Ideas to Inspire

What is it: Wikispaces are read/write spaces that are similar to blogs, except that all members of the wikispace are able to read/write and edit each others’ words.

Link: Wikispace on wikispaces – includes how to sign up, get started, as well as examples from other educators.

How it enhances learning in the classroom:

• It gives students a place to collaborate with their classmates and you, even though they are not in the same class period. That makes them accountable to more than just themselves.
• Students publish for a real audience so they are more conscientious about how they present their work.
• It makes their learning transparent to the teacher as a formative assessment tool.
• Parents can see what’s going on in the classroom (or what is not going on in the classroom).

The good: I’ve been most successful at using wikispaces as a space to put our finished products. It is user-friendly and allows students to put their work up, embed videos, links, etc., and MOST importantly, it allows our parents/ohana to have easy access to what we’re doing. For those that want to jazz it up, they can change the font (limited), change the font color, change the alignment, and add bling items like pics, voicethreads, imovies, etc.

The bad: if more than one student is working on the same page at the same time, wikispace can only save one of them.

The ugly: if you are not an educator and ask for a free educator account, you’re going to have advertising on the right side of your screen. Part of the need for everyone to make money.

You Tube of how wikis can help you collaborate. I wish I could embed, but this blog site doesn’t let us embed the video. Something to work on don’t you think?