Thursday, August 14, 2008

Week 7, Thing #16: Aloha Wiki!

When I think of wikis, the first one that immediately comes to mind is Wikipedia. Although I understoond that wikis were a compendium of information created by consensus, it was exciting to see how wikis were applied in the library world. My favorite wiki from CSLA's library wiki list was Library Success. I liked the idea of having librarians from all over share their secrets of success with other librarians. I especially liked the section on Services for Teens and the book lists on it. The Library Success wiki had all these resources compiled by other librarians, all in one place. I like how I can just save Library Success on my Del.icio.us and know that all these important and relevant links are there waiting for me to discover them. Also, to protect the wiki's credibility, Library Success required that people log in, in order to edit the content. Although I trust most of the links on Library Success, it was nice to know that this extra security measure is taken.

As a person with a B.A. in History, I was really excited to find the Sample AP World History Wiki. The purpose of the wiki was so that students created a study guide that they would use to study for the AP World History exam. Building the wiki as a class gave them an opportunity to learn how to work in a group, create content using technology, and study for the AP test. I wonder if the class enjoyed creating the wiki as much as I enjoyed reading it.

Meredith Farkas' article helped me see how wikis could be applied in libraries. I especially liked her idea about how wikis could be connected to library catalogs, so that patrons could read recommendations written by other patrons. I think that this would be extremely helpful at the middle school library where I work at, because students will check out a book that has been enjoyed by other students like them. And having the recommendations written online will allow all types of students (the ones who chatter away when I ask them how they liked a book to the ones who are too shy to talk to me) to write about how they felt about a book. For our school, our staff could create a wiki that contains the reading lists of all the English and Social Studies teachers. This way, these reading lists were located in one place and it would be easy to edit this list too. Students and parents could easily consult this list when they're in the school library, public library, or bookstore.

This exploration really made me a believer of wikis. I excited to discover other ways they can help our school and library the next school year.

1 comment:

Jackie S, 2.0 project manager said...

Wikis are very powerful and versitile, aren't they? We need to find time to update our California Curriculum Connections wiki to the new version by PBWIKI.

Best wishes.