Join us for our Digital Citizenship Panel on Tuesday, Sep. 25th at 11am PDT Our team has the pleasure of working with some pretty amazing educators from around the globe, and we’re always amazed at how they’re handling some of today’s most innovative initiatives and biggest challenges in education. Last month, we had our first panel on school solutions for blended learning where we saw ways to bridge face-to-face learning with online pedagogy. Each panelist shared how they plan, execute and evaluate a blended learning and flipped classroom environment and we took questions online. This Month This month, we’ll be exploring the topic of Digital Citizenship and Wikispaces. Three Digital Citizenship advocates will share their thoughts, experiences, and best practices in this live online panel. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear how to begin, rejuvenate, or tweak your commitment to help students discover what Digital Citizenship means in today’s world. Our Panelists Kelly Mendoza Common Sense Media @kellymendoza Jeff Brain Reed Union School District Tiburon, CA @misterbrain Gail Desler Oak Grove Unified School District San Francisco, CA @GailDesler Want to join? 1. Sign up and we will send you information before and after the event. 2. Come to our event page at 11am PDT on Tuesday, Sep. 25th where the live event will be streaming. With a Google+ account, you can easily type questions into the comment box and we’ll answer them live from Google+. Alternatively, you can ask questions via the hashtag #panel2012. 3. Can’t make it? No problem. It will be archived on our YouTube Channel directly after the event.

With our latest release, we have introduced the concept of wiki types, and our first new wiki type is the Editable Website. All of the Wikispaces you know and love are what we are now calling Basic Wikis. They emphasize collaboration and discussion around the content you and your users work on together. But sometimes you just want to put a website up for others to view. You want the easy editing of Wikispaces but you don’t want people visiting your wiki to see all of the editing and discussion functions. For those times, our new Editable Website type is perfect. When you create an Editable Website wiki, we hide the editing and management tools - like Edit and Manage Wiki - from your members and visitors. Organizers are still able to edit the wiki like normal, but others will only see a website. Getting started When you create a new wiki you’ll be given the option to choose a wiki type. If you already have a wiki and you want to change its type, head to Manage Wiki and then Wiki Info. When you create a wiki in editable website mode, your wiki permissions will be set to protected, and comments and discussions will be disabled. As an organizer you’ll see a rectangular icon in your black global navigation bar at the top of the screen. Click on it to reveal your edit button, page options, and action menu in the sidebar. Click it again to hide these options. Try it out Here are some ideas for how to use our new Editable Website wiki type: Create your own website. If you’re looking to share resources, videos, and links with your students or other visitors, it’s now easier than ever. Collaborate then publish. Start a collaborative writing project that you build with your students as a Basic Wiki. Then, when it’s ready, switch over to an Editable Website and share it with parents. Create public-facing content on top of your private workspaces. Our Private Label service lets you create as many wikis as you’d like to on your own site. By choosing between our new wiki types, you can decide how people interact with the content you build. Use Editable Website wikis to share news and information with your parents, community, or customers. Or set up Basic Wikis to encourage collaboration in your classrooms or departments. More options, more flexibility. How are you using our new Editable Website wikis? Let us know in the comments below. And be sure to keep an eye on the blog to learn about upcoming wiki types and features.

"It’s easier to type." "Fun to touch." "Easy to find pages." This is what the students in Amy McCauley’s room at Pinehill Elementary in Auckland, New Zealand said as they worked on their class wikis from their iPads. Amy’s doing a pretty extensive iPad roll-out this year and we were able to watch the progress unfold over Twitter. Students in particular really enjoyed the ability to use Wikispaces on their iPads "anywhere because the iPads are small and portable." We asked Amy to share a bit about her overall use of Wikispaces and how her students have fared with the new mobile experience. We hope it’s helpful to you as you roll out mobile devices in your own learning space. How I use Wikispaces Planning. I have all my planning (overviews, units and lessons) on a private wiki that my team all has access to. This is a great way for me to have all my planning online and easily accessible. I used to have all my elearning links in hundreds of different places (emails, bookmarks, written down!) and now I can link and have them all in one place! (Note: Amy’s school also has a great eLearning Resource wiki that you can check out!) Class Wiki We have our class wiki, which is really the central hub for all lesson plans, help, and supporting materials for their lessons. I post as much as possible so students can go and have a look when they need to. For example, if we have been discussing something in class, they can have another look at a related slideshow or website. I manage the space and my students add content in some places, all using their iPads. Student Wikis Students have their own Wikispace which I like to call their ebook. They have control over their own space. I run individual learning programs and within their weekly program they have allocated time to ‘publish’, which involves putting up content on their Wikispace. I also check these spaces and add comments as well as make notes. For example, this week as I have focused on their blogs and writing, I have notes to catch-up with various students and have left comments for them to make changes or move forward using the comment function. Within their wikis, the students have each set up a blog page. As we don’t have email addresses for the students, I couldn’t find a blog site for the students that met all our needs. I got the students to set up a page called ‘blog’. Students are expected to blog at least once a week, reflecting on their learning. I have just put an RSS feed (thanks to the advanced webinar last month!) of each of their blogs on our class wiki. I have 6 featured blogs at the top! Thanks Amy! We look forward to hearing more from you as you and your students bring iPads to the world of wikis. Be sure to follow Room 14′s journey on Twitter.

We’ve heard from many of you that you’re always looking for more training and professional development resources. We’re excited to share with you some fantastic examples of how educators are using wikis to bring together their professional development resources. We hope they spark your creativity. iPads and Professional Development at Buhler USD 313 Rosemary Miller, District Integration Technology Specialist from Buhler Unified School District 313 in Buhler, Kansas, uses wikis regularly to organize all of her professional development resources. One of Buhler’s wikis at http://buhleripads.wikispaces.com/ is a great example of this. You can find information on different apps for the iPad as well as how they’re being used in the classroom. Be sure to check out how they snazzed up their wiki with a custom Wikispaces theme and embedded graphics. Empowering Teachers to Empower Students Helen Gooch, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Clarksville-Montgomery County Schools in Clarksville, Tenneesee, uses Wikispaces to "house all the technology we do here in the district as an exemplar of what is possible and a test bed for assisting teachers with their implementation." Check out just one of their rich professional development wikis at http://empowerstudents.wikispaces.com/. Organize Workshops and Conferences By sharing your PD resources and events on a wiki, your educators can easily reference, share, and engage with them. Melissa Shields from Etowah County Schools hosts her workshops on her wiki. Her teachers visit the site to find PowerPoints, exercises, checklists, and even how-to videos from her workshops. Manitou Springs School District uses a wiki for their Summer Learning Institute. There, attendees can find resources and activities for each event, work on them at their own pace, and return to them as needed throughout the year. Adrienne Michetti from the Australia International School of Singapore posts her workshop resources in one place as well. We’ve highlighted a few ways people are using wikis to support their professional development, but we’d love to hear more. Let us know in the comments below. How do you PD?

Ron Mader started the Oaxaca wiki in July of 2007. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: The Oaxaca Wiki brings together the fans of Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s plurilingual in approach and we measure progress slow step by slow step. We bring together the visitors and the locals who edit information about unique cultural and environmental aspects of Oaxaca in multiple languages (starting with English and Spanish). We focus attention on niche interests in travel and tourism, helping guide the way for those interested in cuisine, indigenous peoples, cycling, markets, and a host of other topics. All travel is local when we learn to listen to the locals. The wiki format has worked wonders. Paraphrasing Benjamin Disraeli: "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to wiki about it." 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? History. The ability to see and review revisions over time makes the progress visible to all. Cheers to embedded transparency and accountability! Second favorite: Embed a widget. This has been so helpful in adding videos. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? Creating events, including local workshops, photo safaris and grassroots fairs. To get people to interact requires collaborative editing. The wiki has been a stellar platform. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" The development of the Indigenous Cuisine (Comida Indigena) menu. I simply print out the page from time to time and show it to friends at local markets. The conversations that this engenders is awesome. Likewise, we couldn’t create multiple language vocabularies without true collaboration. Check out: Santa Maria Ocotepec (Ayuuk/Mixe) Teotitlán del Valle (Zapotec) San Pedro Tidaa (Mixtec) 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? I think the wiki would exclaim how collaboration is the key strength of my work. Even if the pages are not physically edited by others, they show the steady development in a slow conversation and reveal how valuable local knowledge is when combined with global partners. This type of open journalism encourages feedback that was unimaginable ten years ago. That said, what we do in the next ten years depends on our willingness to collaborate. The experiences online and in face to face chats using this wiki has been fundamental in developing collaborative skills among friends who share different backgrounds, languages and interests.

There’s a lot of noise today about entrepreneurs and investors getting involved in education technology, much more than we’ve ever heard. This is a good thing. But we’re also convinced that most of today’s new ed-tech startups will fail and that a lot of investor money will be lost when they do. In part, that’s just how it goes in entrepreneurial endeavors. Creative destruction involves destruction of entrenched players and interests but also of many new entrants as we try to make change. Given the stakes however, we wanted to publish a guide for ed-tech entrepreneurs and investors based on our experiences over the last 7 years in building and growing a successful, large ed-tech platform. In particular, we wanted to put down in writing what it means to us to succeed in this market and how to pursue that kind of success. We’ve gotten so much out of building Wikispaces, and we hope that many more entrepreneurs have the kind of experience we’ve had. In particular the ongoing conversations we’ve had with all the teachers who have been part of our journey have been both the mechanism behind, and a crucial part of, all of our success. We welcome your feedback and comment. Read the full guide then come back here to discuss.

For those of you familiar with Wikispaces Projects, you know they are a great way to get your students working in groups on their class projects or individually on their e-portfolios. In our recent release, we added a few improvements to make them even easier. You can now create new projects directly from your Actions sidebar. Simply click on the plus-sign button next to Projects to get started. And if you’re looking to manage your teams, you can do so from a single consolidated page. Click on Projects and then your project name to create or delete your project’s teams, change team permissions, add or remove team members, and set project events. We hope you enjoy these changes. If you’d like more information on Projects or how you can effectively use them in your classroom, be sure to check out these previous posts: Projects: A better way to work in classroom groups Tips and tricks: Group work in wikis Resources for Project-Based Learning

Join us tomorrow, December 11 at 11am PST, for our live panel on Common Core Standards. We’ll be speaking with Djuna Dudeck from the Pulaski County Special School District, Arkansas as she shares her experiences and insights around creating and implementing a strategy for the upcoming standards. It’s going to be both a fun and informative event. We hope to see you there. Register for tomorrow’s panel.

On Tuesday 18 December at 5pm Pacific, we’ll be participating in a Future of Education podcast with our good friend Steve Hargadon. After reading our recent How to Succeed in Ed-Tech article, Steve suggested a conversation about education entrepreneurship with us and his brother Andrew who is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at UC Davis. As with anything Steve does it should be thoughtful and energizing. We’re looking forward to it. Please join us at 5pm US Pacific time on Tuesday 18 December at http://futureofed.info Update: The recording is now available.

Join us on January 22 at 11am PST as we explore one of the most popular uses for wikis: knowledge bases. Whether you’re in charge of building an archive of standards and procedures in your company, a teacher setting up a collaborative research project for your students, or a district administrator looking to create a shared curriculum resource for your educators, we’ll help you build it. Join us for the free hour-long event and learn to get started with your own online resource database. Update: A recording of the event is now available. Enjoy and let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.