1. Introduction
2. Sponsor's Spot: The Morningstar Academy
3. Weekly Topic: How to Create a Wiki
4. Printables Club Members Also Get ...
5. Quote of the Week
6. Subscription Management
#1. September 17, 2008
Dear Reader,
I got slammed by readers disagreeing with me about Michelle Rhee's plan to pay kids to show up at school. Anyone out there agree with me that extreme curcumstances require outrageous actions? Click through to my blog post, and let me know what you think: Should Kids Be Paid to Show Up at School?.
A wiki is a type of collaborative website with integrated tools for adding and editing content. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia.org is one popular example, WikiHow.com is another. But not all wikis give public editorial rights as Wikipedia does. A wiki can also be created for a classroom or a club, with an administrator who decides what pages are editable, and who can do the editing. Learn more about creating wikis at the following sites.
Google Docs
Although they do not call themselves a wiki, Google Docs provides a powerful set of collaboration tools, a familiar interface, and meets most of the usual wiki criteria. With a free Google account, you can post and share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. As the document owner, you control who can views and edits each document. Since the documents are stored remotely, they are accessible from anywhere; and changes made by anyone, are immediately available to everyone. Forget the old paradigm of email, edit, email. Google Docs is a revolution in cooperation.
PBWiki
PBWiki provides anyone a free wiki website for up to three users, but educators get a special deal: a 10MB wiki for an unlimited number of users for free. Key features include speedy setup, an audit trail of changes made to the wiki pages, RSS and email notification of wiki updates, IP whitelisting and blacklisting, and four roles to control access: Reader, Writer, Editor and Administrator.
PikiWiki
With drag-and-drop simplicity, PikiWiki is the easiest wiki to learn, and a great one for elementary-age kids. Not only is PikiWiki, free, but you can even build your first page without any registration. I recommend using Internet Explorer, as I had some difficulty using the site with Firefox. "With PikiWiki, even novice computer users can create unique, expressive web pages by dragging and dropping pictures, video, or any other media into their browser right from their computer desktop. ... Friends and family can similarly contribute to your page or create their own pages for you to contribute to."
"This bridge will take you halfway there — the last few steps you will have to take yourself." ~~ Shel Silverstein (September 25, 1930 – May 10, 1999) American poet, songwriter, musician, composer, cartoonist, screenwriter and author of children's books.
Dear Reader,
