Wikis are something else that I first learned about from my sister-in-law. We tried creating a family wiki where we could collect memories, the stories that you want to pass down to the grandkids, that sort of thing. I must admit I have not been a faithful contributor. Maybe that should be another summer "to do" thing.
I used PBWorks to create the LYMAN Reads wiki for our library. Its original main purpose was as a home for all our "If you liked..." lists, since there was no way we could put them on our school webpage. As you can see, we haven't done much with it since then.
The examples given in these discovery exercises may provide me with some inspiration to do more with our wiki. I particularly like the Library Bloggers Wiki and California Curriculum Connections wiki and will be going back to play with them some more. I'll also be sharing some of the more subject-specific sites with some of our teachers.
Although not technically "curriculum applications", there are a couple of other ways that wikis might be a good tool. One would be a "living" library procedures manual. With our whole library staff in DROP, it might be a good time to start writing down how we do things, the quirks of some of our equipment, where the software and owner's manuals are located (TIP comes to mind), etc. Another idea from my s-i-l, that she got from her tech support people and that I wish our guys would adopt, is to use a wiki as a record of what they do - what software was installed and when (by location or station), what repairs were made to a unit, what problems arose and how they were solved, etc. Everyone on the tech team could read and post to the wiki and a lot of wheel-reinventing could be avoided. We have had a lot of turnover in our tech support staff over the years and this could have saved a lot of headaches.
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