I’ve been playing with wikis lately. They’re a wonderful tool for putting things up on the Internet while not really knowing how to make a webpage. They’re a nice collaborative tool that allows a group to collectively build a website. Wikipedia, probably the world’s most developed wiki, is a great example of this.
My most commonly used wiki is one called PHPWiki which I run on some of my personal webspace. I use it primarily for the students to review material they’ve studied. If I give them a list of key terms, each one will make a page that defines their term or terms, and then link to the other pages where appropriate. For example, if I were doing a Bible test on Genesis, a page on Abraham might have a link to a page on Sarah, his wife. With PHPWiki this is done by putting the title of the page to be linked to (Sarah) in square brackets, like this [Sarah]. Pretty easy, huh?
If you’re not into making your own wiki, there’s plenty of places to get them for free, like Jotspot (just acquired by Google, so they’re not taking new members right now), PBWiki (a favorite of educators because it will let teachers use the free version without ads), Wikispaces, and my new favorite, Wikidot (which currently has no ads).
I’m hoping to start a project with one of my classes to gather war stories from older members of the community. We’ll compile these on a wiki because it’s really easy for the kids to do, and, since I’m switching schools next fall, really easy for other non-techie teachers to continue.