Wikis in the Classroom
Engines for collaboration
www.wikispaces.com and www.pbworks.com are two great PDSB approved wiki sites.
Wikispaces has more functionality for free built in which makes it a powerful choice
Wikispaces has more functionality for free built in which makes it a powerful choice
Step 1: Sign up for an account
Goto www.wikispaces.com and click on the "Teachers" button on the bottom left.
Click "Sign up and start your wiki"
Step 2: Make sure you select K-12 Educator.
By selecting K-12 Education as your industry and clicking on "certify this wiki" you gain additional free wiki functionality.
Step 3: Setup a group task that will take advantage of a wiki's possibilities
You can click on the "Edit" button to add texts, pictures or links to your homepage.
If you add a link it automatically creates a new page to that link
Step 4: Track individual contributions
Click on the "clock" icon at the top of each wiki page to view all changes to the page.
All edits are recorded and can be undone and compared to each other.
Step 5: Discussion Forums
Tell your students to be 'in charge' of their own page, and if they wish to comment on or collaborate with other groups, they can add comments to each page's built in discussion forum
Step 6: Get your student's names into the system.
Press "Manage Wiki" and then "User Creator"
Wikispaces can create users if you upload a class list in excel file format.
Follow the instructions on the user creator page. Your ITRT can help you with this step.