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 April: Smithsonian The Smithsonian Institution’s wiki for web and new media strategy, along with their April Ignite Smithsonian event, were getting a lot of buzz: Michael Peter Edson: "We’re on! #igniteSmithsonian will be at George Mason University monday if the gov closes. Updates @ http://tinyurl.com/4olskep" abigail belfrage: "lovely stuff; the smithsonian’s mobile strategy wiki: http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Mobile" ASTC: "Ignite Smithsonian event explores digital media, technology in museums: http://bit.ly/fBIV9U #tuesdaytrends" Merete Sanderhoff: "Gives mom time to concentrate on reading http://is.gd/KL77SY" iPads and Cell Phones in Education The question of how — and sometimes whether — to use mobile devices in education is a big one. Here are a few of the resources and pointers that were recently mentioned: Danielle Bayes: "The Apps In Education wiki has been updated, 15 new apps today! Anyone want to recommend more? http://appsineducation.wikispaces.com/" Valerie: "free UDL tools, all categorized, all free http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/ #TLTechForum" Lorri Carroll: "Cell Phones in the classroom http://psdtechpd.wikispaces.com/Cell+Phones A great wiki of resources! #isedchat" Steven W. Anderson: "All About Cell Phones In The Classroom: http://bit.ly/hv41k7 #mlearning" Widgets and Wiki Resources Another month means another batch of great resources for your wikis, both new and old: BES School Milan: " https://edunology.wikispaces.com/Word-Clouds - Word Clouds, very useful for word study, comprehension, analysis, and more" J. Camille Dempsey: "Animotos that infuse the arts: http://artinaction.wikispaces.com/Animoto" Miss Noor: "Great resources for audio files http://bit.ly/dAYeXH" Leon Cych: "At end of the project yesterday showed the kids http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/ - they loved it - ducks to water :) wonderful end" Cool class wikis and wiki projects And, of course, here are just a handful of the awesome wikis you were promoting and sharing in April: Claudia Amendola: "Check out the advertisements my class have posted for their ‘Planet For Sale’ activity! http://studyingspace.wikispaces.com" Martin Burrett: "A #MFL #EAL English & #Mandarin project we are doing at school. http://speechbubbles.wikispaces.com. #edtech Would love a RT." kkliegman: "Congrats to the #ISTE #SIGMS primary winners! What an awesome project! http://maybellethecockroach.wikispaces.com/" Marlise: "YouTube’s 90 Best Teacher Videos" http://bit.ly/ht7hER #newellfonda"

Since 2008, Chuck Wood has been sharing a new photo of the moon every day on his Lunar Photo of the Day wiki. We asked him to tell us about it: One of the most popular web sites over the last 15 years has been Astronomy Picture of the Day. It is not surprising that the universe provides infinite opportunities for glorious and inspiring photos, but 8 years ago I wondered if there was enough material for a picture of the day blog about the Moon. With a certain hubris, Lunar Photo of the Day began on January 1, 2004, and, 2,650 days later, is still going. About 1,000 people a day visit LPOD, which features photos from lunar orbiters and amateur telescopes. Hundreds of people from dozens of countries have supplied images for LPOD, and it has been amazing to see the vast improvements in image quality — now rivaling the Hubble Space Telescope — from backyard telescopes. Originally LPOD was an html website designed by a webmaster, but after two years that failed: so I switched to WordPress to try to have more personal control of the site and reduce my dependence on costly support, which I pay myself. That was great for about two years and then became so sluggish that I had to abandon it. Wikispaces came along about then and I have happily used it for more than three years now. Wikispaces is easy to use and stays out of my way so I can concentrate on the content. Currently, LPOD has 1,288 pages, which added to the 3,274 pages of the companion Moon-Wiki, constitutes one of the largest lunar resources on the planet — and all done by volunteers using Wikispaces. You can also check out l’image lunaire du jour, another wiki of Chuck’s, this one in French.

Wikis are wonderful for sending things around for review. First, because they keep all your corrections and revisions in one place, even when you have multiple reviewers. And second, because the History tab means that every edit is saved, in one place, where they are easy to find and recover. I like those features. A lot. I use them every day. But what do you do when a reviewer has a question, instead of a correction? In the past, I’d sometimes relied on tricky inline commentary in brackets, or even email. But from now on, I’ll be using comments. What do you mean by "comments"? Comments let you apply notes, questions, or observations to a passage on a wiki page — it’s kind of like slapping a Post-it note onto the wiki page. Because they’re linked to a specific part of the page, comments show you exactly which words they’re about (unlike with an email or discussion post). And because the comments can be revealed or collapsed, they let you look at a page as either an appreciative audience or a critical editor, depending on your needs. OK, I’m sold. How do I leave a comment? Edit a page. Highlight the word, phrase, or paragraph that you want to comment on. Now the comment icon in the editor toolbar will be live. It looks like a cartoon conversation bubble. Click the comments icon to open a new comment box. Type your comment into the box. Make any additional edits or add any additional comments to the page. When you’re done, hit Save. (There’s no need to save comments individually.) How can I find comments that have already been left? As soon as a page has at least one saved comment, you will see a small, yellow conversation bubble to the right of the page contents. The number on this bubble indicates the number of saved comments. You can click on this bubble to hide or reveal comments on that page. Comments are also recorded on the Discussion tab for that page. If you have only one Discussion page for the whole wiki, you can find the comments there. Either way, discussion posts that originated as comments will have "Comment Added" subjects, so you always know what you’re looking at. What if I want to respond to a posted comment? Nothing could be simpler: Edit the page. Click Reply in the appropriate comment box. Type your reply. Save the page. I’m a little more visual. Can I add images or files to comments? Sure. Just remember that comment box isn’t very big so, for best results, use smaller images. Just keep on using the editor toolbar, as if you were editing any other part of the page. I, personally, am already a huge fan of comments. And I’ve only just started using them. I’m pretty sure you’re going to love them, too.   Update: Special thanks to some of our long-time customers — and friends — who helped us out with input and feedback on this feature: Dan Beeby and Jonah Bossewitch from Columbia University, Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay of the Flat Classroom project, and Christian deTorres from University of Massachusetts Boston. Thanks for all your help! You can find more information about this feature on our Comments help page.

There are a lot of educators out there, using wikis and reading this blog. And right about now, you’re probably starting to think about wrapping up the school year. Just for you, here are some helpful hints for winding down your wikis at the end of the year. We hope this will help you get as much as you can from them. Take time to review The simplest steps are often the easiest to overlook. Make sure you take few minutes to run a "post mortem" on your wiki. Either alone or with your class, go through the wiki and ask a few simple questions: What worked well in this wiki? What didn’t work? What would I do again? What would I do differently next time? You can also look back at how your wiki has performed by reviewing your wiki stats. Export your wiki You (and your students) have put a lot of work into that wiki. Why not take it with you? Make sure you’re logged in as the organizer of the wiki. Go to Manage Wiki. Scroll down to Tools and click Exports. Select the Content Type (HTML, wikitext, or PDF), and, if applicable, File Type (.zip or .tgz). Click Export Wiki. Wait. It may take a couple of minutes to process your export. You can either wait for it to run, or you can leave the page and go do something else — you’ll get a message (and, if your address is confirmed, an email) when the export is ready. The Export Wiki page also keeps an archive of all the wiki exports you’ve processed, so you can save the export to your hard drive now or later or never. It’s up to you. While you’re enjoying your summer vacation on a tropical beach without internet access, you can still open up your wiki on your laptop, and look back at all the great work you’ve done. Save individual pages of student work Whether your students are compiling their online portfolios or just want a record of their work, it’s easy to export single pages from any wiki. You can do this for them, or give them these instructions and they can capture all the PDFs they want: Go to the wiki page you want to export. It doesn’t matter whether you’re logged in. As long as you can see the page, you can export a PDF. Roll over the down arrow on the Page tab. Select Download PDF from the dropdown list.

Craig Kemp started the We Are Room 1 wiki in October of 2007. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: Weareroom1 is my class’s wikispace. We are a Year 5/6 Class at Grant’s Braes School in Dunedin, New Zealand. Our wikispace is a learning tool used daily by the children to share their learning with friends, family, and students and educators around the world. Our class wiki is an exciting, interactive tool that encourages the children to share their amazing new learning with others. We are currently learning what a global audience is and are excited to see so many views and hits from all over the world — it is great to get feedback from children and teachers. As well as the curriculum area pages and fun activities to do online, the children also have their own individual pages which they use to share their individual learning, like a mini blog. Our wikispace allows my students to have a 24/7 learning environment, and it is being used as such which is an exciting thing to see. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? My favourite feature is the widget feature. The ability to add widgets has made our life SO much easier. There are new and exciting widgets coming out everyday that make learning so much more interactive and engaging. The children love to explore new widgets and use them on their pages to "spunk" up the look and feel of their learning. Adding our videos onto YouTube and being able to embed them easily and effectively as a video widget is great. I would encourage all wiki users to explore the widgets on our wiki and try them for themselves. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? They are used everyday by the children. They are used as a resource for links and games during maths, spelling, writing, reading or inquiry. Also for collaborative activities or commenting / giving each other feedback. We always upload our learning to our pages with photos, videos and other interactive tools. Our new widgets give our global learning tool a new feel - we are now learning how we can best utilise our wikispace and learn from it. Anything collaborative the children pounce on and I often now found myself learning new things from them through our learning space online. It is an exciting time in their learning journey and as an educator I think it is my job to support them in this learning. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" I have used wikis for 3 years now and introduced them to my school — all classrooms now use them. The big "Aha" moment for me only came about a month ago when I realised that the children had reached a much wider audience than just mum and dad at home. I noticed that the wiki had become global and only through adding widgets did we discover just how popular it is. We have hooked up with schools all over the world via Skype and shared our learning with schools in every continent. It is SO exciting to see the children light up when they see a comment from someone in another school or country. It really inspires them to make their pages better and it inspires me to give them more opportunities to share their learning. It is truly inspirational and without the children’s motivation, the pages would have been forgotten about a long time ago. To see the children learning, sharing, collaborating with each other is one thing, but to see their willingness to improve and get better and to share with anyone around the world is truly remarkable. Having a global audience had made me continue to push boundaries with wikis… 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? This guy never gives up - he spends a lot of time on here - does he have a life haha - I really enjoy it and it is a passion. It does take time, but it is worth it to see my students make huge gains, not only academically but with confidence. It is truly amazing. I think the wiki would wonder why there are so many people looking at it and maybe sometimes feel a little self-conscious, but with a bit of tweaking and doing up they feel confident again to go out and share their life with the world of educators and learners!!!

On Wednesday, May 25 at 11 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. UTC), we will be holding a webinar to talk about Wikispaces Private Label for K-12 education. If you are an educator who’s already using wikis and you’re rounding out this year and gearing up for next, this is the event for you. We’ll cover setting up a Private Label site, migrating your existing wikis over to it, training for the summer, and more. And we’ll take some time to go over any questions or concerns you have — so start saving up your questions now. Then, the very next day we’ll be holding another webinar to discuss Wikispaces Private Label for Higher Education. That’ll be Thursday, May 26 at 10 a.m. PDT (5 p.m. UTC). We have a lot of great content to share, and all it costs is one hour of your time. Interested? Sign up today for the K-12 webinar or the higher education webinar.

A site or system’s uptime is measured in nines. At Wikispaces, we aim for four nines: 99.99%, or 52.6 minutes a year. Five nines is our dream: 99.999%, or a measly 5.26 minutes of downtime. When we checked this month, we saw that our one-year availability is 99.9979%, and that’s within rounding distance of those mythical five nines! 99.9979% of the time, Wikispaces was reachable over the network to our customers. That corresponds to 11 minutes of unplanned downtime over the year, and counts only whole-site outages. We had a few brief slowdowns, search problems, and RSS feed issues that had no impact on most users. Savvy readers will note that we had zero minutes of scheduled downtime over the year as well. Because of the scale at which we operate and the number of visitors who depend on Wikispaces, we’ve worked hard to roll out all changes to the site without interruption. The status page is a great place to look if you’re wondering whether a slowdown is a problem on your end or something system-wide.

I’ll let you in on a secret: sometimes I draft things in Word. Once I feel like they’re ready to share, I copy them over to the wiki so I can collaborate and get feedback from my coworkers. But that first draft? Word doc. And that’s why I’m pleased to announce that we’ve improved the copy and paste function from Word to Wikispaces. The process of copying your Word docs into your wiki should be much smoother and easier from here on out, without losing all your formatting work. So what can I copy and paste? Text Text Style This means font, size, color, italics, bold, and underline. All of that will be carried into the wiki. Numbered and Bulleted Lists If they were formatted as a list in the original Word doc, they’ll keep that formatting when they’re moved to the wiki page. Tables All of your rows, columns, merged cells, and in-table text formatting can be pasted into the wiki page without breaking the table. What can’t I copy and paste? Images Instead of getting the image, you’ll get a "Missing Image" placeholder. Single click it to add the image. Forms If your original Word doc has a lot of complicated form fields, they won’t carry over to your wiki. If you want a form on your wiki page, you should use a form widget. Tabs Tabs at the beginning of a line or next to a space won’t carry over. Tabs between two other characters will carry over as spaces.

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 May: Commenting on comments This month we introduced a new commenting feature. Here’s what you had to say about it: Free Technology for Teachers: Wikispaces Adds a New Commenting Feature Michelle Krill: "Checking out @wikispaces new comment feature! http://blog.wikispaces.com/2011/05/our-great-new-comments-feature.html" Clint Heitz: "Free Tech for Teachers: Wikispaces Adds a New Commenting Feature - http://goo.gl/McXO5 #PValley - Adds some possibilities!" Tzvi Pittinsky: "This looks exciting! Free Technology for Teachers: Wikispaces Adds a New Commenting Feature http://bit.ly/mUjZ07 #jed21″ Jennifer Deacon: "loving the comment button on my #wikispaces. Makes it so much easier to help my students. Love collaborative work!" Horizon report Now that summer’s coming, maybe there’s finally enough time to look through the Horizon report’s predictions for technology in education: Elise Eisenberg: "Emerging Technologies in the Horizon 2011 http://bit.ly/hbsQIK report and wiki http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/ on #edulive" jmeyert: "Horizon report wiki - in case one has forgotten: http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/ #hz11″ Luke Rosenberger: "the horizon report wiki — transparent view of whole process: http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/ #edulive" Young people, around the world I’ll let them speak for themselves: Youth Voices: "http://quakestories.wikispaces.com/American+School+in+Japan read more http://bit.ly/iNuKZs" Katherine: "http://refugeestories.wikispaces.com/ refugee children tell their stories on voicethread" TransitionsRTC: "Check out Voices4Hope for some great education resources! http://voices4hope.wikispaces.com/Education+Tips+and+Resources" Social media and Web tools The biggest challenge of this roundup is always choosing which of the great resources to share: Mathematics and Multimedia: Wikispaces and GeoGebra Susanna Livingston: "Great information on using Facebook for the classroom- all grade levels, including higher-ed- http://siglit.iste.wikispaces.net/FACEBOOK" ChelseaKierstead: "Want to learn more about Skype? Want to use it in your classroom? Here’s how. Visit my wiki at #skypefortheclassroom.wikispaces.com" Paul Elser: "Looking for a good wiki that has done an excellent job of orgnanizing and collecting them? Go to http://web20guru.wikispaces.com/ #SIM323″ Adding fun to summer reading — as if it wasn’t already fun enough. Here are a few ways to get even reluctant readers excited about that summer reading list: Theresa Shafer: "I LOVE this idea and will be sharing with colleagues! Twitter Style Book Reviews http://murrayhill.wikispaces.com/Twitter_Book_Reviews" Sarah Ducharme: "@bookchica’s wiki for book trailers http://digitalbookreviews.wikispaces.com/ #ecislib2011″ The Daring Librarian: "Ban the Book Report Resources! Get some ideas & post your own! http://bit.ly/ifOzc9 #engchat #engchat" …and a special hello to the students at Minarets! On Friday, May 13, the Social Media club from Minarets High School dropped by the office as part of their tour of Bay Area social media companies. It was great to have you guys! Mike Niehoff: "Minarets Social Media Team visits Wikispaces in SF yesterday as part of their bay area tour. http://t.co/D53Nkza http://t.co/2ySek54" Have a great summer, everyone!

The Zombie Teacher Project gave Texas teachers a platform to play with video and internet tools for their teaching. With the philosophy that short films could be a great way to create fun content that would engage students and still meet the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), Melissa Bartlett built a wiki to turn teachers into filmmakers. After just a few minutes looking at her wiki, we were almost ready to try it ourselves! We asked Melissa to tell us a little bit about it: What do you get when you cross a teacher with 24 hours of filmmaking? You get the Zombie Teacher! The development of this project was an effort to improve meaningful technology professional development for teachers. We felt a Wikispaces site would provide the perfect learning environment! And we think it has….feel free to stay connected with our 21st century professional development.