TRU Wiki:About/Why

What is a Wiki?
The fastest way to work the web. Especially for editing, page creation.

A collaborative and participatory utopian online vision. An early example. An even earlier one.

Back when it didn't solidify, it was seen as a blow against the traditionalist mode of education. Oh well.

Why Wiki?
To provide an online space that is simple, accessible, and lightly managed.

To share and document our work. Make it readily retrievable.

To promote iterative and open processes. See (Recent Changes), (Page History), etc...

What is it used for?
For things that use text and media.

For documentation, course information and materials, multi-authored and ongoing writing, and just about anything else.

Why are you calling this KUMU?
While "wiki" is the Hawaiian work for "quick", "kumu" means many things in that language: including "teacher", as well as "starting place" and "gathering place".

Special Features
Embed code for every page. So Sandbox:Test_Course on Kumu could be viewed in any web environment. Such as a WordPress space, a Learning Management System (such as Blackboard and/or Moodle), or the the TRU website. (WordPress also has [a special plugin] for even more precise rendering of MediaWiki pages.)

The "book creator" creates clean and formatted PDF or EPUB versions of assembled content in the Kumu space on the fly.

'''Namespaces and subpages. Automatically generated indices.''' Example. UBC Course Space.

Transclusion - easily allows for blocks of content to be reused and updated easily across the system.

Special:UploadWizard - guides copyright compliant media sharing.

InstantCommons - allow the usage of any uploaded media file from the Wikimedia Commons.  Excellent media and page metadata (stats, citation, etc...).