Advanced Wiki Tips

On Saturday I went to a workshop taught by Stu Woodward at Adams Middle School in Redondo Beach, CA as part of the Beach City Computer Using Educators.

In the past I had primarily used wikis for sharing text, links and collaborating with other instructors from The Stephens Group. Through the workshop I learned about a lot of other cool things you can do with your wiki.

For instance, I did not know that you could check statistics about visitors to your wiki by going to Manage Spaces and clicking on Usage Statistics. I was surprised to learn that our wiki from last year's digital media conference received a number of visitors from other countries.

I had also not played with the Insert Widget feature on the wiki (it looks like a little TV). The convergence of media that you can incorporate into your wiki is truely amazing. You can embed videos, audio, a calendar, maps, slideshows and even interactive surveys into your wiki. I tried embedding a google map of a satellite view of the Milwaukee County Zoo. I loved how once the map is embedded you can click on it and still manipulate the map just like you can in Google maps. The woman sitting next to me said she was going to create a wiki for her team and embed a shared Google Calendar for the group.

Another useful feature I learned is that when browsing other educational wikis you can add wikis that are of interest to you by clicking on the star next to the title. Then when you click on your user name at the top a window will appear with a list of your favorite wikis.