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"

On Tuesday, February 15, at 11 a.m. PST (7 p.m. UTC) we will be hosting a Private Label webinar. We are very pleased to be joined by Connie Lindsey of Education Service Center Region XV. Connie runs a professional development Private Label site, and will be showing us how she uses her site to get important information and tools to educators across multiple rural districts in Texas. This will be a great chance to look at how technology — and Wikispaces Private Label — are changing the face of education. We’ll be there on February 15. Won’t you join us? Sign up today.

Lisa Dabbs moderates the weekly #ntchat for new teachers on Twitter. The New Teacher Chat wiki is an archive of those conversations — and a valuable resource for new teachers. We asked her to tell us about it: As an Educational Consultant and former school Principal, I’m passionate about the need to mentor and support new teachers. In early 2009, as a consultant I became very involved in the use of Social Media to support educational reform. So I created my Twitter handle and joined the stream! I observed the chats for educators on Twitter and began to participate in #edchat. I observed that at the end of the chat the tweets were "archived" in a collaborative workspace to keep the tweets for all to review. After participating in many #edchats, I discovered that there wasn’t a chat to support new teachers. I was shocked, but after 4 months of preparation, on Wed May 5th 2010, I launched the New Teacher Chat on Twitter. I’m the creator and moderator of the chat and hashtag #ntchat. The chat was met with great excitement! As #ntchat developed, I knew that I wanted to archive the tweets to provide opportunity for reflection on the conversations and resources shared. After looking at several applications, I choose Wikispaces, and I’m glad I did! In creating the New Teacher Chat Wiki, as a novice Wikispaces user, I took the time to watch the helpful videos and interact with other wikis used for educational collaboration. It took me 5 hours to design the wikispace for New Teacher Chat! It was a labor of love and worth the time and effort. I particularly loved that I could customize it to reflect my enthusiasm for #ntchat. I love that I can not only archive the chat, but also add supportive resources, links and videos in pages and navigation bar. Recently I added a Voki! I’m excited to see how my New Teacher Chat Wiki develops. I plan to continue to add links and resources in the coming months as #ntchat grows. I’m even hoping to get sponsorship to move my Wiki to the next level! Thanks Wikispaces team for your support and great product!

James and Adam are all packed up for PETE&C in Hershey, Pennsylvania. If you plan on being there, you should stop by the Social Networking Lounge to say hi. You can be absolutely sure to find them there from 11:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on Monday (Feb 14) and from 2:15 - 3:15 p.m. Tuesday (Feb 15) — but they should be around for a lot of the conference. If you’d like to talk to us during the show, send us an email at help@wikispaces.com and we’ll make sure to find time to chat. We’d love to hear about your experiences with Wikispaces, what you’d like to see from us in the future, and to share some of our plans with you. One of the big things we’re excited about this year is our new partnership with PAIUnet, which gives us an excuse to provide discounts to all schools and districts in Pennsylvania. Very exciting! Hope to see you there!

One of the most common questions we get is also one of the hardest to answer: How do I make my wiki look good? Of course there’s no one simple trick for attractive wikis. The best advice we can give you is to get in there and play with it — and to be inspired by all the wonderful wikis that your colleagues have already made. So, instead of giving you a how-to, we wanted to highlight some of the simplest tools you’ve got, and how you can use them to make your wiki shine. 1. Headings Clear, clean pages are always appealing. And the simplest way to set up clear sections in your wiki page is to use preformatted headings. When you set a line as a heading (from Heading 1 through Heading 6) it will be made larger and bolder than the rest of the page. And, more than that, setting up headings lets you add a Table of Contents widget to the top of your page, so it’s even easier for visitors to read and navigate your page. 2. Fonts A little more complicated than Headings — and a lot more fun! — are all your options for fonts. Spend some time with your Style Text tool. I promise you won’t regret it. Not only can you change the font itself (to Times New Roman, Comic Sans, and many more), you also can adjust the size, alignment, position, and color. You can modify a whole paragraph or line of text, or just one word, or even a single letter at a time. These are all fantastic options, and tweaking them can make a huge difference to your page. But I have to admit to having a favorite, and that’s changing the color. If you know the hexadecimal value of your favorite color, you can just type it into the Text Color field. For the rest of us, there’s a handy-dandy color picker. The outside circle lets you pick color, then the inside square lets you adjust the value (that is, how much white, black, or gray is added to the color you’ve chosen). Just play around until the preview displays the color you want. You can set the Background Color the same way you chose a font color. This won’t change the color of the whole page. Instead, it creates a solid stripe behind the text you’ve selected, like you’ve gone over it with a highlighter in any color you choose. 3. Horizontal Rules Some people never use horizontal rules. I love them. Just one button (click!), and you’ve added a tidy separation between two sections of your page. You can put them above your section headings to serve as a section break. Or you can put it right below the heading as a graphic element. Or you can put one above and one below to make a stripe with your heading inside it. 4. Images Of the simple editor tools, this is probably the one with the biggest impact. Even a single image can make a huge change to the way your page looks and feels. So of course it’s important to choose the right images, and to format and crop them correctly. But, assuming you already have images that you’re happy with, you should also get familiar with your options for adding them to a page. That means adjusting the size of the image, adding a caption, even turning it into a link. You can also change the alignment of an image. By default, an image has no alignment, which means that it gets treated more or less like a really big letter, in line with the other letters around it. If you center align an image, it will be centered on its own line. And if you change its alignment to the left or right, the rest of your text will wrap around it, like a picture in a magazine or a textbook. This is the heart of a wiki: simple tools that anyone can use. But they give you nearly infinite options for building beautiful, impressive wiki pages. If you’ve built pages you’re proud of, share them in the comments below, or send us an email at help@wikispaces.com so we can take a look!

Tom Strongman started the MindDrive wiki in January of 2010. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: Our Wiki has played a key role in telling our story, which has received worldwide attention. We began as a group of seven at-risk students and 11 adult mentors from DeLaSalle High School in Kansas City, and our goal was to convert an old Lola Indy car to electric power, to design a lightweight full-coverage body for it, and to measure how efficient we could make it. The class met for four hours every Saturday morning for eight months. Our Wiki enabled me to document the class and post weekly updates so that all mentors, students, and school officials could keep abreast of our work. As the project developed, we attracted the attention of a couple of major corporate sponsors, and the Wiki played a key role by letting them follow our progress on a weekly basis. Bridgestone invited us to bring the car to their proving grounds in Ft. Stockton, TX for testing in August. The efficiency of our electric powertrain equaled 300 miles-per-gallon at 42 mph and 443 MPGe at 25 mph. The car was a sensational success. The news of our achievement spread quickly around the world, and we were featured on more than 300 websites, TV shows, and magazines. Once people saw our story, they would come to the Wiki to read a detailed version. We formed MINDDRIVE as a non-profit organization to continue the class with more students in the future. We have been invited to bring our car to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May for Emerging Technology Day. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? Besides the Edit button, I like being able to embed widgets because I publish videos and slideshows. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? I use the Wiki as a way to tell our story with pleasing graphics and photography. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" When we received inquiries from India, Germany and the Ukraine, I realized that the Wiki made that happen. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? Our Wiki would say that our diverse group has been about transformation and vision. We learned that every one of us has a unique gift of creativity and ingenuity, and that learning from each other is the basis for our success. The car became a beautiful metaphor for the group: not only does the skin have no color, but its transparency enables us to focus on what’s inside, and it’s what inside each of us that counts the most.

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 February: Free Wikis for Higher Education Yep, you read that right. Free wikis — ad-free, full-featured Wikispaces wikis — are now free for higher education, as well as K-12 education. We’ll have more to say about that in a bit. In the meantime, take a look at what everyone else is saying: Steve Hargadon: New Wikispaces Ad-free Program for Higher Education Free Technology for Teachers: Wikispaces Now Offers Free Wikis to Higher Ed NeverEndingSearch: Wikispaces goes to college, gets even better, and stays FREE! CogDogBlog: Yee Ha! Wikispaces Rolling our Free Ones for Higher Education The Whiteboard Blog: Wikispaces to extend free wikis to Higher Ed Hack Education: Wikispaces Extends Its Free Wikis for Educators from K-12 to Higher Ed Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org: The Best Free Wiki - Now MORE Available for Higher Ed and K-12 @wikispaces #edchat YourCampus360: "Have you gotten your Free Wiki for Higher Ed Users? Pretty cool: http://bit.ly/fytSYG #highered #wiki" awyatt: "Just requested a complimentary upgrade to course wiki from @wikispaces! Thanks! http://www.wikispaces.com/content/for/highered" Janine Lim: "so excited that #wikispaces is giving away plus wikis to higher education now too!! yay for a company investing in education!" Web 2.0 in the Classroom Every month, you guys are building more and better uses of technology in the classroom. These are just a few of the resources and projects you were talking about in February: Malden Observer, Malden, MA: Learning history in the 21st century Deb Langford: "web2 classroom tools - one of my favourite sites http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/" Jamie Burdon: "A useful HOW TO site for Google Apps. Includes videos. http://googletools.barrow.wikispaces.net/ #spneps" Steven W. Anderson: "Did you know the Did You Know Videos from @mcleod and @karlfisch have a wiki? Yep. Good stuff: http://bit.ly/gQACsl #edtech" Collaborative Projects Wikis are all about collaboration. Here are a few of the open projects out there reaching out to the world community. Check them out, and get involved! Jim Noble: "http://internationalstudentsurvey.wikispaces.com/ Collaborative stats project. Please participate, please help us spread the word! Thanks" Amanda Helmkamp: "@karacornejo @gilmorekendra This is a wiki for teachers to have others comment on their student blogs http://bit.ly/W3csi" kditzler: "Registration for the Progressive Story Project is now open: http://writeyourstory.wikispaces.com/" PETE&C In the middle of February, we went to Hershey, PA to attend PETE&C. We had a blast. Fortunately for those of you who couldn’t make it, many of the presenters and attendees wanted to share: Kathy Fiedler: "http://tech4di.wikispaces.com/ is a new resource for me. Thank you! #PETEC2011 #LL07″ Shighla Jackson: "My head is spinning. iLIfe is amazing. Taking notes as fast as possible. http://crsd.wikispaces.com/iLife #petec2011″ Jimbo Lamb: "Find info on my #petec2011 presentation here: http://misterlamb.wikispaces.com/PETE&C+2011" Brandon Lutz: "If you missed 60 in 60 here is the wiki http://60in60.wikispaces.com/ , click on PETE&C 2.15.11 under upcoming presentations!" Dorothy Noll: "Patti just showed 101 Math & Science resources in under 1 minute: duncanpatti.wikispaces.com" J. Camille Dempsey: "Co-presenting, iPads, Inquiry, & PD at PETE&C at 11:30 AM today: http://artseducator20.wikispaces.com/PETE%26C+2011 #petec2011″ Rich Kiker: "http://bit.ly/fMhJE5 Very useful wiki on iPads in education from @rboltz & @amyjshoemaker #petec2011 #1to1″ Cheryl Capozzoli: "Getting Ready for My PETEC Pres. http://web20guru.wikispaces.com/PETE%26C+2011 http://fb.me/KJFHJUVV" khornberger: "Great copyright tool from yesterday’s CFF session http://copyrightconfusion.wikispaces.com/Reasoning #petec11″

Starting this month, Wikispaces is offering free wikis to higher education. It’s the logical next step for us, all things considered. Where it started Over five years ago, we had what we thought was a great idea: take 100,000 of our wikis, make them ad-free and private, and load them up with our great Plus features, then give them away — for free — to K-12 educators. That went so well, we decided to give away 250,000 more. After that, we just kept going and going. As I’m writing this, we’ve given away 980,000 free classroom wikis for K-12 education. This has been good for educators, who need a simple, powerful way to write and work on the Internet. And it’s been really good for us, because it gets our wikis into the hands of the people who need them the most. How it’s changing We’re taking it to the next level. Our great ad-free, private, Plus-featured wikis are now free to higher education, as well. With this whole new audience for our wikis, we’re extending our commitment to give away 2 million total free wikis for education. The features in these free educational wikis normally cost $50 per year, but are completely free when used for K-12 or higher education. That means wikis for teachers, students, professors, researchers, librarians — anyone and everyone using their wikis in K-12 or higher education. So spread the word and let’s achieve something great together. If you’re using your wiki exclusively for K-12 education, find out how to upgrade your wiki and get lots of other great information here. If you’re using your wiki exclusively for Higher Education, find out how to upgrade your wiki and get lots of other great information here. What’s next Expanding our free wiki program is a crucial first step in changing how we think about wikis for educators. Over the next year — and beyond — we are planning to develop and release some of the tools and features that educators request most often. Plus a few that we just think will be cool. All still free, ad-free and private, because we believe that educators deserve it.

Through the recent tragedies in Australia, the Fitzroy Oxfam Group’s Disaster Relief Australia wiki has been connecting people in need with donors who want to help. It’s a truly inspirational undertaking. Wiki co-founder, Fitzroy Oxfam Group’s Brian Moran told us more about it: When a disaster happens in Australia like the Victorian bush fires and the recent Queensland floods there is an immediate outpouring of generosity in the local community and an equally strong immediate need for practical assistance by those who are suffering. Wiki has provided us with an instant way to connect both parties without the bureaucracy, time lag or bottlenecks. It’s so simple that I can’t believe others had not thought of using a Wiki community notice board concept to immediately connect these two parties in a crisis situation. Within hours of the Victorian bush fires Craig Reardon from TheETeam, craig@theeteam.com.au , and I set up a Wiki site and emailed out a media release. The media immediately picked up on the concept and we had 24,000 hits in a few days as this site offered immediate relief to thousands. When the Red Cross, and other charitable organizations could not cope with the offers to help they immediately referred donors and sufferers to our Wiki site. The most telling call was from an Australian Government department Lawyer saying to me "we don’t know how you have done this so easily and quickly but your unique idea is working like a treat and solving so many of the logistical problems many of our departments are struggling with. Don’t quote my name or my department but we will give you all the support you need as your goods and services register is providing such a vital service. So just click on www.wikifloods.com.au and see how simply it works. Let’s say you are a generous soul on high ground in Brisbane and you have an empty caravan in your back yard that you want to loan to a sufferer for a few months. Log on to the site and list what you have to offer with your phone number and my guess is you will have got a phone call within minutes from someone needing it. You sort out the logistics of delivery between you both and an accommodation problem for a family is solved almost immediately. (On our Victorian bush fries site 4WD Club members listed their offer to move caravans within 100 km free of charge.) It’s peer to peer, no bureaucracy, time lag or bottlenecks. Imagine the time, resources, paperwork and labour this above offer would have taken a charity/government department to sort out. In a digital age let’s have digital solution. The site facilitated air drops of food and medicine by another generous soul offering use of his ultra-light. And it’s not just offers of goods, like furniture, bedding, and food but labor, stock agistment, transport and even professional services are listed as well. The site is beginning to empty out now and an empty site is a sign of great success to us! We have spent many hours refining the concept and we know it works well so we are now ready to offer it as an essential tool in any crisis situation anywhere in the world. Brian Moran OAM Chair Fitzroy Oxfam Group. briangum@tpg.com.au Note : Between the time that Brian sent me this post and I hit Publish, tragedy struck Christchurch, New Zealand. If you need help, would like to donate, or just want to learn more, go to http://disasterreliefnz.wikispaces.com/. —Carole

On Wednesday, March 16, at 3 p.m. PDT (10 p.m. UTC), we’ll be holding a Private Label training webinar for site administrators, wiki organizers, and anyone curious about Wikispaces Private Label. The one and only Sarah Cove will be hosting, and she has some wonderful use cases, features, and tricks to share with you all. And, naturally, she’ll be concluding with a Q&A session, so you get a chance to drive the conversation, too. The webinar will be one hour long, and it’s totally free. Why don’t you sign up today?

Last month, we gave you a quick rundown of your most basic tools for formatting a wiki page. This month, we wanted to give you an introduction to one of the all-time most popular wiki tools: widgets. Widgets: A Primer A "widget" is any piece of media or dynamic content that you can embed into a wiki page. It could be anything from a table of contents to a video to a playable Flash game. It’s also a great way to make your wiki more engaging, relevant, and fun! Wikispaces Widgets When you click the widget icon in your toolbar, the first thing you see is a list of Wikispaces Widgets. We built these tools to make it easy for you to add certain types of formatting and wiki-specific information to your pages. For example, this is how you’d add a table of contents, or a reference (a "reference" is like a footnote for your page), or a special character. Some of these widgets make it easier to navigate your wiki. For example, you can add an alphabetical List of Wiki Pages, and even narrow the list to only pages with a certain tag. Or you can add a List of Links to a Page, and provide a little backwards navigation. Or, if you are working in a Private Label site or if you have a whole bunch of single wikis, you can add a List of Wikis to any page on any of your wikis. Documents, Presentations, and Other Popular Media Chances are you’re already using other Web 2.0 tools in your projects or coursework. One of the most popular is Glogster, which lets you create and publish rich, dynamic online posters. Our users love Glogster so much that we recently built a special widget to make adding them to wikis even easier. It’s easy to add other content, too: videos from YouTube and TeacherTube, presentations and slideshows from Flickr and Scribd, Google Docs and Google Calendars, RSS feeds, even Skype chat. We have a list of widgets on our help page — but as long as you have the embed code, you can add any widget from anywhere to any page on your wiki. How It’s Done Go to the page of your wiki that needs a widget. Hit the Edit button. Place the cursor where you want the widget to go, then click the Widget icon (it looks like a little TV). Select the type of widget you want from the menu. If you’re using a Wikispaces Widget or one of the popular media or widgets that we’ve listed for you, just follow the instructions on the screen. If you want to add other media or widgets, select Other HTML and paste the embed code into the field (you can usually find the code in a text box labeled "embed," "embed HTML," "add to my site/blog," or something similar. Hit Save. Save the page. And that’s it! More About Widgets You probably see widgets every day, on web sites, blogs, and other wikis. And there’s no reason not to use those great tools — and get the same great impact — on your own wiki. If you already have tools you love or media you admire, take a look around for that embed code. It can probably be yours with a simple cut and paste. But that’s not all. In fact, we have so much to say about widgets that it wouldn’t all fit in one blog post. So be sure to check back for the April tips and tricks, and Part II of Widgets.

Larry Bruce started the first Mr. Bruce’s History in July of 2007. In June of 2010, he updated to the current Mr. Bruce’s History wiki. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: Mr. Bruce’s History serves as the class website for my 9th grade U.S. History courses. But more than being a web site where course material and instruction can be disseminated and delivered, it serves as an online collaborative workspace — a community hall, of sorts, based on the shared goals of the course and of the students. Through Mr. Bruce’s History, students have access to an interactive class calendar, a curriculum guide based on the state content expectations and links to unit pages, a personal portfolio where they can post links to their work next to the content expectation that it is intended to address. Students also access class readings and participate in frequent discussions — all without leaving Mr. Bruce’s History! 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? I would have to say templates. The key functions of our wiki is based on the quick creation employment of complex pages. Creating such pages from scratch every time would prove to be unwise, taking far more time than necessary. Rather, by having templates ready for the calendar pages, the student pages, reading assignment pages, and any student wiki project pages, the workload is greatly reduced by eliminating the menial editing and all pages are uniformly matched to the site. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? As we intensified our use of Wikispaces for course management and a collaborative workspace, we also used it in combination with Google Docs to embed small group note-taking/collaborative content resources. Where we wanted real-time collaboration, I embedded a Doc on the curriculum page for that content and posted the open link and we would go to town while reading. Watching students make connections without speaking was somewhat thrilling and it drove verbal conversation as well. Setting up things like this is so easy to do on the fly, that even if a portion of the class benefits, it can be set up on the spot by anyone in the classroom. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" Yeah, that would have to be the first large asynchronous project that I did when teaching 8th grade U.S. History - The Big Kahuna. This project required students to work in collaborative pairs and asynchronous groups of four or more. They chose a topic from the Era of Expansion and Reform 1800-1850 that sparked their interest. These pairs would work with another pair in a different hour that chose the same topic. Pairs would produce a video on their topic and the group would construct a wiki page in which the videos would be embedded. Witnessing the pairs work in class and then communicate using email, wiki discussions, and wiki mail to collaborate with classmates outside their class was invigorating. It also generated conversations about History class outside the walls of my room. It fully utilized the purpose and design of Wikispaces and the outcome was better than I had anticipated. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? I think my wiki would say that I put an emphasis on a well-designed online workspace. When I speak at conferences or to groups about wikis in the classroom (or about any aspect of an online web presence for teachers) the emphasis I make is on designing it around its intended purpose. If a teacher creates a web presence (blog, wiki, WordPress, etc.) without the forethought of what function it is intended to serve, then it will exist without one. I hope that the wiki designed for my U.S. History classes demonstrates what online collaborative workspaces look like at the intersection of form and function.

Wikispaces is 6 years old. We’re going strong, and we’re having a great time. Tomorrow we’re going to give you the numbers update we do every year to give you a sense of the scale of what we do. That’s always a lot of fun for us, and sometimes it’s a little shocking. There are a LOT of you out there. We spend time on a regular basis thinking about what success means to us. Specifically, we ask ourselves who we want to be and what we want to do as a company. It’s not just about numbers, whether they be membership numbers, activity numbers, or revenue numbers. It’s about ambition. We have the ambition to be innovative and efficient. Software is hard. At scale it’s very hard. Software at scale with a small team is really very hard. But it’s also fun and rewarding. We’re pretty good at this, we want to get even better. We have the ambition to treat everyone we serve not just well, but extremely well. We want our employees, our customers, and our users to feel that we have exceeded their expectations. After all, that’s the way we like to be treated. We have the ambition to serve more and more educators. We are reminded every day of our ability to help teachers and students. And that strengthens our commitment to expanding our presence in education, reaching more and more teachers, schools and universities, and having a positive impact on the education of students worldwide. We are privileged to live in a time where we are constrained by almost nothing. We have the ability to be clear, open, and honest in our communications, to build something of value and get it into the hands of millions. Why wouldn’t you feel ambitious at a time like this? Thank you for all of your help this past year. Onward and upward.

On our birthday, we like to take a look at how much Wikispaces activity has changed over the past year. It’s kind of like keeping a growth chart. And, in the past year, we have done a LOT of growing. Since our last birthday, we have grown to over 7 million Wikispaces users who have created more than 3 million wikis. And we know those wikis are great, because in the past year more than 115 million visitors have gone to those wikis and racked up 879 million pageviews. (Or, to put it another way, 0.88 billion pageviews.) In the past month, we’ve had nearly 17 million visitors with nearly 106 million pageviews. On March 2nd alone, those visitors made 209,207 edits in a single day - and on August 31st, we had the most active hour of the year, with 33,949 edits in a 60-minute window. We’ve also crossed a huge milestone in our support of education: we have given away over 1 million free wikis for K-12 and higher education. We are thrilled to support education at this scale. March 2011 March 2010 All-Time Registered Members 7,282,736 4,468,404 All-Time Wikis 3,081,875 1,804,063 Pageviews 879,098,490 642,412,469 Unique Visitors 115,523,326 71,808,285 30 Day Pageviews 105,762,167 74,673,090 30 Day Unique Visitors 16,755,241 8,804,730 We like to share these stats because it’s exciting to look at how much is happening in WIkispaces. Not just because the numbers are so big, but because the wikis, work, and learning they represent is awe-inspiring. So thank you for another wonderful year full of so many fantastic wikis. Pageview and visitor stats are from Google Analytics and are through March 15, 2011. Tell us what you think with an email to help@wikispaces.com.

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 March: Making sense of tragedy in Japan After the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami, many of you set up, shared, and contributed to wikis full of information and resources for helping: begoña b: "Journalist wall of shame/Journalist wall of honor(Muro dl vergüenza periodística/Muro dl honor periodístico) http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/" Robert Dillon: "My 8th graders are using the info they find from searching #prayforjapan and other hashtags to create http://disasterinjapan.wikispaces.com/" Nippon Time: "http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/" Mutia Kurniawati: "You’ve the Journalists Wall of Shame, now here’s for Some Good Journalism: http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Some+Good+Journalism" Keiichi: "Just put up a wiki site, http://japanese-relief-resources.wikispaces.com/ please help edit and spread the word!" Lori Borgman: "For a pespective on the nuclear situation in Japan from a nuclear engineer and nice guy http://japannuclearsituation.wikispaces.com/" jean-louis oustric: "fukushima - home http://fukushima.wikispaces.com/ This is a public wiki about the ongoing nuclear crisis in japan." A sampling of cool wiki projects Every month we hear about exciting wiki projects. Here are just a few from March: Craig Kemp: "Hey everyone can you please spread the word about my class #wikispace and give us some feedback - http://weareroom1.wikispaces.com/Feedback" kditzler: "WOW! There are already 94 classes signed up! http://writeyourstory.wikispaces.com/ Still looking for classes to write a story in Spanish." Smithsonian: "Curious about what else we offer for social media? Here’s all the stuff that couldn’t fit in the @nytimes article http://ow.ly/4guJY" Jen Smith: "We are hoping to find schools to contribute, please RT or contact me if interested! http://aglobalhello.wikispaces.com/ #edtech #global ed" Valuable tools for Web 2.0 classrooms Here are some of the resources that you’ve been talking about this past month: Wesley Fryer: "Great video #pbl idea #mace11 Paper Slide Videos @commoncraft style! http://paperslide.wikispaces.com" OCM BOCES SLS: "ISTE’s 1 Tool at a Time webinar series Glogster Thurs 17th http://1toolatatime.wikispaces.com/" Suzie Vesper: "Just added a few new avatar tools to my wiki page. Anyone got anymore? http://educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Avatars" West Broward High: "Web_2_Oh_Tools - Fantastic Resources for projects: http://thedaringlibrarian.wikispaces.com/Web_2_Oh_Tools" Our free wikis for higher education We announced our free wikis for Higher Education in February. This month, some of you were still talking about it: The Thinking Stick: Wikispaces Extends Free Education Wikis to Higher-Ed Digital Writing, Digital Teaching: Wikispaces announces free wikis for higher ed Planeta Educativo: Wikispaces pro también gratis para educación superior Just a Tech Blog: Wikispaces Offering Free Wikis for Higher Ed JISC Digital Media: Wikispaces announces free wikis for HE and FE NetSquared: Free WikiSpaces Plus Accounts for K-12 and higher Education Institutions Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Free wikis for educators: K through 12 through PhD

We are very, very excited to announce your new and improved navigation bar. I’ll dive into the details in a second, but here are the three big reasons we think you’re going to be as excited as we are: You can sort your pages by tag into collapsible folders. You can drag and drop to rearrange pages — instead of editing the navigation bar or adding links by hand. All those pages you’ve flagged as Favorites are conveniently listed in your navigation bar. The new navigation bar is simpler and friendlier, and it is going to give you a whole new way to keep an eye on what’s happening in your wiki, without any tricky setup. Here’s what it’s going to look like: Which wikis get the new navigation bar? If you’ve ever edited the navigation bar on your wiki, you won’t see any changes and you won’t lose any of your hard work. But if you’ve never edited the navigation bar, or if you’re creating a new wiki, you will see the new navigation bar by default. How do I use it? If you are the organizer of a wiki, you can rearrange that wiki’s navigation bar. Your Navigation Options will let you decide which categories your navigation bar shows: just pages with a certain tag, or All pages in the wiki. Pages will be listed in the order they were created or in the order the tag was applied. But you can easily rearrange the order of pages or tags by simply dragging them to where you want them to be. You don’t have to hit edit, you don’t have to save. Just make the changes, and every visitor to your wiki will see the navigation bar the way it should be. If you’re visiting a wiki but you’re not the organizer, you still have some options for customizing the navigation bar. All the various folders can be expanded or collapsed, depending on which pages you need to access easily. Whenever you add a navigation bar tag to a page, it will be automatically added to the navigation bar. And any of the pages you flag as Favorites will appear at the top of the navigation bar every time you visit the wiki. I’m still not sure the default navigation bar works for me Not to worry. The new navigation bar gives you more freedom, not less. You can still edit your navigation bar like any page in your wiki (our navigation bar help page can give you some pointers. And if you find yourself feeling nostalgic for the old alphabetized list of pages, you can do that too: On the side bar, under the list of pages, click the edit navigation link. Delete anything that you may have added to your navigation bar. Click the Widget button in the toolbar. From the Widget menu, select List of Wiki Pages. If you want the home page to appear at the top of the list, check the Move Home Page to Top box. If you want the home page to appear alphabetically in the "H" position, leave the box unchecked. By default, we will list up to ten pages. You can change this number if you would like to list more (or fewer) pages. Click Embed Page List. Hit Save. I’ve customized my navigation bar in the past, but I want to give the new one a try That’s also easy: On the side bar, under the list of pages, click the edit navigation link. Delete anything that you may have added to your navigation bar. Click the Widget button in the toolbar. From the Widget menu, select Insert Navigation Widget. Click Insert Navigation Widget. Hit Save. We hope you enjoy the new navigation bar! If you have any questions or comments, shoot us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

Cheryl Arnett and her students use their wikis to keep up with pen pals all over the globe. We asked her to tell us how she got started: I used to have pen pals from around the world for my class. After losing one great contact in Australia, I gave up on pen pals. When I first learned about wikis, that was the first use that came to mind! It made sense to create a website that we could all access and post to. Imagine how much more efficient it would be than email or, as we had done before, postal letters! I ended up on ePals and quickly found partners from several places around the world. We created our first wiki, wearepals.wikispaces.com, with first grade students. The children learned so much from each other! One of the teachers, Rawya Shatila, from Beirut, Lebanon, and I entered a contest with epals and were named Epals Ambassadors for the year based on our wiki. We then entered the Microsoft Innovative Education Forum with our wiki project and not only won the contest in the United States, but were able to attend a world-wide event in Capetown, South Africa in October of 2010. This year we created a new wiki for our second graders called joinhands.wikispaces.com. One of the greatest benefits to using a wiki for pen pals is the opportunity to assist teachers who are just learning about technology. My favorite moment came when I found an email from our partner teacher in Lusaka, Zambia. Her assistant had been trying to update a page when she erased it completely. Knowing pages could be restored, I went on the wiki and recreated the erased page. Little did I know that at that exact moment, my friends in Africa were also trying to fix the problem and the page magically reappeared! They did not know how that happened until they read a new email from me! Wikispaces is a wonderful way for children from around the world to become friends. My friend in Beirut and I like to say, "If children everywhere became friends when they were 6, maybe there would be less conflict and war in the world!"

Columbia University recently announced that their Wikispaces Private Label site just hit 20,000 users. Columbia began their journey with Wikispaces in 2007. Since then they’ve created over 1,700 course wikis, giving instructors a place to give more engaging assignments and build more dynamic class syllabi. "Wikispaces has been exceptional - always available and dedicated to supporting us," says Maurice Matiz, Vice Executive Director of Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. You can read about it in more detail in our case study of Columbia University. If you’re interested in finding out what Wikispaces Private Label could do for your university or organization, take a look or send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

Last month we gave you a compact introduction to widgets. You said hi, shook hands, made a little small talk about the weather. But we just know that you and widgets are going to get along like gangbusters, once you get to know each other. So we’re taking some time to get you better acquainted. How you know you need widgets Maybe you found a really great wiki through one of your colleagues, or from Twitter, or right here on this blog. And while you were admiring that wiki, something caught your eye. Perhaps it was a list of visitors, showing their location on a rotating globe, or a Facebook "like" button. Or possibly you saw an embedded presentation that let you flip through slides without downloading anything or opening any new windows. These were all widgets. They didn’t take any coding or programming or special skills. And they’re out there, on the Web, ready for you to use. How you find the widgets you need There are literally thousands of widgets out there that do everything from helping you lose weight to letting you play Space Invaders, so finding the right one can be a bit overwhelming. Here a few simple steps to get you started. Keep your eyes open. Now that you know what you’re looking for, you can recognize all those cool widgets on wikis, Web sites, and blogs for what they are. A lot of the time, those cools widgets will be branded with the widget’s name (or even a link to the source), so you can easily look them up and add them to your own wikis. Hunt for Embed codes. Most of the Web 2.0 tools you already use and love can probably be embedded in your wiki. Take a close look at your settings, preferences, and options. Is there something that says, "Share," or "Embed," or "Post to your blog"? If so, there’s a good chance that same code will let you add it to your wiki. Search. Googling "wiki widgets" won’t do you much good — there are simply too many out there. But once you know what you want, you can narrow it down. Try "bookshelf widget," for example. Or "embed slideshow." (Just a note: There’s a lot of great stuff out there, but some widgets and widget sites may contain inappropriate content. So search safely.) Ask. Every really great wiki gets that way because someone puts a lot of effort and care into it. These people are experts, and they are often excited to talk about the work they’ve done. They may be happy to help, or they may be too busy. But it seldom hurts to ask — and to let them know that all their hard work is appreciated. And now — the good stuff We wish we could take you straight to exactly the right widget: that one perfect tool that will be the cherry on top of your wiki. But there are just too many projects and too many widgets. And there are new ones every day! Here are just a few to get you started. We know the Wikispaces community already uses (and loves) these guys: Glogster interactive online posters Voki talking avatars Prezi dynamic presentations Slideshare presentations, documents, and videos Feedjit live feeds of the traffic to your wiki ClustrMaps and RevolverMaps real-time global maps of visitors to your wiki Storybird sharable, illustrated storybooks Wordle word clouds That’s just a teaser, really. You can find a much, much bigger list at cooltoolsforschools. In fact, so many of you are collecting and sharing all these fantastic tools that we can’t really keep up. Every month in our roundup post, we try to gather just a few of your lists, libraries, and recommendations. Good luck!

Andrew Churches started the Educational Origami wiki in April of 2007. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: The Educational Origami wiki is a starting point for education. When I first published the wiki I was working on taking traditional teaching practice and fitting it into the wide range of tools that we have available to us. Since then it’s expanded to cover Bloom’s Digital taxonomy, a revision of Benjamin Bloom’s original work and then the later revision by Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl. Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy takes these works and brings them in to the 21st Century. I use the wiki as a resource hub, where I and the others who contribute to the wiki can share resources on a wide range of technology and education based topics ranging from Pedagogy to Leadership and management. We have starter sheets for different technologies and rubrics for their use, plus links to readings that challenge the reader to think and question their teaching practice. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? The discussion tool - there are so many great discussions and these help to shape my thinking. It’s a huge privilege to have people take the time to comment and suggest, I really appreciate the conversations. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects? As a teacher, Wikispaces wikis are one of the most powerful tools in my teaching toolbox. While I use tools like Google documents with my students for collaboration, this is always a short duration task, but for anything that requires permanence I use a wiki. We have global projects that run between schools in 5 or 6 countries and are over two years in duration and the foundation of the projects is the shared wiki. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" My AHA moment came after I had started the wiki and at that stage it was a private wiki, where to edit you had to be a member. A colleague of mine encouraged me to open it up, to make it public, to invite collaboration. I trusted his advice and watched it grow from there. It’s great and so worthwhile. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? I hope that it would say that as an educator and also about education is about sharing, openness, open doors, transparency and passion for learning.

On Wednesday, April 20, at 11 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. UTC) we will be holding a special webinar for people interested in Wikispaces Private Label for Higher Education. We want to show you the benefits of using wikis in college courses, and the terrific advantages of having coordinated central administration (including Single Sign-On) for your university. We’ll walk you through getting started, look at some inspiring use cases, and take the time to answer any questions you have about Wikispaces Private Label for Higher Education. Then, on Thursday, April 21, at 10 a.m. PDT (5 p.m. UTC) we will be holding another webinar to talk about Wikispaces Private Label for K-12. You will get a chance to see the advantages of an integrated wiki environment for your school or district, and see how easy it is to get started. These will be a great opportunities to learn all about Wikispaces for education. And it’s totally free. Sign up today.

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.