A wiki experiment

For anyone who might like to try participating in a wiki (collaborative writing environment), I have put a draft version of my next Media Matters column for Leading & Learning on a free wiki site:  Jot Spot. Log on with "guest" (no quotes) as both your username and password. If you make changes, and feel free to do so, please add your name or initials to the bottom of the document so I can see how many people contributed. I will note in the printed column that it was wiki-ized.

I'm doing this for a couple reasons. First, the topic is one on which I do not particually consider myself an expert  -  web logs. There are many  experienced folks who can increase the value and accuracy of the column for the eventual print reader if willing to make some additions and/or changes.

Second, I'd  just like to see how this wiki business pans out. I am not, by nature, a collaborative writer. Other than asking the LWW to proof read my writing for its most egregious errors in grammar and clarity, I don't like other people touching my nouns, verbs, or, especially, my adjectives. I am keeping my draft of the column in good-old Word just in case people really muck this up. (OK, I am uneasy.)

If this works, I may be on to a real time-saving ploy. Perhaps I can just throw an outline or even an idea out on a wiki and let the world write for me! I have a book that desperately needs revision. Should the wiki-sphere have a go at that too? The possibilities are mind-numbing and very appealing to this latent sloth.

What’s New - summer writings

Top Ten Secrets for a Successful Workshop Here are some easy ways to make a good workshop a GREAT workshop.

Foreword to Joyce Valenza’s new book Super Searchers Go To School : Sharing Online Strategies with K-12 Students, Teachers, and Librarians, Cyberage Books/Information Today, Inc., 2005. This is a really good book -get it! In it my friend Joycie interviews some of the very best minds in the field on online searching, evaluating information, and techniques for helping student library users do those things. I was brought in for comic relief.

“More Voices Create Better Policies” The School Administrator, August 2005.

My 2004-2005 Head for the Edge columns from Library Media Connection (and other magazines) are now available .

“Linking Libraries and Literacy” (a review of The Power of Reading: Insights into the Research, 2nd edition. Stephen D. Krashen. Heinemann/Libraries Unlimited, 2004. ISBN: 1-59158-169-9. KQ on the Web, AASL, Spring 2005.