Help:Hosting for classes and student organizations
From SeLawWiki
What can the wiki do? What IS a wiki?
A wiki is a web site that allows users to create and edit documents collectively. This wiki has a few additions to gear it for a school environment, like forums and quizzes.
What are the advantages of using this site over Westlaw's TWEN or Lexis' Blackboard?
There are several advantages to using this wiki, but also aspects that might make the wiki less suitable for your class or organization, depending on your goals.
The advantages:
- The wiki is operated by local UGA students.
- Posting assignments and documents is easier, and pages generally look cleaner.
- Notes for classes can be posted to the site easily, by anyone. If a student must miss a class because of an illness or other obligation, it's easy to check the notes for that day.
- Every page on the wiki can be bookmarked and doesn't require logging-in just to view pages--this makes it dramatically easier for students to check forums and teacher pages for new postings. This makes students much more likely to participate on the forums, since a TWEN or Blackboard forum can easily die when students get frustrated with clicking through a long series of log-in screens to find that nothing has been posted.
- The wiki supports Firefox, Safari, and other browsers.
- The wiki is formatted using CSS, a standard that makes it highly accessible for users with disabilities who access web pages with alternative browsing systems, like screen readers, magnifiers, or JAWS.
- The wiki enables collective editing of documents, and every prior version of a document is saved, allowing you to see how a document has developed over time.
- Using this site, a group of students can draft a note, memo, or contract together, and the version tracking system would allow a professor to evaluate the contributions made by individual students.
- The wiki is public, which means that student work and teacher commentary contribute to larger society.
- If students did not get a chance to speak in class or at a club organization, they always have a forum available.
- The site supports searching, which means students can find a term lost somewhere in the class documents or notes.
The disadvantages:
- As with any computer related thing, there's a learning curve.
- There isn't much privacy. You might prefer that students be able to work through material in a less public environment.
- Contributors to the site agree to release material into the public domain--so this isn't the best place if you're writing something you want to collect royalties on. Files can be uploaded as attachments if you want to retain copyright protections over your work.
- The wiki has no official language requirements. Everyone is required to use their real name when making edits, which generally means no one will say anything they aren't comfortable standing behind--but aside from that, the wiki functions more or less like the plaza at UGA's Tate Center--free speech prevails. This is part and parcel of the wiki's philosophy, but you may prefer another service if you want to have the ability to delete posts or block students from posting.
So how does it look in practice?
As of February 2008, (the wiki was launched in January) the wiki is hosting pages for five classes, with three forums. Four are section Y classes, and the fifth is professor Turner's Land Use class.
Can I try it first, or just play around with it?
Of course! If you have a .uga e-mail address, just click the create account link at the top right. Your account will usually be approved within a few hours, and you can try creating pages to see if you like it. Our help documentation is still nascent, but the wiki runs on the software developed for Wikipedia, which means virtually all of the Wikipedia help material is applicable.
Will the site always be geared toward section Y?
Nope--for now, the navigation bar on the left provides quick access to all of the section Y classes, but this will be restructured soon to provide a different navigation page for section Y students.
I want to use this for my class or student organization, or I have other questions. Who can I talk to?
The wiki is administrated at the moment by Alex Rowland, who can be easily spotted around Hirsch Hall wearing a large, red, hiking backpack. His contact information is also available in the UGA law directory. His e-mail address is ARowland (((at symbol)) uga.edu.
