What (if Any) Value Can Blogs and Wikis Add to Your Learning Experiences or Academic Growth?
Read Time: 13 mins Languages:
'Wiki' is one of the nigh prevalent buzzwords on the Internet, right up there with 'cloud calculating' and 'responsive design'.
When yous hear the discussion 'wiki', you lot most likely retrieve immediately of Wikipedia, the famous online encyclopedia. Then there'south WikiLeaks, the source of leaked government secrets. With both sites bearing the same weird root discussion, you would be forgiven for thinking they're related. They're not. At least not in the style you might recall.
What is a 'wiki' defined equally today? This term "wiki" actually means quick in Hawaiian. The journey from that definition to today's definition of "a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users" is quite the interesting story, best told by Ward Cunningham, the father of the modern wiki.
The important part of wikis—what makes them different from whatsoever other blazon of website—iscollaborative editing by the users. Recall near that for a moment: the ability for the users of a wiki to collaboratively edit it. If you lot can read information technology, you can edit it. Information technology seems simple at start, yet greatly powerful in do—and information technology'southward what both Wikipedia and WikiLeaks have in common.
That's what we're going to explore: the benefits a wiki can provide to a business, the sort of problems information technology tin solve, why you might use a wiki, and what sort of options you have for setting up a wiki for yourself. It's a lot to cover, then allow's keep things moving.
What Wikis Do
To really appreciate what wikis in and of themselves exercise for your business organisation, we need to first travel back in time, dorsum to the original days of the web. By looking at what the first wiki was intended to practise, the electric current state of wiki software will make a lot more sense.
I mentioned Ward Cunningham, father of the wiki, earlier. On the front folio of his ain wiki, he gives some insight into the origins of wikis and what they're designed to do.
The idea of a "Wiki" may seem odd at first, but dive in, explore its links and it will before long seem familiar. "Wiki" is a limerick system; it's a give-and-take medium; it's a repository; information technology'southward a mail organisation; it's a tool for collaboration. We don't know quite what it is, just nosotros exercise know information technology'south a fun way to communicate asynchronously across the network.
I love that summary. In the beginning, Ward and his colleagues didn't even know what wikis were supposed to do exactly. But they knew it was fun.
From that short summary we can pull out some of the chief themes of wikis: composing, discussing, hyperlinking, collaborating, communicating.
Notice something about those words? They're all verbs. They're what wikis practise.
1. Quick Composing With Wikis
How exercise wikis work? At their core, wikis are composition systems. They're trying to brand it as easy as possible to write on a webpage. This is so important because it's something that separates wikis from your average website.
Almost people simply visit a site similar Wikipedia to read something, but like they do most websites, and then this aspect of wikis is frequently lost on the casual observer. But back in the belatedly 1990s, when Ward Cunningham built his wiki, information technology was the easy authoring of web content that he had in mind.
At that fourth dimension, web pages were nearly always written by hand in HTML. HTML is fine as a markup language, and it still powers the web today. But it can be a cumbersome language to blazon by paw, and oft gets in the way of but writing. This is especially true when y'all effort to do more than type simple paragraphs. If y'all want to add whatsoever sort of construction or formatting to a document, the HTML markup quickly swallows up the content.
Ward wanted a tool that let people write spider web pages quickly(see how the name wiki comes back into play here?) and HTML wasn't quick enough. And so within his wiki organization was a basic text formatting system. Information technology was simpler and easier to blazon than HTML tags, and was less obtrusive when writing and editing wiki pages. Plus, it enabled anyone to edit a wiki, without having to know how to edit HTML code.
And then in turn, quick and piece of cake limerick has go a cornerstone of wiki design. It should be faster and easier to write and edit text in a wiki than hand-writing HTML lawmaking. The wiki syntax—which is somewhat like to the at present-popular Markdown syntax—is designed to help subtract friction when writing and editing wiki pages, which in turn helps users to write and edit more frequently.
Detect peachy Wiki WordPress Themes on Elements or ThemeForest:
2. Wikis Are Great For Collaborating
The Cyberspace has simplified communications to such a degree that today, talking to someone on the other side of the world isn't even that exciting. In the early days of the Web that power was all the more tantalizing. Today's Cyberspace-powered communication apps didn't yet exist, so the web itself was the primary way to communicate. That's part of what made the wiki such a fascinating production, it'southward great for discussing, collaborating, and communicating.
Flexible Access for Editing Wiki Pages
Nosotros already looked at how the wiki fabricated things quicker to edit than your average web page. But the wiki allowed for something else unique: anyone who could read a wiki page had the ability to edit that wiki page. In its nearly open up sense, a wiki is editable by any visitor.
Information technology was this characteristic that Ward was referring to when he chosen the wiki "a discussion medium; a mail organisation; a tool for collaboration." These days, wiki software allows for more control over who tin edit the wiki, but the power of the feature remains the aforementioned. You lot tin make a wiki into all of those things Ward mentioned and more.
Editing doesn't just have to mean working together to make a site—it tin can also hateful just updating a wiki page almost a project to permit others know how information technology's progressing, for case. When you lot get-go thinking well-nigh it in the context of business concern, the potential gets pretty exciting, doesn't it?
3. Hyperlinking Powers All Wikis
Hyperlinking is certainly aught new—it'south been around since the dawn of the Web. It'south the beginning word in the acronym "HTML". But how the first wiki handled hyperlinks was what made it then special, and that's why linking has become a cornerstone of wiki design to this mean solar day.
Adding Links to Wiki Pages is Quick
Just like everything else we've looked at then far, adding and creating links within the wiki is designed to be fast and piece of cake. Detect I said within the wiki—it'southward internal links that are designed to exist so easy to brand.
The specific syntax for creating an internal link differs between different wiki systems, simply what they all have in common is efficiency. That, amid other reasons, is why information technology's so easy to get lost in Wikipedia, since at that place'southward ever more info to explore among the dozens of links on any page.
The Ability of Linking to Hereafter Wiki Pages
Beyond just being quick to add together, something else that's special nearly links in wikis is that you lot can link to something that doesn't be. What practise I mean by that? Well, allow me illustrate: what if yous're writing a wiki page, and you want to go more in-depth on a particular subject? You can create a link to a page virtually that subject field, even though the other page doesn't even so exist.
Take a moment to think well-nigh that. It'due south simple, all the same profound.
And information technology fits in so neatly with the vision Ward Cunningham had for his wiki in the first place. He wanted it to be a fertile place for communication, discourse, and the sharing of knowledge.
Hither we accept a simple and straight-forward ways for one user to asking farther thought and discussion on a particular topic. Or, used a different fashion, the means for a user to map out subjects he wants to elaborate on in the future. A natural to-exercise list, if you lot volition, ane that automatically makes the original projection better when the tasks are completed.
These two aspects of linking within wikis come up together into something more special than your boilerplate hyperlink. They help facilitate growth within the wiki. It's past means of this sort of linking that wikis beginning becoming magical.
Are Wikis Right for My Business organization?
Then, in a nutshell, wikis:
- Make it quick and piece of cake to write information on web pages.
- Facilitate communication and discussion, since it's easy for those who are reading a wiki page to edit that folio themselves.
- Allow for quick and piece of cake linking between wiki pages, including pages that don't yet be on the wiki.
But that's even so a fleck abstract. It might aid you see how Wikipedia considering such a success, but it's a bit harder to see how it can benefit your business. For that, here'south some specific examples of what a wiki can practice for you. I call up y'all'll exist convinced they're the perfect solution for your business.
ane. Wikis Are the Documentation Dream
Every business organisation wants detailed, well-maintained documentation. And even so, it so often feels like a piping dream. Back in the day, possibly your business documentation was a detailed employee handbook, meticulously researched, maybe spiral-leap, and fabricated in-house. Just it'southward the 21st century; nobody wants to apply something like that anymore.
You could try modernizing things, going digital with your documentation. Maybe you could have some Word documents in shared folders for your unabridged company. That would certainly give you some nice features. It'south digital, syncs to your different employees computers, and it's easy to write and edit... well, as long every bit everyone has Microsoft Word.
But, what if you want to reference a document while you're in a meeting, and you don't have your calculator right in front of y'all? How most trying to search for a particular procedure, or an of import technique in those Discussion docs? After all, it'd accept a lot of Word docs to document everything. So, information technology'd be fashion too piece of cake for someone to accidentally delete a document, or edit out something important, and the but way to fix the error would exist to restore from a backup.
And we haven't even talked nigh trying to associate different documents with each other. How do yous connect documents together when you're talking about Discussion files in a shared binder? Let's look at a simple scenario:
The Problem With Organizing Business Documents
Permit's say y'all take a few different departments all writing their own documentation. How do you organize all of those documents? Just throwing them all inside one shared folder volition get messy quickly. So you start putting some of those documents within folders.
Let's say you lot organize those folders by department.
- Now what happens if a document could apply to more than one section, and therefore fits into more one binder?
- Do you identify a copy of that document in each folder?
- What happens when someone edits ane of those documents?
- How do those changes make their way to the copies of that same certificate?
See how things can become out of manus quickly? I don't mean to bash on Give-and-take documents in shared folders. If a system similar that genuinely works for you lot, I'm happy for you. But if yous've encountered any of the problems I just described, then you owe information technology to yourself to examine a wiki as a solution for your business.
2. Making That Dream a Reality
How can a wiki help to make your documentation dreams a reality?
Think about part memos, the ones you lot feel similar you're always resending. With a wiki, they plow into a unmarried page with a link you tin display somewhere anybody will run into it. When it comes fourth dimension to edit that memo, it's unproblematic and piece of cake. And the best office is, the link will always exist accurate, even after you've edited the memo. Cool, right?
Create a Searchable, Online Product Catalog
Do you have a large and complex catalog of products? Imagine it neatly organized in ane place. A place that's searchable, easily editable, and links related products together. That's a wiki, my friend. Neat, huh?
Brand a Knowledge Base for Your Team
What if yous have a sales-based business? With a wiki you can help your salesmen keep track of their sales numbers, client information, or sales tips and tricks, all in one convenient place. And yous can set upwardly your wiki so that it'south accessible to them when they're out in the field, from any type of mobile device. Now that feels similar the 21st century, doesn't it?
Build a Wiki Intranet for Business Training
Now, recall virtually how a wiki can revolutionize employee training. The wiki becomes a consistent identify to put business policies, best practices, standards, and guidelines. All the things that you lot've learned over time, a new employee can benefit from right away just by reading the wiki. Y'all can stop worrying about education the same thing over and over again. Write it in one case now, and it will teach everyone in the hereafter—and volition be piece of cake to edit when things change.
A wiki can be domicile to all of this and more than. Call back what makes a wiki unique: they're like shooting fish in a barrel to edit, accessible from annihilation with a web browser, with uncomplicated and intuitive linking between pages. These features assist facilitate the sort of surroundings where quality documentation like you lot've e'er wanted can grow and thrive.
Brand Your Own Wiki (Take the Next Pace)
I promise past now you appreciate what a wiki does, and how it tin can do good a pocket-sized business, school, your personal life, and anything else. At present, all you lot'll need to exercise is to make your own wiki, and put it to apply in your work.
You lot can ready upwards a wiki with MediaWiki on your own server, or in one click with most web hosting services. Alternatively, you could use a hosted wiki service similar PBworks or Wikia. The nuts are the same, no matter which yous cull.
Yous tin can as well use WordPress to setup your wiki with. We offer pop WordPress wiki themes on our ThemeForest marketplace. They're keen for making corporate intranets, collaborate cognition based sites, helpdesk setups, and other types of business wikis.
But it can notwithstanding be a bit complicated getting your wiki started, and learning how to really employ it to create, edit, and link content. That'due south where our next tutorial comes in. Here's everything you need to get your wiki up and running.
To acquire even more almost Wikis, review this tutorial:
Editorial Note: This post was originally published in 2014. It has been comprehensively revised to make electric current, accurate, and upwardly to date past our staff—with special help from Laura Spencer .
Did you notice this post useful?
cunninghampachise.blogspot.com
Source: https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/what-are-wikis-and-why-should-you-use-them--cms-19540
0 Response to "What (if Any) Value Can Blogs and Wikis Add to Your Learning Experiences or Academic Growth?"
Post a Comment