Showcase: Professional Development Wikis

By wendy | Published: November 5, 2012

We’ve heard from many of you that you’re always looking for more training and professional development resources. We’re excited to share with you some fantastic examples of how educators are using wikis to bring together their professional development resources. We hope they spark your creativity.

iPads and Professional Development at Buhler USD 313

Rosemary Miller, District Integration Technology Specialist from Buhler Unified School District 313 in Buhler, Kansas, uses wikis regularly to organize all of her professional development resources. One of Buhler’s wikis at http://buhleripads.wikispaces.com/ is a great example of this. You can find information on different apps for the iPad as well as how they’re being used in the classroom. Be sure to check out how they snazzed up their wiki with a custom Wikispaces theme and embedded graphics.

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Empowering Teachers to Empower Students

Helen Gooch, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools in Clarksville, Tenneesee, uses Wikispaces to “house all the technology we do here in the district as an exemplar of what is possible and a test bed for assisting teachers with their implementation.” Check out just one of their rich professional development wikis at http://empowerstudents.wikispaces.com/.

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Organize Workshops and Conferences

By sharing your PD resources and events on a wiki, your educators can easily reference, share, and engage with them. Melissa Shields from Etowah County Schools hosts her workshops on her wiki. Her teachers visit the site to find PowerPoints, exercises, checklists, and even how-to videos from her workshops.

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Manitou Springs School District uses a wiki for their Summer Learning Institute. There, attendees can find resources and activities for each event, work on them at their own pace, and return to them as needed throughout the year. Adrienne Michetti from the Australia International School of Singapore posts her workshop resources in one place as well.

We’ve highlighted a few ways people are using wikis to support their professional development, but we’d love to hear more. Let us know in the comments below. How do you PD?

Posted in Education, Wikispaces | Leave a comment

Classroom Case Study: Room 14 Goes Mobile in Auckland

By wendy | Published: September 27, 2012

Students Using iPads

“It’s easier to type.”
“Fun to touch.”
“Easy to find pages.”



This is what the students in Amy McCauley’s room at Pinehill Elementary in Auckland, New Zealand said as they worked on their class wikis from their iPads. Amy’s doing a pretty extensive iPad roll-out this year and we were able to watch the progress unfold over Twitter. Students in particular really enjoyed the ability to use Wikispaces on their iPads “anywhere because the iPads are small and portable.”

We asked Amy to share a bit about her overall use of Wikispaces and how her students have fared with the new mobile experience. We hope it’s helpful to you as you roll out mobile devices in your own learning space.

How I use Wikispaces
Planning. I have all my planning (overviews, units and lessons) on a private wiki that my team all has access to. This is a great way for me to have all my planning online and easily accessible. I used to have all my elearning links in hundreds of different places (emails, bookmarks, written down!) and now I can link and have them all in one place! (Note: Amy’s school also has a great eLearning Resource wiki that you can check out!)

Class Wiki
We have our class wiki, which is really the central hub for all lesson plans, help, and supporting materials for their lessons. I post as much as possible so students can go and have a look when they need to. For example, if we have been discussing something in class, they can have another look at a related slideshow or website. I manage the space and my students add content in some places, all using their iPads.

Student Wikis
Students have their own Wikispace which I like to call their ebook. They have control over their own space. I run individual learning programs and within their weekly program they have allocated time to ‘publish’, which involves putting up content on their Wikispace. I also check these spaces and add comments as well as make notes. For example, this week as I have focused on their blogs and writing, I have notes to catch-up with various students and have left comments for them to make changes or move forward using the comment function.

Within their wikis, the students have each set up a blog page. As we don’t have email addresses for the students, I couldn’t find a blog site for the students that met all our needs. I got the students to set up a page called ‘blog’. Students are expected to blog at least once a week, reflecting on their learning. I have just put an RSS feed (thanks to the advanced webinar last month!) of each of their blogs on our class wiki. I have 6 featured blogs at the top!

Thanks Amy! We look forward to hearing more from you as you and your students bring iPads to the world of wikis.

Be sure to follow Room 14′s journey on Twitter.

Posted in Education, Wikispaces | 5 Responses

Introducing the Editable Website wiki type

By Sarah | Published: September 25, 2012

With our latest release, we have introduced the concept of wiki types, and our first new wiki type is the Editable Website.

All of the Wikispaces you know and love are what we are now calling Basic Wikis. They emphasize collaboration and discussion around the content you and your users work on together.

But sometimes you just want to put a website up for others to view. You want the easy editing of Wikispaces but you don’t want people visiting your wiki to see all of the editing and discussion functions. For those times, our new Editable Website type is perfect. When you create an Editable Website wiki, we hide the editing and management tools – like Edit and Manage Wiki – from your members and visitors. Organizers are still able to edit the wiki like normal, but others will only see a website.

Getting started

When you create a new wiki you’ll be given the option to choose a wiki type. If you already have a wiki and you want to change its type, head to Manage Wiki and then Wiki Info. When you create a wiki in editable website mode, your wiki permissions will be set to protected, and comments and discussions will be disabled.

As an organizer you’ll see a rectangular icon in your black global navigation bar at the top of the screen. Click on it to reveal your edit button, page options, and action menu in the sidebar. Click it again to hide these options.

Try it out

Here are some ideas for how to use our new Editable Website wiki type:

  • Create your own website. If you’re looking to share resources, videos, and links with your students or other visitors, it’s now easier than ever.
  • Collaborate then publish. Start a collaborative writing project that you build with your students as a Basic Wiki. Then, when it’s ready, switch over to an Editable Website and share it with parents.
  • Create public-facing content on top of your private workspaces. Our Private Label service lets you create as many wikis as you’d like to on your own site. By choosing between our new wiki types, you can decide how people interact with the content you build. Use Editable Website wikis to share news and information with your parents, community, or customers. Or set up Basic Wikis to encourage collaboration in your classrooms or departments. More options, more flexibility.

How are you using our new Editable Website wikis? Let us know in the comments below.

And be sure to keep an eye on the blog to learn about upcoming wiki types and features.

Posted in Features, Wikispaces | 10 Responses

Join us for our Digital Citizenship Panel

By wendy | Published: September 20, 2012

Join us for our Digital Citizenship Panel on Tuesday, Sep. 25th at 11am PDT

Our team has the pleasure of working with some pretty amazing educators from around the globe, and we’re always amazed at how they’re handling some of today’s most innovative initiatives and biggest challenges in education.

Last month, we had our first panel on school solutions for blended learning where we saw ways to bridge face-to-face learning with online pedagogy. Each panelist shared how they plan, execute and evaluate a blended learning and flipped classroom environment and we took questions online.

This Month

This month, we’ll be exploring the topic of Digital Citizenship and Wikispaces. Three Digital Citizenship advocates will share their thoughts, experiences, and best practices in this live online panel. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear how to begin, rejuvenate, or tweak your commitment to help students discover what Digital Citizenship means in today’s world.

Our Panelists


Kelly Mendoza
Common Sense Media
@kellymendoza





Jeff Brain
Reed Union School District
Tiburon, CA
@misterbrain




Gail Desler
Oak Grove Unified School District
San Francisco, CA
@GailDesler




Want to join?

1. Sign up and we will send you information before and after the event.
2. Come to our event page at 11am PDT on Tuesday, Sep. 25th where the live event will be streaming. With a Google+ account, you can easily type questions into the comment box and we’ll answer them live from Google+. Alternatively, you can ask questions via the hashtag #panel2012.
3. Can’t make it? No problem. It will be archived on our YouTube Channel directly after the event.

Posted in Education, Events, Wikispaces | 3 Responses

Wikispaces for iPads

By Sarah | Published: September 14, 2012

Wikispaces now works even better with iPads! With our latest release for mobile devices, you’ll find a sleeker interface, seamless navigation, and the same rich wiki functionality you’ve come to expect from Wikispaces.


A few things to note as you get started:

  • The tools for working on your page – Edit, Discussions, Comments, History and Other Page Options – are right there at the top of the screen. Head to Other Page Options to tag, rename, delete, or otherwise manage your page.
  • Your sidebar now lives at the bottom of your screen. There you can find Wiki Home, Recent Changes, Pages and Files, Members, and Other Wiki Options.
  • Looking for your wiki navigation or Manage Wiki? Head to the Other Wiki Options button at the bottom right of the screen to find your full sidebar. (Psst. It looks like an ellipsis “…”)

So go ahead, grab your iPad, and head to your wiki! We think you’ll love the changes.

Stay tuned to see how educators are using Wikispaces and iPads in their classrooms.

Rolling out iPads across your school or district?
Wikispaces Private Label offers an easy way to bring collaboration to your classrooms while managing all your accounts and activity. Contact us today to learn more.

Update: With iOS 6, you can now upload photos and videos directly from your iPad! Let us know what you think.

Posted in Features, Wikispaces | 18 Responses

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