What exactly is a wiki?
Wikis are basically simple websites that do the coding for you and allow multiple editors. The word “wiki” is a Hawaiian word for “fast,” and they are indeed that! Since wikis use a simplified coding language, you don’t have to be a webmaster to create an online site – anyone can create a wiki, just as with blogs.
Probably the most famous use of a wiki tool is Wikipedia. It was created as a free, online, collaborative encyclopedia. Any user can quickly and easily contribute to update the site content. That’s right… you could update a Wikipedia article.
But unless you are an expert on Karmichael Hunt or the events of November 21, you are more likely to use wikis to collaborate on smaller-scale projects. Because they’re available online and editable by anyone who has the right permissions, they’re perfect for
- group projects
- taking class notes – easy way to get the notes from last week when you were, um, indisposed.
- sharing thoughts
- organizing events – everybody sign up for what you’re bringing to the party next weekend!
- using all the great features of a website – hypertext linking, media sharing, easy page organization – without having to know any HTML coding.
There are lots of free wiki sites out there, and most are pretty easy to use. There are occasional issues with cutting and pasting from (or into) a program like MS Word, and sometimes the “back end” – where the magic takes place – does formatting things you don’t want it to do. If you’re using wikis simply for group collaboration and then will hand in a final project or paper in another format, you can copy and paste information from the wiki over to some other program, but sometimes the formatting will require a little correction. But for publishing your information online, 99% of the time, wikis are the fastest, cheapest and simplest way.