Module 2 : Wikis & Online Applications ie Zoho Writer

#3 Wikis
A wiki is a collaborative website and authoring tool that allows users to easily add, remove and edit content.

Wikipedia, the online open-community encyclopedia, is the largest and perhaps the most well known of these knowledge sharing tools. With the benefits that wikis provide the use and popularity of these tools is exploding.

Some of the benefits that make wikis so attractive are:

• Anyone (registered or unregistered, if the wiki is unrestricted) can add, edit or delete content.
• Tracking tools within wikis allow you to easily keep up on what been changed and by whom.
• Earlier versions of a page can be viewed and reinstated when needed.
• And users do not need to know HTML in order to apply styles to text or add and edit content. In most cases simple syntax structure is used.

The use of wikis has grown and libraries have begun to use them to collaborate and share knowledge. Among their applications are subject guide wikis, book review wikis, conference wikis and even library best practices wikis.

Discovery Resources - view these to learn more about wikis

• Using Wikis to Create Online Communities – a good overview of what a wiki is and how it can be used in libraries.
• Working with Wiki: How We Collaborate and Share Documents at the National Library - Read about how the NLA use wikis.
  

Examples of wikis

• Book Lovers Wiki - developed by the Princeton Public Library
• SLVTraining Wiki - Mark Showalter's wiki of online resources used in Internet Searching training
• SJCPL Subject Guides – a pathfinder wiki developed by the St. Joseph County Public Library system

Discovery Exercises:

1. View the SLV Desk Wiki.
   
2. Add or edit a page in the wiki.
   
3. Create a blog post about your findings. What did you find interesting? What types of applications within libraries and/or at the SLV might work well with a wiki? Are there disadvantages in using a wiki application? (Please include # Wk 2 in the title).
   

#4 Online Applications ie Zoho Writer

The availability and use of online productivity web-based applications
(eg: word processing and spreadsheets) provides users with the ability to create and share documents over the internet without the need of installed desktop software eg Microsoft Office - Word, Excel etc

One large benefit of web-based applications is you do not have to consider different software versions or file types as you email documents or move from PC to PC.

They allow collaboration by allowing multiple users to edit the same file (with versioning) and provide users the ability to easily save and convert documents as multiple file types (including HTML and pdf).

You can use many of these tools, such as Zoho Writer and Google Docs and spreadsheets to author and publish posts to your blog.

It’s this type of integration with other web 2.0 tools that also makes web-based applications so appealing.

Discovery Exercises:

View a short list of web-based productivity applications

1. Create a free account for yourself in Zoho Writer. You can sign in as a Google user by using your blog username (email address) and password to login - Make sure you select 'Sign in Using Google'.
   
2. Explore the site and create a few test documents of two.
3. Create a blog post about your discoveries.

If you're up for the challenge, try using Zoho’s "publish" options to post to your blog.

* Note: You can also explore Google Docs and spreadsheets Google's online word processer, as another option for this exercise.