Mars,

I'd recommend you use Deki Wiki for your project.  I've answered your requirements below.

1. Can integrate chat and VoIP to facilitate communication and collaboration

Chat can for sure be implemented within Deki Wiki.  Not sure on how you want to implement VOIP but should be doable. 

2. Can insert files ONTO the wikipages  - there will be heaps of resources created by teachers of different types (Word docs, Pdfs, other wikipages, etc.). I figure the best way to do that in a wiki is to put them in a table with descriptions. A complex table feature would make this nice too.

You can link to the files within the wiki page, you can embed the files in the page with an integrated document viewer, and you can attach them to a page.

3. A hierarchical sidebar for easy navigation (collapsible folders would be nice too).

Has this

4. Has a template feature to facilitate similar page creation (e.g. personal professional development pages).

Has this

5. Can insert superscript and math symbols so that teachers can easily use the wikipage to create math focused resources.

Deki Wiki has a math extension that allows you to compute an equation and displays it using LaTeX characters.

6. Can edit source of wikipage to introduce i-frames for such things as forums.

Yes

7. If not the above, then the wiki has a good threaded discussion feature.

We include Flat comments for discussing on each page.

8. Stable wiki that will not disappear for while. Also should be able to download content of wiki.

Deki Wiki is downloaded over 2,000 times a day and has commercial support that is available for purchase.  Customers include: EPA, Mozilla, Expedia, and the US Army. 

If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us directly here: http://wiki.mindtouch.com/support

Last edited by cjtannu (2008-03-25 23:20:28)

Mars,

  Glad to hear everything is working out for you.

1. Is it possible that there be a generic titled page in the sidebar entitled myPage (for example), but when clicked upon it will be the specific personalized page of the user.

There actually is a My Page at the Top of the Screen that when clicked on is associated with the logged in User. 

2. and another thing, could content from another page in that wiki (e.g. new and updates) be inserted into that personalized user page (above or in the midst of their own content) and change automatically when the content is altered on the news and updates page?

You can do this using Tranclusions.  The way you'd set it up is to use the following DekiScript:

{{wiki.page("/path/subpage")}}

There are more examples of the extensions here: http://wiki.opengarden.org/index.php?ti … _Variables

Also within your WYSIWYG editor you'll notice a cog icon, this allows you to graphically insert DekiScript and other extensions. 

Let me know if you have any other questions.

However what I would like is for the chat program and Skype or similar to be omnipresent in the wiki, so that no matter where a person is they can see if someone is chatting to them, preferably with an alert. That way they could be editing the same or different pages and still communicate/collaborate. I am not sure where the chat window would sit. I am thinking that under the left navigational sidebar would be one place. Is anything like this possible?

We have different extensions and there are widgets that you can add to your site that says if a person is online or if you have a chat room setup that you can enter the room.  It depends on how you want to set it up.  If you want it to be more of a room like gabbly or if you want it to be a single IM account that people can interact with, like online chat support.

If the wiki becomes largish with numerous pages (scores of them) and files (potentially in the hundreds) stored there, and APIs(?) here and there (by that I mean a googlemap, chat, flikr, etc.), will that slow the speed of page loading and saving and navigation? (It was slow this evening, but not sure why).     If that is the case if the wiki is downloaded and run on a local server (which seems unlikely since I would have to try and climb that learning curve and not sure if it can be done at my school, or alternatively convince the Education Department to put it on their server which seems like a massive hurdle to jump) would that be quicker?

The more content you add to the wiki it can take longer to load as the wiki is pulling in information from the respective services that you have embedded in the page.  If you anticipate the site to get very large then I would encourage you to take a look at moving it to your own hosting.  We have support plans to answer any questions you'd have about setting up Deki Wiki, configuring, and using.  Take a look at our plans here: http://wiki.mindtouch.com/Deki_Wiki/Dek … rt_Pricing

BTW I think that the ability to edit single sections of a page as well as the entire page is a great features, since that would be great for synchronous collaboration. (I hope I am right in assuming that this allows simultaneous editing of a page).

You are correct with your assumption.

If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us here: http://wiki.mindtouch.com/support

Thanks

Mars, you might want to check out Moodle as well.  It is a very established and robust open source program that is used by a lot of educators.

(I am not related to them in any way.  However, while running the training team at Royal Caribbean I did look at a lot of LMS, LCMS, CMS, and early wiki solutions and felt that Moodle had the most bang for the buck.  The Royal Caribbean port-of-call training team ended up using Moodle and they love it.)