A Many-to-Many Publishing & Collaboration Tool

The MAASE Wiki is basically a web site editable by its users. A wiki site combines some of the features of email, web sites, blogs, listserv, forums, etc. (click for a overview or a deeper discussion on collaborative uses of the web). The site uses resources from pbwiki.com, so named because using this site is intended to be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.

The purpose of the MAASE Wiki is to support the professional development mission of MAASE with a knowledge management and decision support forum via an interactive platform that facilitates:

• a knowledge base - for official documents such as state/federal laws, rules, policies, technical assistance documents housed at the Oakland Schools Compliance Services site
• networking - for unofficial, creative, collaborative input from the field about how to meet the mandates while addressing practice considerations and critical issues
• collaboration - with a few reasonable editorial guidelines.

   

On the internet, there are hundreds of thousands of wikis covering every vocational and avocational topic. The most famous wiki is the huge Wikipedia containing millions of pages. The Harvard Business School estimates that all Fortune 1,000 companies use some form of wiki. A search the internet will find numerous uses of wikis in government and polictics. We use a simple format that begins with a brief description of an issue an the opportunity for reader contributions. Many topic pages of the MAASE Wiki, however, are also anchored the corresponding pages of a publicly-accessible collection of official state/federal law, policy, and technical assistance documents for special education compliance at the Oakland Schools Compliance Support Services web site. The collection of mandates may be changed by request as users find and submit new compliance documents.

Accessing and Editing the MAASE Wiki

The MAASE Wiki is accessible to anyone on the internet on a read-only basis. The special-interest nature of the content should limit editors/readers to, at our most optimistic, several hundred users. A smaller number of users are given permissions by MAASE to be trusted writers/editors with the role to "housekeep" the pages and accept contributrion from the field. Collaboration is what this site is all about, and restrictions on the use of this Wiki will be implemented only as absolutely necessary.

Front Page is an index of topics and also contains some search engines that seach various subsets of the special education web-based literature. The What's New page conveniently lists recent contributions. 

On the Front Page a limited number of critical files are given for each topic, although a topic may also link to its own separate page (each must be hosted by a volunteer Page Editor) with more extensive resources.  (Information accessible from this page is similar to that on the CD previously distributed at annual State Montors' meetings)

We do not claim any legal validity of the practical suggestions, although specific citations to state/federal law or policy are given (key practice hint: no matter what you hear legend and lore, always re-eaxamine the original source of authority) . Suggestions also do not constitute official MAASE position statements, unless clearly indicated as such (see the MAASE.org site for MAASE documents). When more definitive answers are needed, we hope this site provides a point-of-departure for our readers to: (1) further research relevant sources of legal authority or research-based practice, or (2) ask informed questions of a school attorney or other expert as needed.