Wiki Project ADDevelopIE

Development

What tools (or combination of tools) will you use to support the site?

I will definitely be using a wiki provider.  I had planned to use pbwiki because of the comments option that would allow teachers to contribute to a wiki page simultaneously, but after checking out Wetpaint, I switched to that option.  In Wetpaint, you can do more than simply leave a comment on a page.  You can also create a discussion related to the content of the page.  I also was attracted by the very useful templates for creating a site and the more familiar structure of the page and associated tools.  The wiki is going to be especially useful for laying out the plan for our professional development and being a place of sharing becuase it is flexible and can easily be changed on the fly.  An important facet of our grant and training is that we don’t want to dictate the direction of training.  Instead we want teachers to let us know what would be most useful to them and provide professional development in that area.  So the wiki will be a great way to have a flexible environment for the schedule, resources, discussion, and sharing.

What customizations will you need to do to your site?

I will need to create the skeleton structure for the wiki.  That means laying out the schedule, setting up the pages that will be used, etc.  Then the presenters for each break out session will fine tune the pages for each session and teachers will fill out their pages.  Several plugins will be very important.  The first is the plugin that allows for the Google Presentation that will be used on the first day to be embedded within the page of the wiki related to the opening remarks.  Another plugin that I will use is a polling plugin that will allow the presenters to get data on what teachers would like to see in break out sessions.

Are you happy with how well it turned out?

Yes and no.  I like the overall look.  I think it will be easy to navigate and easy to use for teachers.  I also think that seeing a wiki used in professional development may spark ideas for teachers on how they could be used in the classroom (especially since they will be getting hands-on experience with it – not just viewing it).  Where I am disappointed is in the deficiencies of Wetpaint.  I would have liked to be able to edit in HTML mode to fine tune some things, but that feature isn’t available.  Also, I couldn’t figure out how to customize the navigation across the top or on the sidebar.  It looks like you have to take those as is.  That was disappointing.  I hope that may become an improvement in the future with Wetpaint.

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