Thing 15

For Thing 15, I got to finally understand what Wikis are all about! A big fan of Wikipedia for light "research" purposes, I had never fully understood the way these tools work until completing this assignment. As I looked over a few of the options provided for exploration (Princeton's summer book club, Wikinomics--which would have been helpful to me in high school economics class!--and the Teacherlibriarianwiki) the main theme I noticed with all of these sites is collaboration. This purpose was also apparent in the video, Wikis in Plain English, in which we are given the example of friends planning a camping trip and using a Wiki to get organized and all be involved on the same level in planning. The concept reminds me of using a Facebook group to plan an event; once a person joins, he or she can contribute for all group members to see,and everyone stays connected because everyone can log on and see or edit the same page.
As I edited the APSU 23 Things Wiki "Sandbox", I found it slightly tedious to navigate. Luckily, one of the first posts from a classmate I saw on the frontpage advised anyone looking to edit the wiki to create an account first. After doing this, I clicked around until I found a "Create Page" button. My page doesn't show up on the front section, but can be found pretty easily under the "Pages" section. It was a fun experience, a little like participating in an online discussion board but with more options for editing your contribution.