Wikispaces - So Far, So Good...So Far

I am just learning wikispaces this year in my computer lab. I successfully created wikispaces for each grade-level team, for each grade level student spaces, one for book reviews, and a few others for special area plans. Wikispaces was great about questions and entering twelve classes of username/passwords for me. With so many students, Excel came in handy for name + automatic number combination. I then copy/pasted the lists to send.

Project logistics-
With six classes in each grade level (I'll begin with 4th-5th) I will group students by their number in class to partner/group wikispaces. Also - I'm hoping it's great for distance collaborations too. Kind of like in here - there is something new each time I check in this site... well at least in my mind that is how they will see it. I have read accounts that students get upset over ownership - but that is part of teamwork in "regular" class too. More life lessons.

With daily contact with teachers at my school and online, we have many topics/standards-based projects in mind - it will all depend on what they are doing when we actually begin. I am planning for 4th graders to be ready for On the Trail of the First PeopleURL: http://eev.liu.edu/KK/na/index.htm with Karen.

Safety-
Wikispaces is safe because school account options can be set to members/invitaion only and I have requested that students share their username/password with parents only - this way parents who have reservations feel safer too.
I'm talking/emailing/blogging/newsletter(ing) home about it before we begin so I can field questions/concerns. I have had good discussions with parents which helps me add to my information I send.
Reading AUP's in CR20 has also been very helpful.

The blocking problem-
The past two months I have made numerous requests of our tech department to unblock sites I need/want such as wikispaces, blogger, podomatic..... Each request listed multiple ways I plan to use the site such as integrating technology and other curriculum, staff development, team collaboration/communicaton, and/or teacher/parent communication. So far, so good.

I've been teaching 20++ years, and in this is my 4th year in this position. I still want to ask:
What other organizational - or other - advice is there out there?

Tags: aup, collaborative, elementary, inter-classroom, socialstudies, wikis

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Permalink Reply by Cathy on July 9, 2008 at 12:17pm

I just signed up for an account on Pbwiki and look forward to exploring its use in an elementary school classroom.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca on July 21, 2008 at 4:28am

Hi Cathy,

I've used pbwiki alot last semester but when I asked students to work on the one page together - i.e leave their comments on the same page, the whole system died on us - as it seems you can only ever have one person at a time working on a specific page. I also had endless trouble because I hadn't understood how to stop all the students being notified for every change I made. Oh dear - wikis are my favourite way of teaching, but they are so fraught when you're not a computer whizz. Still, it's worth pursuing and if you have more computer savvy students that I do this should be a great experience for you all.

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Permalink Reply by Glenn Hubbard on April 12, 2009 at 3:07am

If you want students to be able to work together on the page at the same time - Etherpad.

Ideally, they would be Skyping at the same time to discuss their edits and inclusions live.

Glenn.

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Permalink Reply by Marilyn Doore on April 16, 2009 at 9:03pm

I've used Etherpad quite a lot with my students. I have small groups work on the same Etherpad and then assign one student to be the one to save in Etherpad periodically. Then at the end of the time I have one student copy and paste the group's work onto the Wikipage they are responsible for. We've used this very successfully for planet pages in studying astronomy and for country studies.

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Permalink Reply by Vee Paisie on July 16, 2008 at 8:11am

I've used pbwiki with my writers' club and they love it, and have even set up their own pages branching from the club's. They all love to write, so there's never a problem.
My question for those of you using wikis and blogs with classes. I would like to expect my students to blog and/or wiki, but would like to know: There seems to be a potential problem for my crafty 13-year-olds though: When Susie hasn't done her reading assignment and so asks BFF Janie to post a comment for her, what's to stop Janie from logging in as Susie and doing her work for her? Is there a way to tell, using history, or... ?

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Permalink Reply by Ruth Sheffer on July 17, 2008 at 8:05am

I am just setting up a wikispace .But I cannot get the hyperlinks to open the page in a separate window.It navigates away from my wiki site.
Can anyone explain (for dummies) what to do?
thanks

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Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on July 18, 2008 at 2:14pm

I've not been able to do this, although I think it would be a very good feature. I'm surprised that they haven't implemented it.

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Permalink Reply by Vicky S on July 18, 2008 at 4:23pm

I think the only way you can do it is to use an Other HTML widget and type in the HTML code yourself.

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Permalink Reply by Jay Fogleman on August 5, 2008 at 9:00pm

This is consistent with some of the questions on the wikispaces help site. I tried it and it worked for me:

If you wanted to post some "Link Text" that when clicked with take the reader to http://www.the destination page.com in a new window, do the following:

1. Edit the wikispace page where you want the link.
2. Click where you want the link to occur.
3. Choose the "Other HTML" widget in the Media tool.
4. In the field at the bottom of the dialog box, paste this:
Link Text
5. Substitute your own Link Text and destination address.
6. Close the Media tool and save the page.