http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2006/05/18/wiki-on-a-stick/
Having talked to various people about “Wiki on a Stick”, I thought I’d better have a go. The first page that I found was one at MediaWiki - which is the one I’d seen before. I intially tried the method with Uniform Server3_3, though that started to look rather fiddly (and quite large, given that I only had a 64 MB stick). So I then tried the Alternate approach using WOS portable. That was much more straightforward to install, however, once installed I couldn’t get it to work on my PC in the office at all. I decided that it was most likely to be the University set up - so tried my tablet. I got a bit further this time (i.e. the server started running). However, I still couldn’t get MySQL to run. Remembering that I had MSSQL on there for Perception testing, I tried at home. Still the same problem. I did get it running from the hard drive in the end, but that required me to download & install the earlier version of WOS - which didn’t have a “Small Edition”, so the overall size was over 120 MB.
I had a further google, and it seems that there are other ways of installing a server on a stick, however, I suspect that given the fact that I couldn’t get it going on the University PC would mean that this isn’t a sensible approach if we’re thinking of getting students to use a wiki on a stick for note keeping, so another approach.
So, I’ve found two “Wiki on a stick” options that don’t seem to require a server. While I rather like the sound of t StickWiki , the fact that it only runs in Firefox, while not a problem for me, wouldn’t necessarily suit students, so TiddlyWiki seems to have the edge. It’s tiny! Basically it’s a 159kb html file that can be downloaded. It contains all the JavaScript required to allow you to start to build a wiki. I think that it will take a bit of playing with to get to understand how to use it, and I’m rather unsure of its accessibility. I’ve tried a couple of the accessibility tests on the AIS toolbar, and the results don’t seem too good.
As it was so small, I’ve put StickWiki (even smaller) on the same USB stick & will see what the pros & cons of each are. (So far StickWiki seems to be working in IE as well as Firefox, and I think that I prefer it).