Wikispaces Classroom

Wikispaces Classroom is something that has been getting quite a bit of press over the last few weeks that I decided to post about after receiving a promotional email.

Here is detailed information from their blog...

• Simplicity. Wikispaces was built to help people work together. All kinds of people, in all kinds of contexts. Over the years we made it easier and easier for teachers and students to use Wikispaces but there were always parts of Wikispaces that weren’t designed for the classroom and frankly, got in the way. In Wikispaces Classroom, all that is gone. It’s streamlined and focused, it puts everything you need to manage your classroom right up front, and it gets everything you don’t need right out of the way.

• Engagement. Wikispaces has always been about engaging teachers and students in meaningful activity and communication in and around the learning process. For Wikispaces Classroom we’ve designed an entirely new way to manage and talk about everything that goes on in our class. Featuring a modern newsfeed, and a simple way to manage assignments, announcements, events, and all of your resources and work, it’s everything you and your students love about social networking but private, in your classroom, and integrated with your day to day work.

• Improve Outcomes. We know that the key to improving student outcomes, however you define them, is to help teachers understand what is happening with each student every day, so that they can spend their time helping each student the way that student needs to be helped. Wikispaces has always had an enormous amount of data about what students are doing, and how they are doing, under the hood, and so we just decided to give that data to teachers in a way they can actually use. In formal terms, it’s formative assessment. In our terms, its our way of making the lives of teachers easier, and helping them help more kids, more efficiently, and more effectively.

And of course, Wikispaces Classroom is free for teachers and students.

You can create a new Wikispaces Classroom now, or convert an existing wiki to Wikispaces Classroom in your Settings area.

Click here to give Wikispaces a try.

Hackpad

Hackpad is a site I just found out about from Free Technology 4 Teachers.  This is a nice site to use for creating a wiki that can be collaborated on w/ others.  A pad can be set to public or private and has a variety of nice features such as: color scheme (to see who wrote what), creating links, task lists, and the ability for everyone to be emailed when changes are made (ie, Wikipedia).

I recommend checking out Hackpad by clicking here!!

For my top 10 sites for creating a wiki click here.

Springnote

Springnote is a great site for creating an online notebook in a wiki style. What makes this ideal for education is the group notebooks that you can create for collaboration. This is done by assigning members for editing similar to a wiki.

I highly recommend checking out Springnote by clicking here!!

For my top 10 sites for creating a wiki click here.

Zapaday

Zapaday is a new (alpha) site for getting news on the web. What makes Zapaday so special is it tries to bring you news of the future rather then current news. Here is a quote straight from their founder...

Stefan Hoevenaar, founder of Zapaday: "The internet makes most news old news, instantly. Journalism is now finding new roles, focusing on background stories, opinions and news previews. An open news agenda supports that change. We believe news agendas should be open and free."

The way this is done is by Zapaday bots that scan the internet for news on over 4000 sites. Then the content is created by "us" the users. Actual, this is kinda like a giant wiki that people can edit and share by way of creating calendars and other type of news events.

I highly recommend checking out Zapaday by clicking here!!

FreedomShare

FreedomShare is a great way to create a "wiki" for sharing text, links, and images. It reminds me a lot of Wikispaces w/out the ability to have subscribers to your page. However, you can click on advanced options and make the page public/private w/ the ability to allow comments.

I highly recommend checking out FreedomShare to introduce the 21st Century concept of wikis by clicking here!!!

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo's wonderful blog for the tip!!

Educational Wiki

Hi all, I created this wiki for an upcoming conference here in WI, but I thought it could be of value w/ others. Below is the link, please feel free to join the wiki and edit as you see fit.

Thanks!!!

http://wemta-edtech-resources.wikispaces.com/

Blogs Wikis Docs oh my!!!

Blogs Wikis Docs is a great chart that I found out from wonderful blog, Langwitches. This is a excellent comparison chart for deciding when to use a blog, wiki, or document.

I highly recommend checking out this useful resource by clicking here!!!

Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a cool site that I just found out about from Zarco English. This is a collection of text books on any number of subjects that can be edited by the readers, just like a typical wiki. While this is a very intriguing site it does bring up the question how reliable is the data. However, there is a drop down button where people can rate the accuracy of content as well as other areas.

I highly recommend checking out Wikibooks by clicking here!!

WikiMindMap

WikiMindMap is a visual way to explore Wikipedia. This is a site that I first heard about on Free Technology 4 Teachers which is an excellent blog.

Below is a pic on the search term, Web 2.0...



Give WMM a try by clicking here.

Technology Faceoff

Technology Faceoff is a new wiki which I designed for a group I created in the social network, Educator's PLN (which I did a review on a few weeks back). This is an exciting group where educators collaborate on 21st Century Technology and try to "weed" out the good from the bad.

The wiki is in it's infancy stage but I think has a lot of promise to help educators decide on which Web 2.0 tools will work for them.

If you'd like to take a look or even join the wiki click here.



For more info visit the Edtech Group on The Educator's PLN.

Debategraph

Debategraph is a great new site for creating visual graphs on debatable topics. For example, if there was a debate if 1 to 1 was a benefit to the school environment, it would be here.

Not only can you create your own debates but you can view their abundant library to see what they have going on. Best of all, this is very much like a wiki so users can edit the content and share w/ others.

Below is an example of a debate on the Education Policy in the US...



For more info click here.