The wiki is a powerful tool for thinking, allowing us to use the computer as a Bicycle of the Mind.
At first, it will feel awkward and confusing much like when first learning how to ride a bicycle. How do you both pedal and steer while trying to keep your balance? That was certainly an awkward challenge. But then there was a moment when all the pieces fell in place, the balance was found and off you went down new roads with the wind blowing in your hair.
Yes, gentle reader, with patience you too will hopefully sense this feeling of the wind through your hair, a liberation that leads to new roads of discovery.
To help you get going, we have organized your wiki into four sections: * information * stories * strategies * insights
information
The wiki is a valuable tool for keeping track of articles, videos, or other resources that you come across that you think might be valuable for you to remember.
Here you can just put a snippet on the page, perhaps a paragraph from the article and a little note to help you find it later using the search function that is built into your wiki.
By using the wiki as a simple notetaker, you are not only storing interesting articles and tidbits for yourself but also for others in your creative pod. This feature allows us to begin to learn as a community from our shared curiosities.
Information Template
We use a template to help us remember how to write an information page. We first ask ourselves: * Why do we want to save it? * What's a small piece that will remind us of its value? * Where did we find it?
We then pause and ask ourselves, what are a couple of pages that are connected to this artifact? We then put links to those wiki pages under the section 'related'.
These connections are important for they help us understand that this information is not just a random fragment but is connected, in our mind, to other ideas that are important to us. These connections form the beginning of a potential pattern of new meaning.
stories
We can use the wiki to help us remember stories that feel important to us. Here we name the story and capture enough of the story to remember not only some of the details but, importantly, the feeling of the story. We recall that stories that have meaning not only have surprise and/or delight, but also inspires us to wonder in new ways.
Stories Template
When we name these pages, we use two words that define what we sense as the meaning of the story for us.
Before we leave this page, we reflect and find a couple of pages that hold concepts that we feel are connected to this story.
strategies
As educators, we are always learning as we experiment with new approaches.
Strategies Template
In these pages we introduce the intention, describe it in more detail, share what our experience was and what we learned.
We also connect that strategy to concepts that we we exploring.
We use a template for writing these pages to help us remember these elements.
insights
The most powerful use of your wiki is to remember meaningful insights that emerge in 'aha' moments that are also called Eureka Moments. We seek to name these insights in ways that hit at its meaning, the write the insight in a way that is not only elegant, but beautiful.
Here we practice using a form known as the Haiku Wiki polishing each paragraph and each page to become that which feels beautiful.
Once crafted, we leave these pages behind, knowing that they will become gifts to our future self and perhaps others.