Dear Collective Brain:
Many Thanks to all who answered my query about wikis. I received a ton
of responses and here are most of them.
Diane Briggs
SLMS
Troy High School
Troy NY
briggsd@troy.k12.ny.us
I recommend wikispaces. It was very easy to figure out.
I like wikispaces. I think it's user friendly and the support people
are excellent. They get right back to you within a day or so (which is
quick in my book for them being in the UK). And I like their floating
toolbar.
PBWiki is very easy but free versions have limited accounts so you may
have to setup a generic user that everyone knows. http://pbwiki.com/ If
your district uses Moodle they have a built-in wiki.
Collaborative documents are easy with Google Docs but may require an
email address to setup an account (doesn't have to be a gmail account)
============================
I use Wikispaces. I find it easy to set up, easy to control and easy to
keep up. To me, it is more visually appealing than some of the others.
The visual editor is pretty straight forward and their help screen has a
lot on it if you run into something that isn't clear. You can control
how open it is to the world and who can edit.
www.pbwiki.com is great!!! has lot of help screens available. Can
copy/paste from word. Easily makes links in text or in the SideBar. I
have used it several times with classes. Now has enhanced user levels
so you can have administrative capabilities and students can edit or not
as you choose.
It is really great. Wikispaces is usually highly recommended also but I
have not used it myself.
I just created my first wiki at wikispaces.com. I had struggled with
trying to use pbwiki and was very frustrated. Nothing made sense to me.
So I searched through some wikis at the Eduscapes website where I have
worked on some online classes (http://eduscapes.com/sessions/wiki/ ) and
noticed that lots of them used wikispaces,
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers . Have fun!
pbwiki is supposed to be as easy as "peanut butter and jelly"
at our library we use centraldesktop.com - track student requests given
to our library clerks at circulation so "us" librarians know what
students are asking to read, or equipment/materials they are expecting
us to have
I have accounts for both pbwiki and wetpaint. For adult use, I much
prefer wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com), as it allows the administrator of
the wiki to "lock down" certain pages once the collaborative work is
complete. This prevents accidental loss of information with users who
are just getting familiar with wikis and how they work.
Diane,
I wrote a review of some of the easiest wikis that teachers and
librarians can use. It's in School Library Journal--
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6438167.html
I've used each of these and can find particular elements that I enjoy
using from each of them. There are tutorials for all of these programs
once you browse the websites, but if you are really tentative about
using one or if you need examples of how they can be used, I'm sending
you links to some tutorials. Hopefully this will help.
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3595340/Zoho-Wiki-Tutorial
http://lis.dickinson.edu/Technology/Training/Tutorials/Web/WikiTipsWeb.p
df
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tutorial
Good luck!
~Shonda
I would recommend the Wikispaces from Google. They have an education
version that has no advertisements. Use this link to access that
service: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
Choose the "private-free for educators" option.
They are really easy to set up and the instructions are good. It's just
word processing with the ability to insert (embed) links,
documents,files, pdfs, videos, very easily.
I use wikispaces.com You can set up a free account for an educator that
will have no ads on it. Other free accounts have ads on the side, and
some of them might be inappropriate for schools. They are very simple
to use. If you'd like, take a look at mine at
dupolibrary.wikispaces.com. It's nothing fancy, but gets info out there
for the students to use.
Try PBwiki.com (as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich). I use one
for an informal school site as our Web site is not maintained by me, its
design is horrible and lacks info. You can see my school's wiki at
http://eatonacademy.pbwiki.com <http://eatonacademy.pbwiki.com/>
By now you've probably heard that either wikispaces or pbwiki work well.
Also, Blackboard, Moodle and Turnitin all have wiki components
Try .... eduscapes.com
go to High Tech Learning
go to High Tech Learning again
go to Learning Spaces
go to Collaborative Web and Wikis
Have fun ... great site!
I've had good success with pbwiki. It's free to educators and they have
great tutorials! They also had a couple quick webinars that I took when
I signed up.
I've also used wikispaces which have good tutorials as well....you'll
definitely like one or the other best.
With either one, make sure you sign up as an educator so you won't have
to worry about the ads.
Hope this helps!
I'm sure someone recommended pbwiki.com they are so simple and easy to
use. It is truly as simple as making a peanut butter sandwich. It
walks you through it and it is super simple.
http://booktalksandmore.pbwiki.com <http://booktalksandmore.pbwiki.com/>
My favorite place to begin with a wiki is PBWiki. The link is:
http://pbwiki.com/academic.wiki
The best way to learn would be to go to the link above, click on "create
a wiki," and make a practice wiki so you can see how pages interlink and
how to edit--so save that really good wiki name for the real one! It's
really as easy as making a Word document. Once you've made a wiki and
logged in,click on the "edit" tab at the top of the page, make a few
changes, and click "save." You select text to change text color, text
size, or to add a hyperlink, just as you would in a Word document or
PowerPoint. Adding pictures is slightly more complicated--you have to
upload the file to the wiki, or link to a photo you have hosted
someplace else, but once you've walked through it once, it's easy.
PBWiki makes it easy to link between pages.
I have some links to PBWiki videos and powerpoints, as well as a few
educational examples here: http://squareone.pbwiki.com/PBWiki+Info
My Library resource wiki (http://squareone.pbwiki.com/) has grown to
over a 100 pages. I even pay (gasp!) out of my own pocket to have a
"premium" wiki, because it makes my life easier, but there's no reason
to use a premium wiki, especially when you're just starting out.
If you have any questions, please e-mail me. We could even set up a
time to talk on the phone--I actually walked my husband through setting
up a wiki for his class over the phone.
Hope this helps!
I use and love Wikispaces. They will give you a free account as long
as you certify the space is used for k-12 education. It's quite simple
to begin and is the host of the LM_Net wiki.
Basic beginning steps
1. Sign up for a space
2. Set up administrative permissions as you'd like (who can view, who
can add/edit etc.,)
3. Add members to the space (they will need to 'join')
4. I recommend creating a page with guidelines for posting and, if you
want consistent formatting, I would also recommend providing a template
for the users to download and use to create their materials. **This is
just my opinion**
5. Start creating or uploading content.
I have two wiki's at bomansbookbanter.wikispaces.com and
coreknowledgelibrarians.wikispaces.com
We use Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com and it's free. You can look at the
one for our local high school at
http://lhslibrarymediacenter.wikispaces.com/ . The teacher librarian
there also set up one for me to use at my elementary school site. We're
still in the process of getting my administrator's approval so I haven't
expanded it much, but the possibilities are endless. Here's the link-
http://helenallenlibrary.wikispaces.com/
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