Wikispace

[jsfowler]

How many of you have a wikispace? Tell us how you use it.

What other forms of internet communication do you use with students and parents? Classroom websites? Edublogs?

[Boxcar]

I've not heard of Wikispace before.

I don't do MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, ect. This is really the only place I post.

A classroom website is good for the children's families. I like this and e-mail. The preschoolers are too young to be involved in much of that stuff, but i do like to put up things for them too.

[DarrenB]

I created a wikispace for my students (I teach 7th grade Language Arts). It started out of a desire for my students to have a safe place to go online and interact without the fear of "strange" people getting involved. I have to personally accept any member into the space, and I only allow my students to join.

The wikispaces have a great setup that allows a collaborative creation of an online community. There are chat boards and bulletin boards. Students can upload their pictures and create "walls" for their graffiti style postings.

Having an online community requires specific management techniques, many of which require a bit of fore-knowledge about what can happen in these online communities. I remind my students that even though they are contributing to the wikispace from home, the wikispace is still school. Don't say anything on the wikispace that you wouldn't say at school. My usual classroom expectations and rules apply on the wikispace just like at school.

Once the students get this point, I just have to remind students to be a bit gentle with their words since online communication frequently comes across much more harshly than the writer intends.

I find wikispace to be a much safer arena than Myspace, and it meets the students' needs of getting together online. I would much rather my own children get online with a class's wikispace under a teacher's watchful eye rather than the wide open space of MySpace.

I wish I could show you my students space, but I've restricted all access to members of my class and my administration. But there are a bunch of educators out there using wikispace and having fun!

I also blog, but prefer the collaboration of the wikispace rather than the me-centeredness of a blog. Here's my blog address: http://www.teacher.haywood.k12.nc.us/~dbarkett/blog/

Hope this helps!

[Boxcar]

I think it is a great idea to create a safe space for your students. If my students were older, I would definetly copy you and set up something like this.

[wig]

I use wikispaces quite a bit. We did a collaborative History project with a school across the country. My language arts students are posting their favorite writings. My sixth graders actually posted their research report on line last year. My seventh grade world cultures class is posting a diary of their trip to Africa.

[Aziz]

Great idea! I will look into it to use for my students next year.

-Aziz

[jsfowler]

Does anyone use Moodle?

[Boxcar]

What is Moodle? I have trouble keeping up with all the different sites.

[jsfowler]

http://moodle.org/