Help selecting best tool for the job

Hi,

I would appreciate some help with the following problem. I am setting up a class webpage. I have decided to use a wiki for the purpose since I will be using a wiki for a couple of assignments anyway and they are very easy to configure. The trouble that I am running into is that I have 5 classes and I need to either have 5 separate wikis ($$$) or to have pages in one wiki restricted for each class. The two wikis that I am considering based on ease of use and flexibility are wikispaces and pbwiki. Neither one offer page-level access and each one would charge about $1000 a year (way outside of my budget) for 5 separate wikis. Even if I used another tool for the class webpage I would still need to have separate wikis for the assignments and I would still need separate class pages as well. Any ideas? Thanks. Tom

Tags: class webpages, tools, wikis

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Steve Hargadon on August 17, 2007 at 4:50pm

Tom:

Wikispaces is free for k-12 classroom work. Not sure about pbwiki, but think they may also be. Wikispaces link for this is: http://www.wikispaces.com/t/x/teachers100k

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Tom Wells on August 17, 2007 at 5:02pm

Thanks Steve,

I know that both sites offer free wikis, the big trouble is that they only offer one free space. To do what I want I would need to have 5 separate sites. Tom

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 17, 2007 at 5:45pm

I may not be following you but you can have as many wikispaces as you want for free. I've got 8 set up, 4 students, 4 for teachers. The beauty of the wiki is they can add content, do you want that? You might want to look around at some of the stuff I've done, blogs, wikis, webpages, projects; for a compare and contrast. A Not So Different Place

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Colette Cassinelli on August 17, 2007 at 5:48pm

I have a free wikispace teacher account and host (at least) five different spaces. Some private and some public.

After you log into wikispace, click on My Account at top right. You can then add a new space (under ACTIONS in navigation bar)
and your name will be attached to all your sites.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Tom Wells on August 17, 2007 at 6:14pm

Thanks for your replies. Perhaps my setup is somewhat different. I am a college Instructor and so I don't technically qualify for the free teacher spaces at wikispaces. I do have an account at wikispaces, and it will certainly let me set up as many public or protected spaces as I want. What I would like to do though is to setup private spaces for each class which can only be viewed and edited by that class. To do that they want to charge me $5.00 per space/month.

If I use PBwiki I can setup as many free, private spaces as i want to. However, the free spaces are very limited. To have a reasonably functional space I would have to pay for each one. That would end up costing on the order of $1000/year.

I will certainly look at "A Not So Different Place" for more ideas. Thanks. Tom

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jay Fogleman on January 30, 2008 at 9:51am

I currently use wikispaces for a wiki that includes more than one class. I can confirm that wikispaces is not free at the college level, but I have found that having more than one class use the same space has the following advantages:
* I can ave classes produce artifacts for audiences in different classes
* I can accumulate a common set of template pages for multiple groups in one class, i.e. all groups in class A use the same report format by putting it in a "new page" template.
* I can monitor all the activity of all groups on one "changes" page.
* I can reorganize or re-combine the work of different groups after the work is complete.

Tip: Use the sidebar in wikispaces to create "subspaces" for each group by giving each group its own "home page."

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 17, 2007 at 6:20pm

A odd wikispace issue---if you go to "My Account" to make a new space you will have ads even if you had the teacher ad free the first time. You have to make a new space through the free teacher link. Wacky. I get tickled whenever I email for help. The whole thing is done by three "kids" at least 40 years younger than I am. But, there replies are always so "formal". Cute.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on August 18, 2007 at 4:21pm

Adam, It certainly wasn't a slam...it was a compliment, I can tell you take your business seriously which is good and your response to HELP is better than most! Thanks for wikis and your support. N

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James Dykstra on August 17, 2007 at 10:36pm

I've used wikidot.com for a few wikis in the past year. It offers a lot of different levels of control, it has no ads, and it's free. Yes, it's too good a deal to be true, but they're up there and they're doing great stuff.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dean Mattson on August 18, 2007 at 8:26am

One other option exists if you have access to a server. Moodle has a wiki component as well. It's rather rudimentary, but it works. What's nice about it is you can set up your one wiki for the assignment, but all the different classes ("groups" in Moodle) that will be doing that assignment will be kept separate.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by John Plummer on February 11, 2008 at 11:07am

You can sign up with someone like www.110mb and get 5000meg free spaces and you can run php stuff there that doesn't need mysql so I have dokuwiki up and running. Its quite good, I haven't really done a lot with it yet as I also use Wikispaces. At 110mb you'll need to make a small payment if you wanna use mysql. The site has lots of information, you can install blogs, photo orgainizing stuff too, all mine uses php but no mysql to do all these.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Michael Misovec on August 31, 2007 at 12:12am

HelpingStudents.org is nonprofit that provides free wikis for education purposes.
We provide page level access. The software is open source and your wiki may be downloaded and copied
to a school server.

www.k12.bz