Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Thing #16 - Wikis (part 2)

"Sandbox" is the term that wikis often use to describe the area of the wiki website that should be used for pure play and experimentation. For this discovery and exploration exercise, we’ve set up a whole OCL Web Challenge Wiki for you to play with.

Our wiki is on Google Sites which is a wiki site offering restricted wikis to individuals and businesses. (Restricted means you'll need to log in to edit the wiki.)

To mark your adventure on OCLWebthings wiki site, you will be adding a link to your blog to the page on the OCLwebthing wiki called

1. Go to the
OCL Webthings wiki.
You can get there by going to your email account you used to register your blog with the WebChallenge Committee and opening the email you were sent about the OCL Webthings wiki and Thing #. Click on the invitation link inside the email.

Why you can't just click on the link: Google requires you to be invited to edit a wiki. This keeps the editing rights to only those people the Administrator of the wiki (in this case the Web Challenge committee) wants to have the power to change the wiki. Otherwise it is an open wiki like Wikipedia and the whole world can edit it. That's not a good idea for most wikis that are cooperative efforts within a specific group.

2. So to explore-and-play-with-wikis in this exercise, you are asked to add an entry or two to the Sandbox page on the wiki. The theme of this wiki page is simply “favorites” : favorite books, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, favorite anything. All you need to do is add your favorites under one or more categories. You're also asked to play with the fonts and the formatting features.

3. Next go to the party plans section of the wiki and add an item. Make sure to include your blog url so we'll know you've been there. Remember, if you have questions, or need a little help, email us at oclwebthings@gmail.com

4. Create a post in your blog about the experience. Here's a question you might want to blog about: What are the potential uses of a wiki for work?

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