I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to work with Wikka Wikki, and it hasn’t been easy. I think I’ve got something that isn’t too messed up right now. I couldn’t have said that a few hours ago though. It’s not what I’d call pretty. But then, it’s a wiki, and plain brown wrappers seem to be the standard.

Joan, my colleague from The Hill, has been in touch with me about this project we are working on. I mentioned to her that I had renamed the wiki TrueNorth, and dedicated it to teacher researchers in Alaska. So she emailed me back to let me know that a bunch of the statewide mentor teachers were getting together this weekend to plan some research, and that the wiki might be just the ticket. The statewide mentors are a group of academic-minded teachers who are hired by the Dept. of ED to go around and help other teachers figure out how to be (more) effective. Kind of like a hotshot crew of firefighters, the way I imagine it. They might not agree, but that’s my perspective until one of them straightens me out. So now instead of just me and Joan doing a little bit of work on the little wiki, I might have a whole tribe of teachers wading through the site. Pretty cool. :) But…

I started wondering today how many loose ends I had to clean up. Then I began to think about the responsibility of housing other people’s research data. THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF! Once other people begin to put things on there I can’t all of a sudden decide that I want to do major housekeeping. Things like backing up the database and whatnot come to mind. There was an annoying bug in the program that prohibited the comments form field from displaying. I really wanted that feature. And then when I tried to access the project docs from the Wikka Wiki site, the domain was blocked by the school district’s server. Irritating.

The district has spyware installed on all of our computers, but the little eyes of the Network Assistant binoculars are aimed right at me from the toolbar on my desktop all day long. Other people I work with have the binocular icon, too. But theirs isn’t looking at them. I wonder what they think I’m doing? I know that my search habits don’t fit the mold. It would be fun to get a call from downtown some time.

Anyway, I think I have that house in order…for now.