Thing #9 - 23 Things

MAME booklist wiki is just in the start up stages and is laid out nicely but is suffering from the lack of participation. The navigation was simple and easy to follow. I like the idea of a wiki book list and have tried the idea with some students in the past. For the most part the students that like to talk about books at my building like to talk face to face and not so much online, I'm having better luck this year with a book blog though.

wikiHow is laid out very nicely, easy to navigate by using the categories, organized links and interesting "how to" articles that people could edit and add to. I could see some classroom uses for the topics but also some classes would lend themselves to the same type of "how to" wiki. "How to": play a sport, do a science lab, cook a meal etc. I think it is a nice use of the social tool but like a lot of social sites not all the participants and pages were appropriate.

Michigan Policy Network is run by MSU college students, it has some interesting articles and the headings at the top and the menu on the right side make it easy to navigate. The print and the color scheme make it easy to read. The MSU site looked and felt very professional students could use it for local and state issues but they political classes could also build their own similar site for issues that they are studying.

I also came across some professional education wikis that covered some interesting topics but for the most part they would only be useful for general information, not in depth. Using wikis for information is like using any webpage and I always feel the need to investigate and evaluate the source before I give it serious credit. The fluid nature of the wiki is cool and is it's strength and weakness.