94. Wikispaces

Wikispaces have recently announced another 250,000 free sites for educators which is excellent news.The first time they offered 100,000 free spaces, and the uptake was relatively slow, and then the uptake grew very rapidly leaving some teachers without this option. However wikispaces have again offered educators 250,000 advertisment spaces free of charge if you are an educator. Create a couple of spaces, even if you don't use them immediately.

Although the advertisements are not pervasive, they are there and some of them perhaps a bit over the top for our younger sweethearts, hence the educators spaces with out the advertisements. Remember to tick the Private space and also Educational Use.

I have also been learning about all the extras you can add to your wiki page to create more appeal on the pages. As I work through the addtional features I continually ask... Will this make a diference to children's learning? I'm still learning so watch this space later.

The librarian at Outrum School in Dunedin has created a wiki, showcasing learning. Check it out.



Why use a wki?
They are collaborative spaces, and allow you to have mulitple pages all within easy navigation off the side menu bar. Your students can share their learning with their community from home, strengthening those home school partnerships. Possibly one of the best features is the fact that it is easy to embed podcasts, movies, images and files, all from within the wiki itself, rather than going off to find a third party application that will gtive you the code to embed. Wikispaces are free and are open source social software, so your wiki is held out there in the ether, and able to be edited from anywhere, any time. The kids love them too, isn't that an incentive to join up.