So much information, in so many places.
So much to share, no good way to get it out there.
So much to collect, no way to track it all.
One aggravation for leadership advisers, executive officers and committee chairs is information management. How do you make sure everyone's on the "same page"? How do you establish ONE location for all the information that needs to be disseminated and collected? And the mounds of paperwork - come on! Not only does it add clutter, it's not very green.
Over the past few years, a technology has become widely available to internet users and most importantly, FREE to those in education. It is called a "wiki" and one of our first experiences with this was most likely Wikipedia, the online, free encyclopedia that has been by and large built up, expanded and maintained by the general public around the world. It was collaboration at its finest! So to the beginning we go, and find that Wikipedia defines a wiki as "a page or collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language." And a little fun factoid: "wiki" is originally a Hawaiian word for "fast", at least according to Wikipedia!
What does that mean for those of you not on top of the technology world? Let me paint this picture for you...
Imagine that for your student leadership group, you had a MASTER BINDER. In this binder was all of the information you wanted to share with the students. It also contained feedback from the students - comments they add, information they want to share, etc... And it also has a place for them to fill out requested forms and put documents in for various events/activities/meetings. And the nice thing is, any student can access this binder that sits on the corner of your desk. You and they can add to it, modify it, edit it. At the end of the year, you can clean up whatever you don't need anymore, or you can leave it all in there and just add to it. This binder is the life-blood of your student group from year to year. You would be lost without it.
Now in reality, this binder isn't actually ideal because it can ONLY be accessed from the corner of your desk, only one person can really look at it at a time, it only has hardcopies of documents, not editable electronic versions, it could be spilled on or stolen, and in a few years, you will need to find a 5" binder to fit everything! So if you take the best of what that binder offers and you put it online, you solve those very problems.
And a wiki does that all for you. For students, using a wiki comes easy - they are used to using online applications like Myspace and Facebook and are very comfortable using word processing software such as Microsoft Word. Some advisers that aren't as confident in their technology skills may shy away from using a wiki but I have to tell you, it's as easy as using word processing software! And I'm not saying this because I'm technology-savvy, I'm saying it because when you go to edit a page, it actually looks like a version of Microsoft Word!
So what in the world would you use a wiki for? Just about anything! If you set one up for your student group, you can create as many pages within the wiki as you want. One for every committee, sub-committee and adhoc-committee. One for new idea sharing. One for meeting agendas and another for meeting minutes. One for everyone's contact information. One for a survey of members. One for planning each project, event, or training. One for motivational quotes. You can make your wiki open to the public or private, viewable only be those you give permission to view it and you can give others extra permission to edit it. Maybe you ONLY want your executive officers editing. You can do that! You can upload and share documents, which means you don't need to re-create things year to year and when students leave, they don't take all their resources with them. And what a GIFT for a new adviser coming in, to actually have something to work with. It could be your legacy!
As a teacher, wiki's can be a great classroom collaboration tool for your students and a place to upload their assignments. As a part of a subject-based faculty team, you can use a wiki to share ideas and resources with your colleagues - in your school, in your district, whoever you want! I personally have found a wiki to be an amazing tool to make sure everyone knows what is happening. I use one for my state board students and another for our summer camp staff. From all over the state, the students and staff members just need internet access to log on and see what's happening. I put announcements up there instead of emailing them (students don't check email as often anymore, and they change them every week, so good luck even getting to the right one!), I have people sign up for events there instead of emailing me and then me having to track that information in some other random place. It keeps everything together, in one place, accessible by all.
So where do you start? My suggestion, based on looking at features and ease-of-use, is www.pbwiki.com. The "pb" stands for peanut butter and they think that using a wiki is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich! They offer FREE wikis to educators (as well as free online tutorials) and you can always upgrade for more features (special access-roles, amount of storage space for documents, etc...). There are plenty of other options out there as well, some of which offer free services as well, so explore and see what fits your style. The list below is by no means the entire list -a simple search from google or yahoo will lead you to many more options!
www.pbwiki.com
www.stikipad.com
www.wikispot.com
www.wetpaint.com
www.wikyblog.com
To watch a quick video on what a wiki is and how it works, go to:
www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
Enjoy your first wiki experience and finally gain control of the information around you!
