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What is a Wiki

What is it?

A wiki is a type of website that allows visitors to easily add, remove, edit and otherwise collaborate on content. This ease of use makes wiki’s an effective collaboration tool.

The first such software to be called a wiki, WikiWikiWeb, is named by Ward Cunningham. Cunningham remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called “Wiki Wiki” shuttle bus that runs between the airport’s terminals.

Wiki Wiki is a reduplication of wiki, a Hawaiian-language word for fast.

Why use it?

Using a Wiki makes editing and contributing to a collaborative web site extreamly easy. Depending on how it’s set up, it might be editable by anyone, or only by registered users (Academics? Students?). Some wikis even let you control who can see the content.
One of the important strengths of wiki’s is the easy way they can create links between related topics. Say you have a page about ancient Roman fashion that makes specific mention of the Romans use of the colour purple. Somewhere else you could have a page about the use of colour in German expressionist painting. Both pages refer to purple, so why not start a new new page specificly about the colour purple. Suddenly, and easily, you are building an inter-connected network of pages
You could set up a wiki for a specific student project, with a life span of a few weeks. Or you could set up a wiki for an entire subject, with a life span of years.

How can I use it?

During semester 1, 2007 Swinburne is trialing, a Blackboard plugin that permits wiki creation directly inside Blackboard subjects.
BbWikiScreenShot

Another option would be to use third party application like the wikispaces site (link above). Wikispaces offers free accounts, but the drawback is that they place advertising on the free wikis.