Over the last few days we’ve been incrementally rolling out a brand new editor to everyone who uses Wikispaces. While you may not have noticed a big visual difference, a lot has changed under the hood. This is the story of the third generation Wikispaces editor. Here at Wikispaces HQ we call this project EditorC, pronounced "edit orc." Pay no attention to the toolbar-wielding orc to the right. He’s really quite friendly. Earlier this year we took a hard look at our current editor. It’s a system that we largely wrote in-house over the last four years and it’s done yeoman’s duty: millions of people have used it to save tens of millions of wiki pages. However, a lot has changed in the world of web browsers since 2006 and in many regards our previous editor wasn’t keeping up with the times. We made the difficult choice to swap out the core of the editor for one based on the popular open source TinyMCE project — the same used by WordPress and thousands of other applications. Dom, Jeff, and Ryan have been hard at work on this task since then, with copious amounts of support from the rest of the Wikispaces team. So what’s changed? First, the editor looks a bit different. Here are the old and new toolbars: You’ll notice two new buttons: undo and redo. More on those in a future blog post! The new editor works better in more browsers. We’ve added Chrome support and greatly improved Safari support. You can find our full list of supported browsers on our help wiki. A wide variety of formatting quirks and bugs have been fixed across the board. We streamlined the look of the toolbar and buttons and made a dedicated area for notifications on top of the bar. Warnings when someone else is editing the same page will appear below the editor toolbar rather than in a separate window at the bottom of the page. Most importantly, the new editor provides the foundation for some jaw-dropping features to come. We hope the new editor works well for you. As always, we’d love to hear both the good and bad. Email us at help@wikispaces.com.

Many of you have probably noticed something new about your editor toolbar. Right there, between the Table icon and the Preview button, we’ve added two new buttons: Undo and Redo. So mistakes? You don’t have to worry about them anymore. Just click Undo. And click it again. And again. In fact, you can undo everything you’ve done since you started editing. If that’s your thing. And, for those moments of indecision, you also have the Redo button: Add an image to your page. Not sure you like the way it looks? Undo. Think it may have been better with the picture? Redo. Repeat until you feel secure in your decision, no matter how long that takes. They’re just little, tiny buttons, but we think you’re going to like having them there. You can read about the rest of the changes to the editor here.

Since 2009, Dan Maggiacomo has been using wikis to beef up the teaching toolkit for his blind and visually impaired students in Ontario, Canada. We asked him what that’s like. Building a sweet Wikispace is fun, mildly challenging, and certainly rewarding. Building one that’s accessible and meaningful for my students, all of whom are blind or visually impaired, has been one of the most positive turns of events for my teaching. When I set out to try and use Wikispaces, I thought "I’ll just throw up some notes so they can grab them if they miss them." That worked on one level, but if you’re not differentiating how you deliver and connect your students to information, you’re not doing as much as you could. With this in mind, I had my first light bulb moment. I made an audio note with my computer’s text-to-speech function and embedded it. Great, I figured, now the kids with low vision could sit back and listen if their eyes were tired from reading textbooks all day and the kids who use screen readers could hear a different voice for a change. OK, that worked alright. Now, I need some work in there! One of the problems kids who’re blind or low-vision have is finding information in pages of text. When you have the magnification set so large that you only have a few words on the screen at a time, or you can only listen to the text, it’s pretty hard to scan a document. So I started to manipulate the text to meet the needs of MY students, something that can’t be done with a textbook. The momentum built and I started to connect the Web to my Wikispace. Other sites, blogs, videos, podcasts, anything and everything that was accessible and meaningful I could gather in one spot. Brilliant! I could check and make sure everything is accessible before posting it, avoiding the dreaded "Mr. M, this doesn’t work with (fill in accessibility software name here)." Sweet!

Yes. "Page Includes." If this is the first you’ve heard of them, don’t feel too bad. They’re one of the things we built into Wikispaces that even advanced users might not know about. A Page Include is basically a widget that drops the entire contents of one wiki page into another. Which is pretty cool, because it means that you can build content once, and then use it over and over and over again. And it means that you can take large, unwieldy pages, and carve them up in to usable pieces. This gives you the power to do a lot of things. The following are only a few, to get you started: Bring separate pages together Maybe you are looking for ways to get a team to work together on a wiki. Each member of the team is responsible for a different part of the project. Which is great — you set up a page for each member of the team, and they get to work right away. But you also want to be able to look at all the work the team has done on one page. This is all you have to do: Make separate pages for each member of the team. Create a new page. Let’s call this one, "Team Project." Put headings on the page for each member of the team. Set the cursor under the first heading. Click the Widget icon in the toolbar. From the widget menu, select Contents of a Wiki Page. Type the name of the page for that team member into the Page Name field. Click Embed Wiki Page. Repeat for each remaining section, then hit Save. And now you have a simple snapshot of the entire project. Create editable page sections Now let’s say that, for the sake of clarity and convenience, you want the team members to be able to edit their sections from the Team Project page just as easily as they can from their individual pages. Just add one more step to the instructions above: Make separate pages for each member of the team. Create your new "Team Project" page. Put headings on the page for each member of the team. Set the cursor under the first heading. Click the Widget icon in the toolbar. From the widget menu, select Contents of a Wiki Page. Type the name of the page for that team member into the Page Name field. Check the box that says Editable. Click Embed Wiki Page. Repeat for each remaining section, then hit Save. Add headers and footers that change when you need them to Page Includes also let you build content that can be edited in one place and automatically updated all over your wiki. For example, maybe each of your students has his or her own page, and you want to make sure that today’s assignment appears at the top of every one of those pages every time a student signs in. Here’s how: Create a new page in your wiki called, "Current Assignments." Add a Contents of a Wiki Page widget for the "Current Assignments" page to the top of each student page. Once a day (or once a week) update your "Current Assignments" page. All the student pages will update automatically. Explore the possibilities Because Page Includes are just widgets, like any other widget, you can use them in almost any way you can imagine. Try combining Page Includes and page templates, to get pre-formatted, totally editable pages in your wiki. Or switch to the wikitext editor to customize your page includes with section titles, backlinks, and more. If you’ve already discovered something revolutionary that you can do with Page Includes, let us know in the comments section below, or send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

Julie Ramsay started CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd1 in November of 2009. CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd2, CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd3, and CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd4 followed shortly after. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: After spending several years having my students correspond and work with students on the other side of the country, I was in search of some learning partners who wanted to expand to a much more student-driven and student created project. Our diverse group includes 200+ students in grades 2 through 6 from five different states and their seven teachers. We wanted for our students to use Web 2.0 tools in order to create, communicate, and collaborate. The students created an online journal, named The Coast to Coast Chronicles, on Wikispaces using a different wiki for each edition. For each edition that the students created, they discussed possible themes and then worked to create content for the other students which reinforced their content standards while teaching their audience. This project was driven and created by the students. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? My students really enjoyed how easy it was to embed their many different types of projects into the wiki from weblinks to videos and much more. Wikispaces proved to be an outstanding format for the students to publish all of their varied writing and Web 2.0 projects for our audience. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? Depending on the theme for each edition, the young writers would brainstorm a list of possible project ideas that they wanted to create for the current edition of The Coast to Coast Chronicles. Much of the planning of each edition was done by the students through Skype and Moodle which provided synchronous and asynchronous conversations. They used tools like Wordle, Simply Box, Playcrafter, Wallwisher, ProProfs Quiz Maker, VoiceThread, Storyjumper, and Flickr to create content that not only reinforced their state standards, but also enhanced the content for the other students across the country. One project was a "wiki roulette" where all of the students across the country worked on writing one story together, editing, adding, and publishing. As one student said, "The cool part of The Coast to Coast Chronicles was that we had over 200 teachers working together and teaching us which is a really fun way to learn." The students really embraced the idea that through these Web 2.0 tools, they were not only participants, but teachers exploring and sharing new ideas and bringing their perspective, background knowledge, and experience to the entire group. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" There were so many Aha! moments while using wikis. I’d have to say that the biggest Aha! moment was when we had first begun our project. We were getting ready to upload all of the students’ work onto the wiki for the first time. In the past, I have always posted their work online on the class website. The emphasis being "I." Students would finish their project, load it to a pen drive, and then I would upload it in the evening or on the weekend for their friends and family to see. With wikis, the students uploaded their own work. They had the instant gratification of immediately seeing their work published which motivated them to keep creating and writing. They also were very mindful that once it was published others would be seeing it immediately, which spurred them into being thoughtful about what they created and the importance of using these tools to communicate effectively. Once they saw their work, they were eager to find another tool or create another writing piece for that edition. These writers were empowered with the entire process of their work, from brainstorming to publication. Wikis put the power of the entire process into the students’ hands. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? It would say, "These kids rock!" This project was totally about the students. The students took ownership and pride in everything that they created and they were always hungry for more. Their writing and communicating abilities, confidence, and creativity blossomed. It was a truly amazing thing to witness these second through sixth grade students. We gave them the power and they far exceeded any of our initial expectations.

The engineers here at Wikispaces labs are always looking for more and better ways for you to organize your stuff. Most recently, they’ve come up with bulk tagging for your pages and files. Give it a try: Go to Manage Wiki and select either Pages or Files. Check the pages or files you want to tag. Click the Edit Tags button. Type in the tags you want to add (hitting Enter after each one). Click the Add Tags button. And there you have it! Removing tags in bulk is just as easy: Go to Manage Wiki and select either Pages or Files. Check the pages or files you want to un-tag. Heck, go crazy and check them all! Click the Edit Tags button. Type in the tags you want to remove from those pages or files (hitting Enter after each one). Click the Remove Tags button. If any of the pages or files you’ve checked had that tag, it’s gone now. We think that this is going to be a huge help — especially this time of year, when so many of you are getting your wikis ready for new classes and the new school year. So go ahead and give it shot. It’s kind of fun! Let us know what you think below or with an email to help@wikispaces.com.

The Kuyu Project teaches young African students how to use technology to make a positive impact in their communities. The Kuyu Project wiki hosts their learning content and resources. We asked Simeon Oriko to tell us about it. In Africa, success is a communal effort, hence the proverb "It takes a community to raise a child." When we began The Kuyu Project, we were essentially looking at two things: Ease of use for our target audience who are high school kids in various African countries Crowdsourcing the content so that people can share the techniques and tips that have worked for them A member of our advisory board recommended Wikispaces. I loved the idea that Wikispaces was determined to help advance K-12 education and the vast amounts of resources that existed that would help achieve this including a free upgraded wiki (which Wikispaces kindly granted us). The decision to use Wikispaces solved our usability issue for our target audience, and it came with a lot of other benefits which we are benefiting from and still discovering to date. (I recently discovered the stats page which quite honestly makes my day!) Adopting Wikispaces is half the story. The work of crowdsourcing content about the various tools and techniques that these students can use to make a positive impact in their communities is the other half of the story. We believe that this task will have a major impact, in that by teaching kids to use technology-based tools and techniques, we are in essence fueling their dreams and ambitions — which may one day become the solutions and innovations that will change the Africa and the rest of the world. It’s an uphill task, but it’s doable… and it must be done for the sake of the future of the upcoming generation.

The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that we’ve added a new option to your Widget menu. If you have a Glogster account, now you can embed your posters directly into a wiki page, without ever leaving Wikispaces, and without having to copy any code. Here’s how it works: Go to your page and click Edit. Click the Widget icon. Choose Poster from the Widget menu, then click the Glogster EDU logo. Enter your Glogster nickname and password, and click Log In. Pick the glog you want, and either Insert it into the page, or View a preview. Save the page. It’s that easy! We’re pretty jazzed, because this is the first widget we have that lets you embed media without copying and pasting complicated code and without leaving Wikispaces. But it won’t be the last. Let us know how it’s working for you with a comment below or an email to help@wikispaces.com.

Last week, while you weren’t looking, we gave you new permissions options for files and Private Label sites. Sometimes we’re sneaky like that. So we thought it would be an excellent time to give you a quick tips-and-tricks style review of your privacy and permissions settings, and remind you that switching up a handful of different settings (all easy to do, by the way) gives you an enormous number of options for the way your site behaves, and how people behave on your site. What kinds of permissions can I set? It depends on the plan your wiki is under, but, at best, you can set permissions for the whole wiki, and then separate permissions for every page and file in that wiki. (If you have a Private Label site, you’ll have more advanced settings for the entire site — we’ll talk about those in a little bit.) You can set your wiki permissions by going to Manage Wiki > Permissions and choosing one of the four options: Public: The whole world can see your wiki, and anyone can contribute edits, whether they have a Wikispaces account or not. Protected: You can show off your wiki to the world, but only active users with membership in your wiki can edit pages. Private: No one can see your wiki, or edit any pages, except you and the people you’ve accepted as members of your wiki. Custom: Pick a mix! You can decide who is allowed to view or edit the wiki, based on their membership level. But you can give any individual page more restrictive permissions than the whole wiki, if you want. Just go to that page and click the down arrow on the Page tab to get the page menu. Select Permissions. Once again, you have four options: Default: Leave the page permissions the same as the rest of the wiki. Locked: Anyone who can see the wiki will be able to see this page, but only you and other organizers will be able to edit it. Hidden: No one can see or edit the page but you and your fellow organizers. (I like to use this one for work in progress.) Custom: It’s up to you. Choose your own settings for who can view and edit the page. Wait, didn’t you say something about file permissions? I did! To change permissions on a single file, go to Manage Wiki > Files and select the file you want from the list. Click the down arrow on the File tab, and select Permissions. Then just pick your setting: Default: This file will have the same permissions as the wiki. Locked: If someone can see your wiki, they can see this file. But only you and the other organizers will be able to delete it or replace it. Hidden: Only organizers can see, replace, or delete this file. Custom: Make up your own mind about who can see or delete and replace the file. With so many options, where do I start? You’ll probably want to make some decisions about who will be using your wiki and how they’ll be using it. As far as permissions are concerned, there are four kinds of people: organizers, members, registered users, and everyone else. Make sure that you’ve assigned membership — and the right type of membership — to all the right people. Now you just tweak the settings for your wiki, pages, and files. You can find some of the more popular permissions settings scenarios on our Privacy help page. What if I have a Private Label site? If you’re on Wikispaces Private Label, then, on top of all this, you also have permissions settings for your whole site. Just go to Site Administration > Settings > Users & Privacy. You’ve probably already played with this a bit, deciding who’s allowed to see your site, and who can create new accounts, and turning your messaging system on an off, and some other things. But if it’s been a while since you last adjusted your settings, you might want to check in on some of our recent Private Label permissions upgrades: Allow user account creation by domain: If you know that you’ll be approving every account request that comes from an email address within your school or company, anyway, save yourself time by automatically approving that email address domain. As soon as the user confirms their email address, their account will be active. Grant guest access by IP address: Maybe you don’t want your site to be visible to the entire world, but you also don’t think that every person in your building needs an account to look at their wikis. You can white list your building’s IP address, and everyone in the building gets an automatic guest pass. Easy! Honestly, when it comes to permissions, there’s a lot of ground to cover. I hope this has given you at least a taste of the possibilities. Our Privacy help page goes over this in some more detail.

Kim Grady started the TechMaker wiki in July, 2009. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: We are a group of scientific, industry, and education professionals who are seeking to overcome barriers to bringing new technology to market. Our project is one of many under the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative of the Department of Labor. We used tech transfer concepts to develop the wiki’s organization and framework, and wiki templates to pre-populate pages with standard reoccurring content that guides pedagogy specific to our audiences. We initially gathered about 200 existing resources in the wiki, cataloged them, and then began shaping them for classroom/training room delivery. Educators are participating in pilot programs to use the wiki delivered content in their existing business and technology courses. Specific entrepreneur groups are starting to add their blog content to the wiki for development of new curriculum and ideas. The wiki format allows us to bring together dynamic curriculum and processes for teaching tech transfer concepts. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? The tag cloud because it affords a great way to manage and navigate the content, the tags were developed from the mapped tech transfer concepts, the concepts are kind of the backbone of the wiki delivered content and its organization. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? A process and technique was developed that utilizes interactive concept mapping and wikis. The maps helped build a user defined logic/context for the curriculum and the wiki platform supports formatting and linking the associated content for dissemination. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" Since day one I have been a wiki fan; I never blogged, wikis give me the flexibility I need to work with my clients. I’ll use the words of one of the participants in the project as an aha moment, when I knew the project participants were seeing what I see in wikis. She said, "We are really creating something dynamic but directive here, that’s a good thing." 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? Ah, this kind of goes with #4, I think my wiki would say, "They will see the power of what you are creating, don’t sweat it."