Google sites

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Permalink Reply by Kevin amboe on February 29, 2008 at 10:13pm

I plan on sticking with wikispaces for a time at least. I have spent the time developing it and building the knowledge base with our teachers with using it.

I do see that eventually it will become too tempting to not switch to google and have a complete solution. In our district we already use google earth, sketch up, reader, docs and some gmail.

They have a better chance of winning us over if there is seamless transition and enhanced features. I was exploring JotSpot before it went underground. At that time I preferred wikispaces. I can say that the tech support for wikispaces has been fantastic. I have tried to contact google for a couple of things without response. The relative small size of wikispaces means they can still be personal and respond quickly and respond individually.

Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Irish on March 1, 2008 at 6:24am

I have a gold PBwiki and at this point have invests lots of time developing the site and inservicing staff.

I just recently created a place on wikispaces and have had lots of trouble getting it to accept my password. Responses from help-form response-when that was responded to-the same form response resent.

I have a Google personal web page, and blog.,ove google doc, and use sketch and earth. Unfortunately my school server see many things from Google as spam. My G mail also sent my OLPC order confirmation to spam as well.

I just got the invite for pbwiki 2.0 and played with it a bit this morning. I am still trying to figure out how link from one page to another. Guess I got used to 1.0. I am hoping they improved the images and lists features

Does an inegrated approach sound good/??? Possibly-but I don't want Google to become the Walmart of the internet elbowing out the small businesses

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Cooper on March 2, 2008 at 6:44am

I have an AP Environmental (http://goapes.wikispaces.com) site at wikispaces and plan to stick with it at the moment. I've put too much work into it to transfer it over. Also, others who use it know where it is. I always dislike going to my favorite sites to find that they have moved. It's like going home and finding that your parents moved while you were away. Doesn't make me feel good.

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Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on March 3, 2008 at 5:47am

I haven't checked out how well Google has done their wiki immitation, but I like the idea that it's integrated with Google Apps. I've used Google Apps to get e-mail for my students that I control. Everytime I have my kids sign up for some site or other, someone gets nervous about it (parents, teachers, or students). Google Apps has meant they could sign up with a "safe" e-mail address (one that could be traced back to me, not them, and cancelled easily if there were problems). With Google Sites it sounds like the students do not need to sign up for anything new. That means no one else needs to be nervous and, as a teacher, I still have control of the situation and can intervene if necessary.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Dickie on March 3, 2008 at 6:25pm

We use Google Apps in our building and I've already started creating a Google Site for our Science Club. So far I really like what I see. Don't get me wrong, there are a few things I wish were different, but I' a nerd. Overall I think most educators, if they give it a chance, will be fairly comfortable with Sites and find it easy to use.

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Permalink Reply by John Plummer on March 3, 2008 at 6:52pm

I have 7 wikis at Wikispaces and like it alot, I don't plan to change them over to anywhere else. But I was curious about Jotspot and signed up for the email when it restarted again. I Just took on a new group of English students and thought I'd use Google sites to try it out but I couldn't even get to do that. I also got the email from Pbwiki about trying out their new stuff too. I'd like to try out the Google stuff because I already use quite a few of their things related to my job, Docs, notebook, Google Earth, etc. My main problem with the Google Sites is that both schools I work for don't have their own email accounts so we all tend to use stuff like Gmail or Yahoo which Sites doesn't accept in the sign-up :-( Was it like this when it was Jotspot?

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Permalink Reply by John Plummer on March 6, 2008 at 2:12pm

I was in the jotspot group in Google and they said that its possible to get a free domain from a website called www.dyndns.com. I went and registered at the site and that was as far as I got. I didn't really understand how to use it to get a domain for google sites. Has anyone else read this in the Google jotspot group and tried and succeeded with this?

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