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Blog under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Oct
19
(2005)
Student use of wiki
Filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: web2.0, weblogs, weblogs.ucalgary.ca, wiki, wiki.ucalgary.ca.
Last week, an undergrad student here at the U of C stumbled across both weblogs.ucalgary.ca and wiki.ucalgary.ca. This student was familiar with blogging and wiki (having a LiveJournal already), and dove right in. And quickly proceeded to blow me away with what a student can/will do given a bit of trust and some supporting resources.
In the 6 days since discovering the wiki, this student has made 206 edits to pages. Created new pages. Created page templates. Categories. Shell pages for faculties, departments, and clubs. Templates for user pages. Fleshed out a very interesting user page for himself (including a couple of ideas that I will blatantly borrow for myself). In the “old” way of publishing stuff to the internet, this would have never happened, because there is no way in hell an Institution would let an undergrad edit a faculty web page. Oh, how things change when you open up a little.
On top of that, the Faculty of Education’s Doucette Library has been hammering away, adding resources to their set of wiki pages on resources for education students. And, it looks like our faculty and staff manual for PeopleSoft is being constructed in the wiki. The user manual. In the wiki. That’s so awesome!
Sometime Real Soon Now™ I will have to force myself to make some time to write up some articles on the wiki and weblog services, to start getting the word out to a larger audience on campus. So far, I’ve been limited to preaching to the converted, and having a little bit of osmosis absorb people at the fringes. But, this stuff will be much more valuable for everyone if it’s adopted a bit more widely.
…And quickly proceeded to blow me away with what a student can/will do given a bit of trust and some supporting resources…
Glad to be of service.
…206 edits to pages…
Granted, some of which were very silly edits based on me trying to learn how to use MediaWiki, but nonetheless, wow that’s a lot.
…this would have never happened, because there is no way in hell an Institution would let an undergrad edit a faculty web page…
The revolution is upon us =)
…to start getting the word out to a larger audience on campus…
Incidentally, a president of Verbatim and some of the executive are now aware and supportive of the existence of the wiki page.
Additionally, Dr. X. J. Yang had previously heard of the wiki concept and now knows of the presence of the U of C wiki and the pages relating to his course today. Unprovoked, he briefly announced the page to students in class today.
Oh, and “Hi.” I read your blog now. =p You’re syndicated for livejournal users at darcynorman_rss. Imagine my surprise at reading about myself today.
Additionally, Dr. X. J. Yang had previously heard of the wiki concept and now knows of the presence of the U of C wiki and the pages relating to his course today.
Err…make that “relating to his course.”
Heh. That’s cool, Aron. I didn’t want to link to you directly in case it spooked you or something
Love the new page at litui.net! Wiki as website… The revolution is at hand… 
Eh, no biggie. My identity is spread all over the net anyway (ongoing from about 1994).
I’m not sure about the wiki-as-website idea yet, but I like the following aspects:
1) Requires little to no maintenance so long as I keep it locked down (hunting spam will not be beneficial to my schedule),
2) Can have the general feel of a normal personal website (navigation, &c),
3) Can be updated and posted to randomly by me without the hassle of actual web develpment (which has always been the main obstacle to me putting anything on my websites… not that I can’t, but that I don’t have the time or will to be a web developer these days).
So, we’ll see how it goes for me. One major downside is that mediawiki seems a bit slow on my host. It does a lot of database work just to display a single page. Caching is not in my control, so I’ll have to deal with it at the moment. I tried a few less monstrous pieces of wiki software, but they’re all either too cut-down or too poorly written. MediaWiki has a professional feel about it.
Daily Update — October 20, 2005
Today’s news update focuses on "big surprises" or, in other words, those items that really come as no shock at all but which the news media plays up with the same fervor as Nick and Jessica spats. In general news we take a look at Microsoft …
Aron, try PmWiki for smaller sites that you want to get up and running fast and maintain easily.