Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Easy Wikis: Jottit

http://jottit.com/

For those of you who really want to create your own blogs or wikis, but need an easy site to help you grow your expertise, I suggest both Blogger (http://blogger.com/) and Jottit (http://jottit.com/), create by Camtasia Studio 4. I tried the Jottit site out yesterday, and would think it easy enough for most beginners to master in a very short time. My sample wiki is at http://wccaelc.jottit.com/, and is just a practice site for me to try new techniques. I've used other wiki sites, such as Wetpaint (http://wetpaint.com/) and until recently, was concerned about the ads (it is free, after all). However, you can now apply as an education site which eliminates most of the ad content, solving that dilemma,
Jottit is a no nonsense site developed for educational uses. It isn't as robust as say the Wetpaint site, but you quickly learn how to adapt to a wiki format. A very useful tool in the edit mode, where you will be creating your content, is in the top right corner, and it is called 'formatting help', This gives you some simple coding tools to create things such as italics or links. You can create as many pages as you like, and you can edit them as you need to. Like most wikis, it also gives you a history of your edits. If you are new to the world of wikis, this is a great starter site. Check out the screencast on Demo Girl if you need more instruction: http://demogirl.com/2007/11/02/build-a-website-on-the-fly-with-jottit/.