Wikispaces for Teachers A Guide to Using Them in Your Classroom Overview: This presentation is a template we have prepared for you to use in your own presentations about using wikis in education. We encourage you to use the parts you like, change it around to suit your purposes, and send us the final presentations you use so that we can improve our materials. We hope this guide is helpful in making your presentation a success. This presentation covers what Wikispaces is, why it’s beneficial for teachers, how to begin using it, how to manage Wikispaces to suit the specific needs of teachers and their classrooms, and the features we have that they might find useful. Key points for this slide: Wikispaces is a tool that can help teachers teach, organize their classrooms, and in general foster classroom participation. Remember to introduce yourself and explain when and why you started using Wikispaces, how it has changed your teaching experience, and why you think they can benefit from it like you have. Your experiences will be the best example for your audience. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License Today’s Agenda Overview of wikis Examples of use, account information, and accessibility How to… Create your own This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License What is a Wiki? A webpage with an Edit button Easy to use Perfect for collaborative learning There are different types of Wiki We have chosen Wikispaces This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License Wiki information An online writing space for you and others you decide to invite to your pages No experience necessary. Does not require knowledge of html You are up and running in minutes A multimedia storage space for videos, audio, pdf, docs, etc. Multitude of uses to meet your needs Easy to make and add pages This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Why Bring It To The Classroom? Posting homework Creating a forum for discussion with students Use as a writing tool for students Classroom discussion and debate Collaborate with an international classroom Promotes communication between students, teachers, and external resources. Collaborative environment for student group projects Display student work This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Online Discussions Using A Wiki Each page on a Wikispaces site has a “Discussion” option at top of page: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Online Discussions Cont. On the “Discussions” tab, anyone who is a member of the wiki can post a topic (on Wikispaces, “Subject”) or reply to a topic This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Online Discussions Cont. The goal of an online discussion w/ students is to get them to converse with each other – to share ideas, ask each other questions, attempt to answer other students’ questions, etc. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License Activity Check out these wikis: Mrs. Kelly’s Room – 3rd graders discuss books they’re reading – several students participate from home Mr. McDade’s Room – music listening prompts for discussion (click on the grade level links) The Lonigro Lowdown – Guided Reading Discussion Blog has some good guidelines for online discussion; also check out the Collaborative Class Story Brown Read 180 – HS English teacher in Akron, OH – lots of discussions & technology integration Classroom Braids – international collaborative project To prepare for the activity, make sure you create a space before the presentation. You can have them add the following to their page: 1) A flag of the country you are teaching about 2) A list of the country’s major exports (include at least 3) 3) A link to a website that can offer more resources about said country Some things to consider: It is often easiest to make the space public so that you don’t have to invite the participants as members. We suggest that the space have an equal number of pages as participants in order to facilitate the process of assigning a page for each person to work on for their country lesson. If the teachers do not yet have a Wikispaces account, they cannot upload images from their computers, but they can add media. Take this into consideration when you set up the activity. Will you create the accounts beforehand, have them create their own accounts, or will you design the activity so they won’t upload images? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License Getting Started The rest of the presentation is geared to informing teachers about the basics of Wikispaces and helping them to edit a wiki of their own. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Getting a Teacher Account Called the PlusPlan for K to12 Go to http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers to apply This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Permission levels @wikispaces Wikispaces has different permissions settings for your space Public: Anyone can view or edit your Wikispace Protected: Anyone can view your space but only members can edit Private: Only members can view or edit your space This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Creating Student Accounts User Creator. This option is available once you have an approved teacher site. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Follow the wizard to import users You can import a spreadsheet with account info. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License Editing Your Wiki Click the Edit This Page button at the top of your wiki Write the text you would like on your page You can format it with bold, underline, italics, headings, and more Once you are done editing, click Save This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Adding Links on Your Wiki Click Edit This Page Highlight the text you’d like to link & click on the earth icon in the toolbar Another window appears allowing you to create a link to another page in your space or another website (external) Click Ok This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Adding Images to Your Wiki Click Edit This Page Click the icon that looks like a tree Browse your computer for the image you would like and click Open Upload the chosen picture or file Place your cursor where you would like the image on the page Double click the image or file to place it on the page This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Adding Media to Your Wiki Click Edit This Page Go to the icon of the TV in the toolbar Choose the type of object (widget) that you’d like to embed Follow the instructions for embedding each object Click Save This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License

Additional Resources for Teachers Check out our K-12 Educational Community at: http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com Wikispaces information for teachers: http://www.wikispaces.com/help+teacher This work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License