If you’re using Wikispaces Private Label, you may want to restrict your site to the members of your organization, but you know the last thing your users need is another password to remember. Previously, if you wanted your users to access your Private Label site with the accounts they already have, you could use our Single Sign-On integration to connect to your authentication server. It’s a powerful feature, but it does require a good bit of configuration. Now, if your organization is storing user accounts in an LDAP directory (such as OpenLDAP or ActiveDirectory), you can give your users this same access with virtually no setup — all you have to do is fill out a simple form. Go to Site Administration and click the Authentication link under Settings. You’ll see a form that allows you to add an authentication source. Choose LDAP and fill out the required information. Once you have an LDAP source set up, you won’t need to invite users or get them to set up accounts — all the users in your LDAP directory are essentially members of your site already. All they need to do is log into the site with the username and password they already have. You can also allow users from outside your organization to create accounts in the usual way, or even set up more than one LDAP source if you want to allow users in multiple directories to access your site. Our help page will walk you through the form. It’s easy to set up, so go give it a try. And as always, if you have any questions, let us know at help@wikispaces.com.

If your organization has a Wikispaces Private Label site and already has an existing user database, for several years we’ve given you an option to integrate the two. But this convenience came with a small drawback: if you wanted the benefits of Single Sign-On, you were limited to a single database of users — or a lot of complicated development to make several databases behave like a solitary unit. The goal of Wikispaces has always been to provide a powerful, functional, flexible platform for collaboration. Across silos, between departments, inside and outside your organization, with third parties and other organizations, even over national boundaries. And sometimes all these users can’t be easily contained with a single user database. And that is why we are so excited to announce that, starting this month, we’ve made it easy to integrate your Private Label site with multiple authentication sources, simultaneously. So if you already have an LDAP directory for most of your users, but you know you’ll want to invite guests to collaborate with you, it’s no problem. You don’t have to add the guests to your LDAP directory, you don’t have to compromise the privacy of your site, and you don’t have to worry about cumbersome development. Just enable both authentication sources, and you’re ready to go. So if you have multiple LDAP servers, go ahead and hook them all up. Want to allow OpenID access? Not a problem. Need to open up your school site to parents, community resources, classrooms in other countries? There is nothing stopping you. Our help page will show you how to open your Private Label site to multiple authentication sources. And you can always email us at help@wikispaces.com if you have any questions.

Gwyneth Jones started the Daring Librarian wiki in October of 2006. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: The Daring Librarian’s Steam Powered Wiki in a Digitally Shifted World is a professional development technology wiki to support the teachers and admin of Murray Hill Middle School in Laurel, Maryland (and all educators who are interested in Web 2.0, animation, tech-tips, building a PLN, and other various professional development information) in a easy to use, graphically charged Steampunk format. Though we don’t really want other schools to edit and add to our wiki — we’re building it as a closed school community — our creations are Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial, and Share Alike so any educator is free to copy and paste whole or multiple pages, as long as they follow the Creative Commons license. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? EMBEDDING widgets! I love me some widgets! From Gale/Cengage, World Book, SIRS, learning database widgets, Google doc forms, to Go!Animate and Xtranormal animations and videos, to the Sweet Search student resource box… embedding widgets on our pages brings them alive! 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? Wikis are a daily source of communication and an invaluable tool to our program here at MHMS. We also have a MHMS Learning Wiki we use with kids & teachers for research projects, assignments, and community communication, and a MHTV wiki we use every day with our TV studio crew! 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" When a teacher contacted me last minute to add some links to a research wiki page she had just created for her kids going into the computer lab. Knowing that I had them on another page, I quickly copied and pasted the whole page of links for her page in one fell swoop. This took about 40 seconds. This was four or so years ago and the whole amazement of not having to insert "link > name link > save link," or have to write the "html <aref =" >" bit was just like, "WOW! So this is what the read-write-web is all about!!!" And really from then on I’ve evangelized how wonderful the world of Wikispaces is to teachers. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? I’d say on first glance it’s animated, colorful, quirky, and fun… then upon further inspection it’s rich, extensive, informative, illustrative, and jam packed with information coolness and geeky goodness! Heh heh and humility, yeah… that, too!

Since it’s the last Monday of the month, we wanted to take a look at some of the cool Wikispaces-related things that people have been talking about this month. Here are some of the highlights from December: Wikis and the White House Early this month the White House Open Government Initiative created a wiki to get feedback from the public. We weren’t the only ones talking about it: The White House: Designing for Democracy craignewmark: "Hey, this is big, Feds asking for feedback for how citizens can interact with gov’t: http://go.usa.gov/1mT; Wiki - expertnet.wikispaces.com" ECASTnetwork: "White House is all ears. Ideas for government-wide software tool to elicit expert public participation? Weigh in: http://bit.ly/f048zZ" Twitter / @Wayne Moses Burke: "Interested in supporting #OpenGov initiatives inside government? Comment on http://expertnet.wikispaces.com/ - It’s cool!" @GSA New Media: "How can the gov elicit participation from experts on a given topic? Go to http://expertnet.wikispaces.com and give us your ideas." Resources for educators We know how much you like hearing about fun new resources, so we wanted to pass along a few of the ones we’ve heard about this month: Maryna Badenhorst: "Hello @theintelligiser, I see u r interested in digital portfolios: some resources http://echucaelearning.wikispaces.com/Digital+Portfolios" Joyce Seitzinger: "more #mypln videos here http://whatmyplnmeans.wikispaces.com/" Baiba: "Games in education: Virtual Worlds for kids to teens http://gamesined.wikispaces.com/Virtual+Worlds #games #elt" Chris McGee: "Some of the best blogging resources I have found is through http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/ #edchat" ‘Tis the season From winter games to New Year forecasting, some of you were showing off your seasonal wikis: Keisa Williams: "Holiday Fun Online Games for Elementary http://monarchcenters.wikispaces.com/WinterHolidayFun #iwb #games #edtech #christmas #tlchat" Kim D.: "Looks fun…and lots of ideas. http://winterwonderland.wikispaces.com/" Jason Chupick: "Introducing the 2011 Predictions Wiki: http://bit.ly/g8qWvV Wiki: http://bit.ly/i1gEhM Just hit edit and add faves." Cool wikis and cool projects And, as always, we wanted to highlight just a few of the fantastic things you are using wikis to accomplish: ulimasao: "http://newmarketmaungawhau.wikispaces.com/story2 The story of Mataaho retold by Newmarket children using SOLO Hot maps and Rubrics and Voki." alice ayel: "lunch box project: for students to use the second language they are learning for an authentic purpose http://lunchboxproject.wikispaces.com/" The Burlington Free Press, Burlington, Vermont — Hafter to help with South Burlington fiscal crisis Happy New Year, everyone!

On January 13 at 1 p.m. PST (9 p.m. UTC), we’ll be kicking off the new year with a Private Label webinar. Gene Roche and Mark Hofer from William and Mary will be joining us to demonstrate how they use Wikispaces Private Label in their university: e-portfolios, departmental intranets, class web sites, and more. It’s going to be a great opportunity to see some practical strategies and use cases for wikis in higher education — or any large organization. Don’t miss this chance to get answers and pointers from on-the-ground experts. Our webinars are free and fun. We’ll see you on January 13! Sign up today.

Like any part of your wiki, your Discussion tab is a flexible tool. It can be a vital communication hub, where you record critical conversations and make crucial decisions. Or it can be a casual meeting place, giving you a chance to share opinions and gossip with the other people using your wiki. If you want, it can even disappear altogether. How you use it is up to you. Understanding your options? That’s where we can help. Where is my Discussion tab? What does it do? What can I make it do? The Discussion tab lets you have a conversation, like on a message board. One person can start a topic or pose a question, then other people can add to that comment, or start new topics of their own. When your wiki is fresh out of the box, there is a separate Discussion tab for every page on your wiki. It’s a great option if you have different kinds of work happening on different pages, or if each page is built for a different group. But if your whole wiki is a single project for a single team, or if you want all the chatter as well as the work to happen on the pages themselves instead of in a separate section, it’s easy to change those settings: When you’re logged in as organizer of your wiki, go to Manage Wiki. Under Settings, click Wiki Info. Scroll down to Discussion Settings and make your choice: No discussion pages is pretty self-explanatory. One discussion page for the whole wiki removes your Discussion tabs and adds a Discussion link to your Actions menu, between New Page and Recent Changes. No matter where someone is in your wiki, clicking this link will take them to the same Discussion page. One discussion tab per page will put the tabs back on all your pages. Hit Save. What can I put in a discussion post? Words, pictures, and files. The words part is simple. To add pictures and files, you need wikitext. Say I’ve uploaded an image to my wiki, and it’s called happy.png. If I want to use it as an image, I would add it to my comment by typing, [[image:happy.png]] If I just wanted to link to the image, so that other users could download it, I would add it to my comment by typing, [[file:happy.png]] And that will work for any image or any file that you’ve uploaded to the wiki. In fact, any wikitext formatting will work in comments. You can find out more about wikitext here. Who can join the conversation? That depends on your permissions settings: When you’re logged in as organizer of your wiki, go to Manage Wiki. Under People, click Permissions. If your wiki is Public or Protected, only logged-in members of that wiki can post to a discussion — unless you check the "Allow message posts from non-members" box. In that case, any logged-in user will be able to contribute to the discussion, whether they’re a member of your wiki or not. If you have a Super-plan wiki or your wiki is on a Private Label site, you can adjust your Custom discussion settings. If your wiki is Private, only members of that wiki will even be able to see it, let alone edit pages or post discussions. Once you’re happy with your settings, click the Update button. I like where this is going, but how can I moderate discussions? As an organizer, you have two tools for moderating discussions: Notifications, and the Delete option. Depending on your notification settings, you can monitor all discussions for a whole wiki, all the discussions for a given page, or even just a single discussion topic. Our notification help will help you understand your options. If one of your members gets out of line, you can delete the inappropriate post, or a whole topic. And if someone makes a post in error, or wants to correct a mistake, you can delete the original post so that they can re-post their comment. Curveball time: We had a great discussion about this page last year. This year, I want to have a new discussion about the same page. Can I do that? Sure you can: Rename your page. Create a new page, and give it the name you liked for your original page. Copy everything on the original page into the new page. Now you’re ready to start over, with a fresh Discussion tab and a fresh History. That should be enough to get you started. If you have any questions, or if you want to show off how you’re using discussions in your wiki, send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

On a chilly morning in December, I met with Marsha Pritchard, Jennifer Glanfield, Jessica Garvey, and Rachel Telzer via Skype. This team is responsible for the JourneyofaTshirt wiki, an online unit that they built to satisfy a pair of assignments from two classes at their Teacher Education Faculty in Hamilton, Ontario. Despite their busy end-of-term schedules, they were able to squeeze in a little time to discuss their wiki and share their views on the developing role of Web 2.0 in social media in education. This is a fragment of that interview. You can find the rest here. What were some of the other options you looked at, and what made you decide on a wiki? Marsha: When we were given the assignment of creating a Social Studies unit, there was no requirement to utilize Wikispaces for its final presentation; this was simply a paper assignment. However, as we began to work on the project, we needed a way to share ideas, and work on pulling the assignment together without meeting in person as we all lived a distance away from each other. We began by using Google Docs as a way to collaborate on the lesson plans, and even considered submitting our assignment in this form. However, we ran into problems of formatting, and decided that Google Docs was not the most professional and effective way to share our unit with other educators. With some encouragement, we decided to try out Wikispaces, and were immediately pleased with how user-friendly and professional it was. We had also considered using our personal blogs, however we found them restricting and they didn’t meet the "self-contained" layout that we desired. Jessica: We also looked at using our blogs to post our unit but found it wasn’t a great way to organize the information. That’s where Wikispaces stepped in. It allowed us to look professional and organize our work collaboratively. We also tried using our faculty’s learning network but found that was again an unideal environment to share the work. We wanted to reach more educators than only those in our faculty and within the first week of our unit being posted, we had other universities’ and your own recognition! Once you did get started, what obstacles did you run into? How did you overcome them? How did the finished product differ from your original plans? Marsha: Since our original project was just to be handed in on paper, the final product was vastly different than anything that we could have expected. With the tight deadline that we had to complete the project we had to work efficiently, and I think that this is what we can attribute the simple yet effective nature of our Wikispace to. Rachel: I think our biggest challenge was that it was new to all of us. I have to admit that when it was first suggested to put our final product on Wikispaces, I was a little apprehensive. I just thought we were creating more work for ourselves. However I quickly discovered that Wikispaces is very user-friendly and we were able to post our entire unit plan very quickly. We had originally planned to include an interactive ebook in our wiki, however we encountered some difficulties when trying to embed it. Jessica: We used a lot of trial and error and self-exploration in creating our Wikispace. For educators, this was something new we hadn’t been exposed to before, but as Rachel mentioned, we were really all quite pleased by the user-friendly nature of Wikispaces. It was easy to explore the options Wikispaces provided and it actually allowed us to enhance our unit in ways we never thought possible before. What did you learn from the project? Marsha: We learned so much for this experience beyond just how to create a unit of study. By jumping right in and being willing to try new things, we really discovered the value of technology in education and one’s own professional development. Now that we have each had experience with creating Wikispaces, we have been able to implement them in a practical way in the classroom and have experimented with its many uses. Jennifer: Ultimately, we learned a lot about student potential. Many times we are told to consider whether an assignment or learning task is at level for our students and whether or not they would be able to successfully complete it. We looked at a lot of social justice issues within our unit and spent a lot of time talking about how we could get students at a Grade 6 level to understand and connect with these issues (such as child labour, fair trade). It is important to always think that your students CAN do it, with the right support and resources provided by the teacher, nothing is out of reach for them! Jessica: Absolutely. We were able to cater "real-world" issues to our students. Using a backward design model and technology integration, we found we could truly engage and reach students at a more meaningful level. We have been taught that students need to be taught in ways such that they can recognize the capacity for their learning in the classroom to relate to learning outside of the class, and this unit has been designed to do just that. Hopefully, students will recognize their potential as advocates for greater social issues outside of the classroom as well — as the technology integration only engages our students and develops their skills as 21st century learners even more. Not having integrated vast amounts of technology before, we have realized its potential as educators through the power of collaboration and its use for professional development and its power for our students and their continued learning. Jennifer: And I think, once we started doing it, and seeing the ways that we could approach these topics through hands-on learning and child-friendly technology, that it isn’t too much for them, and you can never push your students too far. They are capable of it, if you use the right tools and resources to get them there. Rachel: And, just on a personal note from me, I’m probably the least tech-savvy of the group. And when it was brought up, I was like, "Oh no! More work!" But I quickly realized that it’s such a user-friendly way to get the information out there, and it wasn’t more work. It was quite easy. Jessica: It was fun, and exciting!

We are extraordinarily proud to share these award-winning educational wikis on Wikispaces. In different ways, each is an example of how wikis can be used to break down borders and build unique and captivating experiences that learners and educators will remember for years to come. Without further ado, the winner and second runner-up of the Edublogs Best Educational Wikis of 2010: Greetings from the World Recognized as the best educational wiki for the second year in a row, Arjana Blazic’s Greetings from the World wiki gives her students in Zagreb, Croatia a way to share their own experience and explore the world. Glogs posted by students from around the globe let us all see the world in the most special way possible: through the eyes of the people who live there. "I’m deeply honored and absolutely delighted to have received the award for the Best Educational Wiki for the second time in a row," says Arjana. "I launched the Greetings From The World wiki in September 2009 with 24 students from my class, because we wanted to create a virtual trip around the world and learn with and from our peers. When we won our first award in December 2009, there were 11 teachers from 10 schools in the project. Over the past year the wiki has grown into a truly international project with 21 teachers and 420 students from five continents. The cross-curricular approach and collaborative nature of the project definitely keep it going. We hope that more teachers and students join us in the future. Greetings From The World is a wiki open to teachers of all subjects, to students of all ages, to speakers of all languages and to learners from all over the world." Metasaga This year’s second runner up is Kate Coutts’ gorgeous wiki, Metasaga. Beginning with Uyeasound, Unst, in the Shetland Islands, each Metasaga gives students (and their teachers) a chance to learn by exploring their whole environment — not just physically, but historically and culturally, as well. Each individual Metasaga feels like a deeply personal guided tour, full of photographs, histories, and personal impressions. They are fascinating explorations of place that make you itch to go out and create your own. Two other Wikispaces wikis did very well in the voting: Celebr8UandMeDigitally gives Eva Büyüksimke?yan of Turkey and Alexandra Francisco of Portugal a space to celebrate special days and share different cultures with their EFL students. Wissahickon School District’s eToolBox from Ambler, PA is an alphabetical index of Web 2.0 tools, from Blogs to Wikispaces, with evaluations and recommendations for each one. Our heartfelt congratulations to all the winners and nominees. Way to go!

Fiona Grant and Rochelle Jensen started the Digistore wiki in October of 2008. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: Digistore - Te Pataka Matihiko is one of a number of online communities in Te Kete Ipurangi, New Zealand’s bilingual education portal and an initiative of the Ministry of Education. Digistore is the gateway to a storehouse of quality digital content for New Zealand educators and is designed to support learning across the curriculum, from early childhood through to senior secondary. The purpose of this wiki is to reinforce the key messages about effective use of digital content and also explore the types of teaching approaches that will have a positive impact on student learning (The New Zealand Curriculum, p.34, 2007). The wiki includes examples of how digital content has been embedded into existing programmes of learning, tools and resources to support teaching and learning and links to other relevant digital content and learning experiences. Like Digistore, this wiki will continue to evolve as the community develops its capacity to effectively integrate digital resources to improve learning outcomes for students. While the wiki is maintained by DigiAdvisers Rochelle Jensen and Fiona Grant, the content is a collaboration and is increasingly growing and changing as a result of contributions and recommendations from the Digistore community and New Zealand educators. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? Widgets and the ability to embed dynamic content into the wiki pages. Embedding widgets is not only fast but adds visually to the pages and provides lots of flexibility and options to demonstrate effective practice. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? Wikispaces provides lots of options for us to link and embed content and contributions from other educators. We are able to share student and teacher voices using video and photo sharing sites, and embed both multimedia and collaborative tools into the pages. Storing, organising, and sharing content in this way adds to the visual appeal of the pages and also helps us to organise and re-purpose content easily and in response to what we need and, most importantly, what is current for the educators and the community. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" Rocky and Fiona have been using blogs for the past few years as a medium to communicate ideas and thinking and support their work as e-Learning facilitators. With the explosion of Web 2.0 and the increase in online collaboration and learning opportunities, the wiki platform is recognised as an environment that is open and responsive to user-generated content development. It also provides a space where the online can support the face-to-face through sharing strategies that school leaders can harness to build capacity in the sector. Providing free spaces for educators was also a plus…no scary or annoying adverts to dodge! 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? Along with Software for Learning, another Te Kete Ipurangi community utilising a wiki, we see these online spaces supporting the parent sites by utilising the power of Web 2.0 and networking to provide responsive and real time support and inspiration for educators. We believe that the wiki recognises the value of both teacher and student voice and the opportunities to support a blended approach to learning for teachers and students. It says… we love learning and recognise the value of our professional learning network.

Since it’s the last Monday of the month, we wanted to take a look at some of the cool Wikispaces-related things that people have been talking about this month. Here are some of the highlights from January: Disaster Relief in Australia Thousands of people were affected by the terrible floods in Queensland in December, then by further flooding that hit Victoria this month. The Fitzroy Oxfam Group’s Disaster Relief Australia has been helping to match people in need with the donors who are ready to help. HarperCollins Aus: "The fast and easy way to match donors with those in need. http://disasterreliefaustralia.wikispaces.com/" Grace Gabriel: "Do you have goods and services to donate to #qldfloods? Or need basic home and contents? Go to Oxfam Registry - http://bit.ly/farxwC" Geordie Guy: "Oh thank GOD someone put this stuff in a proper Wiki instead of running it on fricking Facebook: http://bit.ly/farxwC" Star FM MidNthCoast: "Many want to donate goods to flood victims, register your donations here http://disasterreliefaustralia.wikispaces.com/" Second Life Spanish: "Disaster Relief Goods and Services Registry. Matching donors with those in need. http://bit.ly/gXFUPm #thebigwet #qldfloods #nswfloods" Project 365 Project 365 is an informal network of bloggers, each one sharing a year of their lives, one photograph at a time. Martin Waller: "If you’re starting #project365 today then be sure to add your blog address to the wiki - http://project365.wikispaces.com/ Please RT" Jo McLeay: "Just put my 365 photo challenge here. http://365photoproject.wikispaces.com/2011+Blogs If you’re in put you name here as well" James Michie: "Just added @jennifermichie ‘s #365project blog to http://project365.wikispaces.com/ <- definitely worth checking out!" Multimedia and Web 2.0 Tools At the start of a new season and a new term, many of you were out on Twitter, sharing some favorite toys, tools, and resources. Josh Stumpenhorst: "A ton of multimedia tools: http://bit.ly/eygxzo" Peter Vogel: "Lots of time-wasters on this Wikispaces page: http://bit.ly/bf25d2 (actually, many of these I use with students)" Steven W. Anderson: "So You’re Twittering. Now What? Tips For Using Twitter For PD: http://bit.ly/i4Amaw" Ralph Blackwelder: "Technology Resources for Schools: http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/" Helen S T: "http://springfieldlibrary.wikispaces.com/KidSearch2 :all for kids via EduDemic (connecting Education to Technology )" Libraries of Blogs There are so many wonderful education blogs out there. How can you possibly find them all? These wikis are a great place to start. Rob D Gluck: "nice list of science blogs here: https://scio11.wikispaces.com/Participants+Blogroll #science" Bora Zivkovic: "Add your #scio11 blog posts’ permalinks to the wiki: http://bit.ly/eEu1Gi" Clive Elsmore: "Any ideas how I can make this list of 800 Edu blogs more useful to more ppl? http://bit.ly/goCyt0 #ukedchat #edchat" Steven W. Anderson: "A List Of Educational Blogs By Discipline: http://bit.ly/b96Nkr" Sounds of the Season From snow storms to predictions, many of you were in a January state of mind. Valerie Merahn Simon: "Have you checked out @peterhimler ‘s 2011 PRedictions Wiki yet? http://bit.ly/i1gEhM (great collection of posts- add yours)" M.E. Steele-Pierce: "@pammoran @paulawhite Snowy days here in OH. Left a recipe on the wiki: winter squash soup http://2010-2011recipes.wikispaces.com/" Emily H: "Snow day! #watching ANNE OF GREEN GABLES - THE SEQUEL while updating my library’s @wikispaces. Also #reading MOCKINGBIRDS by @daisywhitney." Peter Himler: "@catone’s 40+ Things You Need to Watch in 2011 http://on.mash.to/hcR00Z added to 2011 PRedictions Wiki http://bit.ly/i1gEhM"