedia. Founded in , Wikipedia is a massive, online encyclopedia operating in more than languages. The free site is run by volunteers the English site claims about , active editors and scores more who are merely registered , who review and update all its entries.

An estimated 21 updates are made every minute, on average. Use the buttons on the Formatting toolbar to format text, and add other content, such as images, tables, and hyperlinks. Note: If you are not using a browser that supports ActiveX Controls, you will not see the Formatting toolbar. Instead, you can enter text using HTML tags. Find more information about using enhanced text boxes in the See Also section. To add wiki links to other pages in your wiki, type the name of the page surrounded by double square brackets: [[Page Name]].

For example, to add a wiki link to a page named "Orientation Information," type: [[Orientation Information]]. To add an image to a wiki, you need to first upload it to your site. You can upload an image to your site by using a picture library.

Find links to more information about creating libraries and adding files to them in the See Also section. Right-click the picture, and then click Copy Shortcut to copy the Web address for the image.

Click where you want to insert the picture, and then on the formatting toolbar for the wiki page, click the Insert Image button. In the Address box, paste the Web address for the image that you copied earlier. For example, if your team will be creating a link later for Training Issues, you can go ahead and insert the link to the page now. The link to a future page appears with a dotted line under it.

To create the page later, someone can click the underlined placeholder link, add content, and then click Create. Type the name of the page, surrounded by double square brackets: [[Page Name]]. For example, to insert a link to a page called "Training Issues," type [[Training Issues]]. The link will be created when you save the page. Tip: To quickly add a link from a wiki page back to the home page for your wiki, type [[Home]]. You can add other items to a wiki site, such as a tasks list to track action items or tasks related to the wiki.

You can choose whether or not the list or library appears on the Quick Launch for the wiki. Click the name of the list or library that you want to create, such as Tasks. In the Description box, type a description of the purpose of the list or library. To add a link to this list or library on the Quick Launch, verify that Yes is selected in the Navigation section.

A wiki can help your organization collect and capture institutional knowledge, assemble content from numerous sources, and share plans and ideas. For example, a corporation can create a company-wide Enterprise wiki where employees can find and contribute the latest, most comprehensive information about corporate activities, benefits, and services.

Or your team can use a wiki to collect information for new team members, to plan a conference, or to collect ideas for a large document or manual. After someone creates a wiki page, another team member can add more content, edit the content, or add supporting links. The community of authors helps to ensure the accuracy and relevance of the content.

Wikis continue to evolve as people add and revise information. Because team members can edit wiki pages without any special editing tools, wikis are a good tool for sharing ideas and collecting information from several people.

Team members can easily create links to pages for someone to finish creating later, or links to existing pages, without having to struggle with long web addresses. The default page type on team sites, and other types of sites, is a wiki page. So in that sense, wiki is everywhere. Because the home page of a team site and the new pages that you create there are automatically wiki pages, you can create a wiki right on your team site without creating other libraries or sites.

New pages are created in the Site Pages library on a team site and you can manage your pages from there. However, the disadvantage to this approach is that you will not have as many specialized options that come with a wiki page library or an Enterprise wiki site. If you know you will be creating many wiki pages or if you want to manage permissions separately for your wiki than for the rest of your site, you have a couple of options, depending on the scale of the wiki you plan to create and the range of options you want:.

Wiki page library A wiki page library is tailored to managing wiki pages and includes special commands on the ribbon for managing page history, permissions, and incoming links to pages. A site owner can create a wiki page library on most sites and get many of the benefits of a traditional wiki.

Enterprise wiki An Enterprise wiki is a publishing site for sharing and updating large volumes of information across an enterprise. If an organization needs a large, centralized knowledge repository that is designed to both store and share information on an enterprise-wide scale, consider using an Enterprise wiki. To learn more information about how to plan and create an Enterprise wiki site, we recommend reading the articles about planning sites and site collections.

You need to have permission to create a site, library, or pages. But the good news is, if a site has been shared with you and you have permission to edit it, you most likely have permission to create a wiki. Permission levels can be customized, but for most sites, you can create a wiki page library if you have the Edit permission level.

By default, members of the Site Name Members group have the Edit permission level. You need to have the Full Control permission level to create an Enterprise wiki site, or your administrator must enable self-service site creation. By default, members of the Site Name Owners group have the Full Control permission level, but your site may be set up differently. To manage permissions for a page in a wiki page library or an Enterprise wiki, a site owner can click the Page Permissions command on the Page tab on the ribbon.

Although initially creating the site or library is similar to other sites, adding content to a wiki is different from how you add content to other types of sites. On a wiki, you usually start by editing the home page and adding placeholder wiki links to other pages that do not exist yet.

You can create those other pages as you go or create them later. When you want to create the page that corresponds to a placeholder link, click the link. The page opens in Edit mode where you can add text and other content such as images.

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Please be as specific as possible, and include your version of SharePoint, OS, and browser. We'll use your feedback to double-check the steps, fix errors, and update this article. Create a wiki page library A team site is a wiki. SharePoint Server Notes: You can configure the settings for the wiki page library, such as permissions, page history, and incoming links, by going to the library and clicking Page in the header. To insert a picture from your computer, do the following: Click the Picture and then click From Computer.

To insert a picture from a web address, do the following: Click Picture and then click From Address. In the Address box, enter the web address where the picture is located. Top of Page. Click Try link to test your link URL. When you're done, save your link. Click where you want to insert a wiki link. Do one of the following: To select one of the suggested pages, use the arrow keys and then press ENTER, or use the mouse.

Your finished page name should be surrounded by double square brackets, like this: [[Page Name]] Tips: To quickly add a link from a wiki page back to the home page for your wiki, type [[Home]]. Here are some examples of links: [[Dogs]] : A link to a page named Dogs in the same folder. Go to the page that has the placeholder link. Click the placeholder wiki link. In the Add a page window, click Create.

Add the content that you want to the new page and save it. Do one of the following: To edit the path of the link so that it points to a different page, click between the two sets of double-square brackets [[ and ]] , and then replace the current link with the name of the page that you want to link to.

You can add a hyperlink to a page that is external to your wiki or even external to your site. Add a link to an external page If you are not already editing the wiki page, click Edit. Click where you want to insert the hyperlink.

Click where you want to insert the list or library. Click Insert and then click Web Part. Create a wiki page library By default, a team site is a wiki.

In the Create dialog box, click Wiki Page Library. Click Create. From the wiki page that you want to edit, click the Page tab on the ribbon. Click the Check Out button. You can add a picture from your computer or from a Web address directly to your wiki page. To insert a picture from your computer, do the following: Click the Picture button, and then click From Computer. To insert a picture from a Web address, do the following: Click the arrow beneath the Picture button, and then click From Address.

In the Address box, enter the Web address where the picture is located. A placeholder wiki link has a dotted line under it. Add the content that you want to the new page. You can add hyperlink to a page that is external to your wiki or even external to your web site. Click the Insert tab on the ribbon, and then click Link. Click Create to create the list or library and add it to the page.

Create a wiki site Before creating a site, make sure that you are at the location on your site where you want to create a new subsite. On the wiki page that you want to edit, click Edit. Type any text you want.