We spend a lot of time with our wikis. It’s something of an occupational hazard. So it makes sense that we’ve figured out a few techniques and shortcuts to make our work easier and better. Once a month, we like to share some of those tricks we’ve learned with you. Or just turn you on to some features that we think are cool and you might not have thought about using yet. But if you’re not specifically looking for a way to do some exact, specific thing, there’s a chance you might not catch one of these posts. And we’d hate for you to miss an opportunity for a better Wiki Experience. To that end, this month we’re giving you a quick rundown of past tips & tricks and new feature posts. Think of this as a checklist. What haven’t you tried? Tools and tricks for editing wiki pages Advanced Linking Tips Comments Copying and pasting into wikis Glogster Widget Formatting a Page Linking Images "List of Wikis" Widget Page Includes References (footnotes) Undo Button Widgets, Part I and Widgets, Part II Tools and tricks for managing wikis Advanced Wiki Customizations Bulk Member Management Bulk Page and File Management Bulk Tagging Custom Domains Discussion Tab Easy-to-digest Daily Notifications Email Export PDF New Navigation Bar Page Templates Permissions Recycle Bin Subpages Tags (…and another post on tags. We love tags.) Tips for a Good-Looking Wiki User Creator Tool Wiki Statistics Wiki Theme and Color Selection Tool Wrapping up a Wiki at the End of the Year Tools and tricks for Wikispaces Private Label sites Bulk Account and Wiki Management Content Editor Integration and Multiple Authentication Integration with LDAP Site Customization Site navigation Site-wide Emails Wiki Templates

Want to get a jump on the school year? On Wednesday, June 22 at 11 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. UTC), we will be holding a webinar to talk about Wikispaces Private Label for higher education. We’ll show you what goes into setting up a Private Label site, how to migrate your existing wikis over to it, what a successful Privae Label site looks like, and more. And save some time for any questions or concerns you have. Then we’re doing it again the next day, Thursday, June 23 at 2 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. UTC), to dig into Wikispaces Private Label for K-12. There will be lots of great tips and examples, even for those of you who aren’t in education. And it’s absolutely free. Sign up today for the higher education webinar or the K-12 webinar.

Next week, Adam and the team will be heading out to Philadelphia for ISTE — and he’s looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible. On Saturday, you’ll find us hanging out at EduBloggerCon, and at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Adam will be joining Vicki Davis for Wonderful World of Wikis: Practical Classroom Wikis for All Ages. But, even better, he’ll be spending Sunday through Tuesday sitting down with as many of you as possible to learn all the latest about what’s happening in your schools and districts. So send us an email at help@wikispaces.com to schedule a time to meet. The presentations we give at ISTE are definitely a plus for us, but mostly we go to meet as many of you as possible. We love to hear your success stories, get your product feedback, hear what challenges you have and how we can help at your school or district, and learn as much from you as we can. See you there!

Tom Greenwell started the Clio History Journal wiki in April of 2009. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: Clio History Journal publishes exemplary essays by senior secondary History students. It’s all about celebrating and sharing great student work. It helps stimulate students’ enthusiasm for the subject and it’s also a great learning tool. It’s really helpful, when you’re setting an essay task, to be able to show students what a high quality essay looks like. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? I like the widget that allows you to embed video in pages. Not only have I been able to embed items like lectures on the Punic Wars and a narration of the Epic of Gilgamesh, we’ve also been able to feature mini-documentaries created by students. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? Students learnt about the Etruscan influence on Rome by reading a student-written essay that had been published on Clio in 2009. They then had to do further research to verify the accuracy of the essay. They reported their findings in the discussion section. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" Whenever I’m playing around with a page and I stuff it up, I’m always very grateful for the ‘revert’ option! 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? "You’re very demanding - you’re always trying to change me."

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 June: Learning and working on the Web There’s a lot to learn about how to get the most out of the time you spend online, whether you’re working, learning, or playing. Fortunately, some of you are already figuring it out: Dawn Angove: "K-12 Digital Citizenship Resources: http://k12digitalcitizenship.wikispaces.com/Resources" The Daring Librarian: "Twitter Etiquette Tips! Your quick 2 bits of Advice Sought! http://bit.ly/mPLUBS #Edchat #TLChat #EdTech #Engchat #UKedchat #ISTE" hechternacht: "Please share any additional resources so we can add to the wiki here http://kinderchat123.wikispaces.com/Technology #kinderchat" mauilibrarian2: "Useful! Free K-12 Tech Tools [Wikispaces] by subject, grade level http://t.co/4TDuQf5 via @eschoolnews #edtech #web20 #HASL11″ Summer reading It’s as much a part of summer as the popsicle. Here’s what a few of you are up to: Emma: "The book club will be reading ONCE A WITCH by Carolyn MacCullough this month. Page and questions to come. Missprint.wikispaces.com" Jaime Parker: "Want to earn free books this summer? Check this out: http://thaleylibrary.wikispaces.com/Library+Info" jmplus2: "@jan72361 Page is created http://4thchat.wikispaces.com/Class+Reading+Lists looking forward to seeing book titles. #4thchat" Comments In case you missed it, in May we released a new Comments feature. We’re very excited about it. And it looks like you are, too: Donna Baumbach: "Way cool….you can now leave comments (post-it note style) in Wikispaces. Tried it. Liked it! http://bit.ly/kwmUYK #tlchat" Peter Skillen: "Look at these new features of Wikispaces - Save & Continue (no notifications) & Comments! Yahoo! http://tinyurl.com/3wlnmjm @brendasherry" Waltham High Library: "Wikispaces has a new Comments feature. Like a Post-it note, it lets you put notes, questions, observations on the page http://bit.ly/lTaKd2" Laura Friesen: "Thanks @wikispaces Love the new sticky notes for comments. Very useful for student/student feedback once postings are made!" ISTE Hello to everyone at ISTE! And for those of you who can’t be in Philadelphia this week, here’s a taste of what’s going on: ISTE_SIGOL: "Check out SIGOL’s wiki page http://sigol.iste.wikispaces.net We are so excited about heading to ISTE in Philly! #iste_sigol #onlinelearning" sigivc: "Free SIGIVC Playground at #ISTE on June 28th http://sigivc.iste.wikispaces.net/ISTE2011Events" anderscj: "Not attending #ISTE11 - participate remotely in our session Wed 10:15am http://the-fix-is-in.wikispaces.com/ by following #thefixisin" PeterVogel: "Tools for writers: http://reluctantwriting.wikispaces.com/ from an #ISTE11 presentation. Lots of resources." Epstein27: "join a great bunch of educators at #SIGMS11 playground! This aint your mama’s library no more! #ISTE11 http://sigms.iste.wikispaces.net/" dmcordell: "Fun, prizes, learning…and librarians! What more could you ask for? http://tlsmackdown.wikispaces.com/ #ISTE11 #tlchat"

Join us on Wednesday, July 6 at 11 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. UTC) for our free webinar to discuss Wikispaces Private Label for K-12 education. We’ll go over some general aspects of Wikispaces Private Label (including getting started and migrating your existing Wikispaces wikis to the new site), as well as some education-specific concerns. And there will be time at the end to cover any questions or concerns that you might have. Then, on Thursday, July 7 at 2 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. UTC), we’ll be holding another free webinar to discuss Wikispaces Private Label for higher education. There will be lots of great tips and examples, even for those of your who aren’t in education. Sign up today for the K-12 webinar or the higher education webinar.

Since September 2009, students around the world have been using Karen Ditzler’s Progressive Story Project wiki to collaborate on writing stories. We asked her to tell us a little bit about the project and why Wikispaces was a good fit: Description of Project In an effort to find a way to integrate technology into the writing curriculum, show teachers how technology could enhance instruction, and connect students with others outside their classroom, I decided to try out a progressive story with some classes at 2 local schools. When I opened up the project to other classes around the world, I was amazed at how much it grew! Over 250 classes in more than 25 states and 10 countries have created more than 100 stories over the last 2 years. Classes are grouped by age level. One class starts the story on the Wikispace. Then it is passed along until the fifth class finishes the story. Illustrations are done, a VoiceThread is created and students narrate the stories. Why Wikispaces? At the start of the project, I tried many different tools, but I decided to use Wikispaces because it allowed me to do everything I needed to do to make the project successful. Each story could have its own page, all the teachers involved could edit the pages, the VoiceThreads could be embedded and it was easy for people to navigate and learn how to use. My Favorite Feature? This may sound minor to others, but a feature I found incredibly useful was the search box. I used the search feature hundreds of times during the organization process. After splitting everyone into groups, I could easily find the classes when reviewing stories and answering questions. Each teacher could search for their classes and find out where they were involved. Any Obstacles? This past January, I wrote this in my blog post, "I love this project and I want to continue to organize it for teachers and students, but… At times it can be a bit overwhelming." I got to the point where I was spending so much time organizing, setting up pages, answering questions, collecting pictures, creating VoiceThreads, and contacting participants. I needed a way to spread the responsibility and Wikispaces made it easy for me. Since the teachers were all members of the Wikispace, I could assign Teacher Leaders to organize and run their stories. It was an easy transition and I plan to continue the project!

A great wiki takes time. Of course, you can always just start a new wiki, but sometimes you have a lot of great formatting and content that you want to save. Just because the project is over or your students have moved on to the next class or grade, it doesn’t mean that all your hard work has to go to waste. This month, we’re giving you some tips on how to take a great wiki and get it ready to use again. Manage membership First, you’ll want to clear out all the old members who won’t be using the wiki anymore: Go to Manage Wiki. Under People, click Members. Check the boxes for anyone who won’t be using the wiki anymore, then click the Remove button. (This won’t delete anyone’s Wikispaces account; it just removes their membership to this particular wiki.) Next, you’ll want to add all your new members. If you have an education wiki (either K-12 or higher ed) or a wiki on a Private Label site, you can use the User Creator tool to create Wikispaces accounts (with or without email addresses) and add those users to your wiki. Go to Manage Wiki. Under People, click User Creator. Follow the prompts in the tool to create accounts and add them to your wiki. If you have a Basic-, Plus-, or Super-plan wiki — or if the people you want to add already have existing Wikispaces accounts — you can invite them to your wiki by username or email address. Go to Manage Wiki. Under People, click Invite People. Enter up to 100 usernames or email addresses, separated by commas or line breaks. Customize the invitation message for your new members. Click Send. Create templates Page templates are an amazing time-saver. You just have to build a page once, and you can use it over and over and over again: Go to Manage Wiki. Under Content, go to Templates. Under Create a Template, enter the name for your new template (use a name you’ll recognize later), and, if you want, the name of an existing page you want to base the template on. Hit Create Template. Make your edits to the page, if any, and hit Save. You can use your templates any time you create a new page, and you can manage and edit them whenever you like by going to Manage Wiki > Templates. Learn more about templates with this tips & tricks post from May, 2010. Wikispaces Private Label also lets you create wiki templates. If you are on a Private Label site and would like to templatize your whole wiki, contact your site administrator. Revise navigation Brush up your navigation bar to make sure it’s still appropriate for what you want the wiki to accomplish. Then you’ll want to go through your wiki and manage your pages for the next year: Go to Manage Wiki. Under Content, go to Pages. Review the full list on the All tab. Follow the links on the list if you want to review or edit a page. Edit your tags. Delete any pages that are no longer applicable. Go to the Orphaned tab and check for any pages that are not linked to from anywhere else on the wiki. Do you still want these pages? Should you create links for them? Go to the Wanted tab. Here you have a list of all the links in your wiki that lead to pages that don’t exist yet. Follow the links to each page, where you can create the page by editing it. When you get to the page, you can use the down arrow on the Page tab to see the Backlinks. This will help you go to the place where the dead link exists so that you can edit it, if needed. Clear out old discussions Sometimes it’s helpful to keep an archive of old discussions, but many of you want to clear out discussions from year to year. The easiest way to do that is to delete the page and start over. A few simple steps will let you do that without needing to create the page all over: Go to the page with the discussions you would like to delete. Using the down arrow on the Page tab, Rename the page to something temporary (like "temp"). In another tab or window, 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. Save the new page. Delete the original page, now called "temp." Now you’re ready to start over, with a fresh Discussion tab and a fresh History. If you have any questions, send us an email at help@wikispaces.com. Update: If you want more tips, we cover saving old work and more in our post on prepping your wiki for summer.

Elena McKinlay started the Education Development Notes wiki in April of 2011. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: The Education Development Notes wiki is a resource designed for English teachers and development workers in western China. Separated across a large area, there is nevertheless a vibrant community of dedicated individuals and groups who, through this site, can find useful resources, share and discuss their own materials, and be inspired by what others are doing. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? I really like the invite button. I can invite local and international teachers to share resources. I can invite development workers to view others’ projects. I can invite a group of volunteer student teachers to grab some materials for their countryside classes. I can send someone materials on how to write a funding proposal. I can put together foreign volunteers to collaborate on making materials designed specifically for local contexts. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? As graduates go into the workforce, and as new foreign English teachers come to these areas, I send them the wiki so that they can start off with some locally-appropriate teaching resources. This saves a lot of time, and begins what is hopefully a sustained dialogue between teachers in different places. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" When I realized how easy it was to link to all of my favorite teaching and proposal writing websites on one page, and to add commentary on these resources. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? "Spend more time with me!"

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 July: MOOCs Everyone’s buzzing about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Here are a few of the highlights you shared this month: myleejoseph: "MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) a gathering of people willing to jointly exchange knowledge and experiences http://bit.ly/pszreC" teach1tech: "Have to check out this digital storytelling MOOC Wiki #dsmdn http://bit.ly/nmqCNv Please spread the word and repeat!" ConorCusack: "edumooc - Online Learning Collaborations: http://t.co/cocLBED via @addthis" References for educators No one knows educational technology like educators. Here are a few of the great resources you were sharing in July: gcasperson: "CC self help lab http://teachingandtech.wikispaces.com/CreativeCommons_and_Copyright #Maety2″ jack_kriss: "K-12 Tech Tools site nice design, easily accessible by subject and grade level http://t.co/4JeHdGo #in" LGioglio: "#css510 resource for using technology in the classroom toptentools.wikispaces.com" barbsaka: "I did a recent presentation about high tech ideas that can be used in low tech (no internet) classes: http://bit.ly/oyhHl9 #eltchat" suehatwilkes: "#mathchat #sd36 @mathteachers Started a wiki page for apps that have applications in math class. Please add your fav’s. http://math4keeps.wikispaces.com/Apps+you+can+use+in+Math+Classes" Writing and storytelling It seems like every day brings new tools for storytelling and better information about writing for online audiences. Here are just a few of the ones that popped up this month: sharpjacqui: "New wiki page ‘Writing to Describe’ http://literacyandict.wikispaces.com/Writing+to+Describe http://fb.me/YGwBRwSo" mentormadness: "iPad Storytelling Apps http://storykeepers.wikispaces.com/iPad+StoryTelling+APPS" openinnovation3: "cooltoolsforschools - Writing Tools: http://bit.ly/nZI3uM" robrobson: "Impossible to not learn something new; enjoyed blogging w/ @danikabarker Check out Assessments-great examples http://bit.ly/mVWtby #otf21c" mitcheta3477: "RAFTS writing strategies. http://t.co/GQAPoEL #5thchat" Just plain cool Some things are simply too much fun not to share: OrlandoSentinel.com, Orlando, FL: All American food: Smithsonian website explores food of the United States mgraffin: "Intrstd in joining the 2011/12 #globalclassroom project? (building on this http://j.mp/kESzya). Add ur details here [[http:/j.mp/jLd7t9|j.mp/jLd7t9]] #ukedchat" heyjudeonline: "#slanza11. http://joycedownunder.wikispaces.com/. Go and drown in the goodies!"