Using+Wikispaces

= Introduction to Wikispaces =

Excellent Documentation available from Wikispaces http://help.wikispaces.com/ Or https://help.wikispaces.com/training+camp To signup for a free K-12 educator wiki check here: Any time you want to create a new K–12 wiki, go to [].

For a site Template for Professional development try this site: http://pdpresentertoolkit.wikispaces.com/

or...

media type="youtube" key="50MenxCNYAI" height="315" width="420" =Free Wikis for K-12 Educators= media type="youtube" key="Hfh2vrgvdIQ" height="315" width="420"

= Planning Your Wiki =

A wiki is a website that can have as many pages as you choose. But unlike typical websites, it can be developed easily, and any member of the wiki can add to it, making it ideal for sharing information and engaging students and colleagues in interactive ways. Before you begin to create a wiki, you'll want to think about the following topics, and you may want to look at the links from the [|wiki workshops page] or the wiki from this recent [|presentation on wikis]

For the features that relate to each of the following topics, there is information under HELP in the right hand corner of every wiki page.

If you want to use what follows as a DIY tutorial, you may want to have three windows open in your browser, one for this wiki, one for the wiki you are building, and a second window in either wiki where you go to wiki help to follow instructions for each feature.

Audio/video tutorials in Camtasia address most of the topics on this page.
 * Introducing Wikispaces
 * Introducing Wikispaces 1: Audience
 * Introducing Wikispaces 2: Organization and Pages
 * Introducing Wikispaces 3: Adding Content
 * Introducing Wikispaces 4: Inviting Participation
 * Introducing Wikispaces 5: Structure and Navigation

1. Audience: Membership and Permissions.
What's the purpose of your wiki? Who will use it? Who will access its information? Post to discussions? Add information and edit pages? Add new pages? media type="youtube" key="Na4b6uzyjoU" height="315" width="420" For a course wiki, you'll want your students to be members. You can invite them by going to "Manage Wiki" in the upper portion of your (left-hand) navigation bar, and then to "invite members," and cutting and pasting students' emails from WISER into the text box. Or you can user your WISER roster to send students the URL for your wiki, asking them to go to it and click on the "join" button in the upper right hand corner. Once they send a request to join, their names will show up at the top of your wiki, where you can approve them as members. Students must use their UMB email logins and passwords for wiki accounts.

media type="youtube" key="rfupt7Gk87w" height="315" width="420"

You can set the permissions level for the wiki so that the whole world can see (public), members of the larger UMB community (protected), or just wiki members (private). You can set editing permission at these levels, or so that only you (the organizer) can edit. media type="youtube" key="Kd-vWTni1Ic" height="315" width="420" You can set individual pages with different permission levels. Faculty often make a syllabus page public or protected for viewing, so that it can be accessed by a wider audience, but editable by only the organizer. They may create student pages that are viewable only by members of the wiki but editable by members as well. media type="youtube" key="3-LZ2UCZVY8" height="315" width="420" See HELP--"Adding Members to your Wiki " and "Manage Wiki">members and permissions.

Creating Projects for Groups of users to be able to edit your wiki. media type="youtube" key="RITNSH07jCY" height="315" width="420" Navigation between projects on your Wiki media type="youtube" key="pvA-8bneZ5o" height="315" width="420" Project Team Permissions Settings media type="youtube" key="qdiNX5OFDUA" height="315" width="420"

2. Organization and Pages
media type="youtube" key="JtLiM-V3u9Q" height="315" width="420" What are the big categories of information/activity--the pages you'll want to create? Each page can then have as many subpages as you'd like. (You may want to create a pencil sketch as you think this through.)

On your home page you'll want to include some information about the wiki's purpose and how people might use it.

For courses, Staff members often want to create major pages for syllabus, assignments, group projects, individual projects, course resources. An assignments page might then have links to weekly subpages. A student page might have links to individual student pages.

To create a new page, go to "New Page" on the upper portion of the (left-hand) navigation bar. You'll be asked to name the page and then to add content (see Adding Content below.) You can add tags to pages, when you create them or later.

A new page tip: When you're editing a page or the navigation bar, you can also create a link to any new page you want to make by putting double brackets around a word.

Once you've saved the page with new content (even just a placeholder word) the page will be added, in alphabetical order, to the navigation bar Managing Files and Pages media type="youtube" key="F8wzlj-fAM4" height="315" width="420"

3. Adding Content
media type="youtube" key="aqovmXg6EWs" height="315" width="420" Once you've figured out what pages you'll have in the wiki, you'll want to add content. When you click on edit page, you'll see an editing tool bar.

Here's a quick guide to the tool bar (a slightly earlier version): http://beyondwords.wikispaces.com/help. But if you just click on "edit this page" at the top of this page, you can bring up the editing bar while you read this.

Formatting features are on the left-hand side of the navigation bar. The T icon allows you to change the font , size and color of text and the color of text background. The drop down box lets you select levels of headings. (Headings are useful because you can use a widget to gather them and create a table of contents. See Widgets below.)

For information on editing pages, go to HELP>Editing a Page or take the Wikispaces video tour at [|http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#introduction]. (The video tours show an earlier version of the wikispaces interface, but they're still helpful.) media type="youtube" key="kdeKkGq9sIk" height="315" width="420" The link icon allows you to make an internal wiki link from text on your page to other wiki pages that you've created, or an external link to a URL that you enter. On adding links: See HELP>Editing a Page.

On uploading files: See HELP>Editing a Page and the Wikspaces video: [|http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#files].

Remember to when you've finished editing and adding content. Wikispaces will save drafts for you periodically.

A content tip: Use the choice of text box on your tool bar (the default is "normal") to create headings. They'll allow you (using a widget) to create a table of contents for your page that looks like the one on this page, so that your readers can navigate to specific sections more easily. (More information below under Structure and Navigation.)

Wikispaces saves every version of every page. You can see the full page history by going to the history tab at the top of a page. You'll see who edited the page, what changes were made, and you can revert to an earlier version of your page if you or your students have messed it up. Nothing is ever lost, and Wikispaces is very forgiving (which makes it great for collaboration).

4. Inviting Participation
You'll probably want to ask members to interact with the wiki in several ways. The discussion tab at the top of each page allows members to post comments related to that page and to comment on each others' comments. (You can also use a widget to make the discussion topics viewable at the bottom of the page itself.) You can ask members/groups to post, on a common page, their contributions to a discussion in which each person builds on what has already been posted. You can ask groups to work together to create group project pages, and you can have them draw from those pages for class presentations. And you can have individuals create their own pages/sets of pages to use as research journals or portfolios.

See HELP>Manage Space>Discussions.

Discussion tips: If you're using the discussion feature, give students some guidance about how to identify their topics, so that you don't end up with a list of posts with "my assignment." If students are posting to a common page, ask them to insert three tildes (~ top left key on keyboard) after their entry. Then when they save, their names will show up after their entries like this: - [|eleanor_kutz] Under Manage Wiki>Notifications you can choose to be notified by email when someone edits a page or posts to a discussion (useful particularly at the beginning of the semester, when you want to be sure that all students are actively using the wiki, but overwhelming when there's a lot of activity, so you may want to turn it off later. See HELP>Manage Space>Notifications.

5. Structure and Navigation
//Editing the Navigation Bar//. Once you've created the major pages of your wiki, you'll want to edit your navigation bar so that it guides users through the main elements of the structure. Click on "Edit Navigation, removing the "pages" widget that appears there, and enter only the names of pages you want to have serve as your main pages, in the order that makes sense for users. Put double brackets around each of these names to create a link to the page (which will become active when you save). Or you can highlight the name and use the link icon to create an internal wiki link to the page. See HELP>Editing a Page>Navigation Bar.

media type="youtube" key="dKeVCjHpi_4" height="315" width="420" //Using Widgets//. On the editing bar, through the TV set icon, you can access a number of widgets that allow you to easily insert links to various sorts of active content. The links in the left hand navigation bar will take you to various audio and video resources (e.g. Youtube). The central pane gives you widgets that help with the structure and navigation of your wiki. When you insert these, they perform a dynamic function. To insert any widget, move your cursor to the position on the page where you want that function to appear and click. Then go to the TV icon, choose your widget and follow instructions. The table of contents widget creates a table of contents for your page, which will change as you add new headings (so you never have to go back and edit it). The reference marker widget allows you to create footnotes. The discussion widget places a list of discussion topics associated with a page any place on the page where you insert it with your cursor and adds to it each time a new topic is added. See HELP>Editing a page>Widgets.


 * Video widget**

Adding Videos media type="youtube" key="LA2tD-j7Q0U" height="315" width="420"

I inserted this video on wikis by clicking on the Widget icon on the editing bar, selecting video from the left hand column, selecting YouTube, clicking on the word "embed" under the video, and copying and pasting the embed code into the appropriate space in the widget box. You can also (within YouTube) customize the embed code, to put in a colored border, for example.

//Tagging Pages.// When you created your pages, you had the option of creating tags for the pages (e.g. green_group, blue_group). The list of wiki pages widget allows you to pull all pages with a tag together. So if your blue group students made (and tagged a number of different pages that appear under different topics on your wiki, you can insert this widget for the blue_group tag and all pages they've created or will create with that tag wiill appear wherever you've inserted that widget.

6. Personalizing Your Wiki
You can change the basic template for your wiki, select new colors, and add your own logo. If you're using more than one online site (a website, Blackboard, a blog) you may want to use the same colors and images across these sites to allow users to reinforce the idea that they are connected.

See HELP>Look and Feel, and [|http://www.wikispaces.com/site/tour#myspace].

If you want to add a wikispaces icon and link to your Blackboard toolbar contact gene.shwalb@umb.edu for help.

7. Other Topics and Tips
Managing File permissions media type="youtube" key="xDAEqvE-4fQ" height="315" width="420"

Bulk User Creator tool for adding users to your WiKI media type="youtube" key="BtEkIQgreKQ" height="315" width="420"

Copying Pages media type="youtube" key="7fc3NK_-Pw8" height="315" width="420"

This link will take you other topics and tips that have come up in workshops. You might also want to look at Getting Tricky With Wikis, a teacher-created wiki that includes directions for inserting html code that can customize your pages beyond what the basic editor does.


 * Beyond the topics discussed here, there are a number of wiki management features that you may want to look through, guided by Wikispaces help.**