What is a wiki?

Wikipedia definition

Wikis in Plain English Video

Who's Using Wikis?

Businesses: Disney, Yahoo, Cingular...and plenty more. Businesses are finding that an internal wiki site is a great way for employees to work collaboratively and share information.

Schools: A free way for students to do group projects online? Teachers are jumping on this bandwagon in a big way. Check out: http://rockwritelisten.wikispaces.com/, http://dvtrack.pbwiki.com/, http://teacherlibrarianwiki.pbwiki.com/, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/South_African_Curriculum

Political Types: People from all over the political spectrum are getting out the vote with the power of wikis. Check out: http://www.superdelegates.org/Main_Page, http://www.editthis.info/wiki/2008_Republican_Platform_Wiki, http://albanygreens.pbwiki.com/

Textbook Developers: Textbook companies of the world, be afraid. Be very afraid: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Portal:Learning_Materials

Fans: Fans know more than anyone, right? Now they can prove it: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page, http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, http://en.sports-wiki.net/Main_Page

Information Seekers: We all know about the Wikipedia juggernaut. But how about http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page and http://askdrwiki.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Physician_Medical_Wiki

Why should you care?

1. You're going to need to use them in your future education and work places.

2. You're going to need new skill sets to use them--namely, how to edit effectively and how to write for a wide audience clearly.

3. It's the direction the web is going--to be a player, you need to follow the trends.