ALOP Glossary wiki

It never fails that each class presents vocabulary and acronyms with which students are unfamiliar. Prior to this semester, I tried in each of my classes to get a list going of acronyms and terms (and the related definitions). Sometimes these lists would be on flipcharts, sometimes in Blackboard, but inevitably we started over in each class each semester. So to end that madness, and help us all, I started an ALOP Glossary wiki that we'll use in all my classes from now on.

What is the ALOP Glossary Wiki?
This link will take you to a glossary wiki that everyone can add/edit to create a useful glossary for current and future students!

What's a wiki?
A wiki is a webpage with content that anyone can easily edit and change without knowing any programming. It's another tool in the broad category of social media that allows for collaboration and the sharing of ideas. Although wiki's have been around for about 10 years, they were much less well known prior to the development of wikipedia (an encyclopedia the content of which is developed through a wiki), which is certainly the most well known wiki.

Here's a great short video by Lee Lefever at Common Craft that goes through an explanation of wikis. (I pointed you to his RSS in Plain English video in an earlier post. I love these videos--yea!)

Wiki's can be hosted on local servers or accessed through third-party websites for free or for a fee. Of the free sites, I use wikispaces which has easy to use text formatting, choice between private, open, and limited control over who can edit, but there are pop-up ads. I sometimes also use PB Wiki which used to have limited formatting (still does in its "classic" editor) but who recently came out with a fairly full featured editor and there are no ads. (it still defaults to the classic editor, so if you try it out select choose "point-and-click edit" in the upper, right corner of the screen to get to the new editor.)

(wiki trivia: the name "wiki" comes from WikiWiki which means quick in Hawaiian.)

How do I use this (or any) wiki?
Using any wiki involves the same steps:

1. Go to the wiki page
2. Get into edit mode
3. Make your additions, edits, deletions
4. SAVE YOUR CHANGES

Really, you can just go to the ALOP Glossary wiki and get started. But if you want a little more explanation, here are some specific instructions for how to use the wikispaces wiki (which is where the glossary wiki is located).

Note: because the ALOP Glossary is on wikispaces (and not part of Blackboard or any other Drake-specific system) you can access it directly from any browser.