Monday, October 21, 2013

Curating with WikiSpaces

In order to organize all of my research for my project of my website and book, I've decided to use a wiki. I like that wikis allow you to create folders to organize your information in, and I like that the folders are all in one place. I think I'll use wikis on future projects as well. One wiki per project is probably what I'll do.

Anyways, at first I used Google Sites to create a wiki, but I found that to be extremely frustrating because I could not change the names of folders on the Google Sites templates. The templates were WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). I was sure that there was a way to customize the folders, so I kept trying to find the button that would allow me to change the folder names, but eventually just gave up. I googled "Create Your Own Wiki" and found Wikispaces.

Wikispaces is much easier to use than Google Sites. It allowed me to custom-make my own wiki right from the get-go, although it did have templates available if desired (particularly for classroom wikis). I went for a basic wiki knowing that I can add on later if I'd like.

 
Screen shot of my wiki.

The first thing I did was create my custom folders :). I made five today, mostly just preparing to be able to add stuff to them as I find them.
I did add a few things to the articles though. Right now I'm most interested in getting the website set up since that's pretty much the first thing on my list. I looked up tutorials that would walk me through building a website. I found two that I liked and put them in the "Setting up a Website" folder.
I emailed my cousin, a web developer, to ask him his opinion on the step-by-step guide since that was the most straightforward out of the two. I haven't heard back from him yet, but hopefully I will soon.

Anyways, I'm loving wikispaces so far. I recommend them for anyone looking for a user-friendly wiki for personal use, and possibly professional use too!

2 comments:

  1. Kristen, I'm always so impressed with how deep you dive in with your posts. Great job! You really help me get my juices flowing. I'm not that familiar with WikiSpaces, but I followed your link and looked it up. Maybe I didn't read into it enough, but is WikiSpaces a curation tool primarily targeted for classrooms and students/teachers, or for anyone with any purpose?

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    1. Initially I thought it was for classrooms as well, but it is also for anyone with any purpose. There is a little button in the right hand corner that says "Not in Education?" If you click on that, it'll lead you to a new page with new options. Select the Individuals or Group option. It'll ask you what industry you are representing. If you say "I prefer not to answer," it'll give you a blank wiki ready for you to customize :).

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