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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!"

Qatar Academy is an International Baccalaureate school that caters for Pre 3 (3 year olds) to Grade 12, with both expat students from around the world as well as Arabic students from the Middle East. Joe Lewczuk told us how they’re using their Wikispaces Private Label site: Located in Doha, Qatar We have been using Wikispaces for some time now, and although the original purpose that we set the wikis up for has changed, they are still an essential part of our school’s digital learning environment. How have they evolved? They have evolved from a teacher-controlled collaboration and communication tool to a place where the students are in control. With their own sites, they can reflect, celebrate, and present work that expresses how they have developed their understanding of any learning experience. Then they can also publish and reflect on any action that has derived from that learning experience. Students’ online presence Most of our students already have a very strong online presence, so we are trying to use the wikis to help provide them with professional learning space to publish their work to an audience — whether it be peers, the teacher, family at home or overseas, or even another school all together, either local or international. Purpose The main use of our wikis is as eportfolios, which are used to present digital artifacts that represent a student’s digital learning journey over a period of time. We have encountered some speed humps along the way that we needed to overcome — such as how we set them up, user accounts, privacy and security — but we believe that the wikis have provided us with the perfect vehicle to manage and overcome them. Next step For now, both the students and teachers are continuing to develop their 21st century skills; and the need for us both (students and teachers) to present evidence of our abilities and achievements to potential employers, schools, and educational institutes, as well as universities, through the wiki is becoming a huge part of what we do as educators in preparing our students for life after school. So… why wikis? They provide us with a strong foundation that also allows for differentiation of students’ ability. They cater to the novas with easy-to-use tools, but also provide for the expert, who may wish to use the wiki code and HTML to personalize and develop their online professional presence in a way that better reflects them as a learner.

Ever wondered what else Wikispaces can do for education? This month, we’re holding two free webinars to show you Wikispaces Private Label — our solution for large organizations like schools, districts, and universities — and what it can do for you. We’ll show you what goes into setting up a Private Label site, how to move your existing wikis over from Wikispaces.com, some tricks for site administration, and more. On Tuesday, August 9 at 11 a.m. PDT (6 p.m. UTC), we’ll be taking a look at what Wikispaces Private Label can do in Higher Education. Then, the very next day on Wednesday, August 10 at 2 p.m. PDT (9 p.m. UTC), we’ll be looking at Private Label sites for K-12. There will be lots of great tips and examples, even for those of your who aren’t in education. Sign up today for the Wikispaces Private Label for Higher Education webinar or the Wikispaces Private Label for K-12 webinar.

You want to get your wiki just right — including the way it looks. And while we think the Wikispaces bonsai logo is pretty fantastic, it might not be right for you. That’s why we made it easy to change the logo for one that better represents you, your classroom, or your organization. All you need is an image file (.jpg, .png, or .gif) and the advice below. Use the right size image for your logo. If your logo is too large, it can push the important parts of your wiki right off the screen. If it’s too small, it can just look kind of silly. We recommend using a logo image that’s about 140 pixels wide by 48 pixels high. If your logo is too large or small, you can either select another image, or use your favorite image editing software to resize your logo. There are a lot of different programs out there, but these three are simple and free: Preview (Mac) Paint (Windows) Gimp (free image editing software) Add your wiki name to a custom logo. When you upload a custom logo, it will replace the bonsai logo and the name of your wiki. There are two simple solutions for this. The first is to make sure that the name of your wiki is part of the image you use as a logo (again, your favorite image editing software will help you do this). If you feel comfortable with HTML and CSS, and your wiki is on a Plus, Super, or Education plan, or part of a Private Label site, you can modify the theme of your wiki to add the title next to the logo. Our custom themes help page will show you how to do that. Upload your custom logo. Now that your logo is ready, it’s time to add it to the wiki: Go to Manage Wiki. Under Settings, click Look and Feel. Scroll down to Logo and hit the Browse button. Select your prepared logo file. Hit Save. Restore the original logo. Like we said, we think the bonsai logo is pretty great, so we understand if you want to bring it back. You can revert to the default logo any time you want with a few simple steps: Go to Manage Wiki. Under Settings, click Look and Feel. Scroll down to Logo and hit the Reset to Default button. Troubleshooting If the image you uploaded is too big, it might push some of the contents of your wiki off the visible screen. If that happens, don’t panic. It’s easy to fix: Go to Manage Wiki. The large logo may have pushed it off the visible screen, but it will still be there. Scroll down and to the right until you find it. Under Settings, click Look and Feel. Scroll down to Logo, where you’ll see the preview display of your logo image. Hit the Reset to Default button. No matter how big the image is, the Reset to Default button will be immediately under its lower right corner.

A wiki is an organic creation: it grows and changes over time as you and your community work on it. But, like with any organic process, you’ll get the best results in the long run if you start out with a solid foundation. This month, we’re going to walk you through a few of the most important things to do as you start a new wiki. If you’re new to Wikispaces, this will give you a head start. But even if you’re an old hand at wikis, you might find some new and valuable tips. Step 1: Master the basics It all starts with the Edit button. Type in some text. Take a look at the editor toolbar, and experiment with all the buttons on it. Play around — you won’t break anything. And don’t be afraid to use the Preview and Save buttons as much as you want. Once you’ve figured out what you can with random poking, use the link at the top of the actions menu to create a New Page and run through this checklist of things to try: Add some links. Add an image. Upload and add a file. Turn an image into a link. Add a widget. Try out the wikitext editor. Play around with formatting. Step 2: Whip your wiki into shape You can do a lot of great things with a wiki page, but that’s just the beginning. Now that you’ve mastered the pages themselves, it’s time to take a look at the whole wiki. Go to Manage Wiki and explore. Our users tell us that they get the most immediate satisfaction (and long-term results) from two things: Adjusting the wiki’s look and feel. From Manage Wiki, go to Look and Feel under Settings. Click Themes and Colors to apply one of our premade themes, set your custom wiki colors, or (if you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS) set up your custom wiki theme. If you have a Plus, Super, or Education plan wiki, and you’re comfortable with CSS, you can customize your Wiki Stylesheet. If you have an image file ready and formatted to size (we recommend 140X48 pixels), you can upload a custom Logo. Setting up your wiki navigation. Format your Navigation Bar. Build in-wiki navigation with links and subpages. Step 3: Manage your members A "member" is any Wikispaces user (or site user, if your organization uses Wikispaces Private Label) who is a listed participant in your wiki. While you could work on your wiki all by yourself, getting other members involved will help you get a lot more out of it. Add users to an Education wiki: Go to Manage Wiki. Under People, click User Creator. Follow the prompts in the tool to create accounts (with or without email addresses) or add existing users to your wiki. Add users to other wikis: 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. Promote another organizer so you can go on vacation: Navigate to your wiki. Go to Manage Wiki. Under People, select Members. Find the person (or people) you want to promote and check the box next to their name(s). Click Make Organizer. Additional resources That was just a quick rundown of some of your first steps. If you’re looking for additional help, we have a lot of resources for you: Our video tours The Wikispaces help wiki Older tips and tricks posts Wikispaces support at help@wikispaces.com

Martin Burrett started the ICTmagic wiki in December of 2010. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: My wiki page began as a way of sharing useful websites with my colleagues at Mersea Island School, a large rural Primary school (k-5), near Colchester in the south-east of England. Since then the wiki has grown into a hub of teaching resources that I find or have recommended to me by the amazing educators on sites like Twitter and Diigo. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? Being able to embed files, links, html coding, videos and other media so easily has meant that Wikispaces has made a great home for me on the Internet. Wikis can be slowly built up and added to from humble beginnings and grow into something quite wonderful. So they are ideal for teachers who now are taking their first steps online. Also, because a number of users are able to add to a wiki through a moderator, they are perfect for showcasing the work and learning of a class in a public, but safe environment. 3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your Projects? I use a Wikispaces page as a class site. The children edit their own pages and add their own resources from other web tools and sites. A current favourite is a site called Glogster, which makes interactive and animated online posters. The children have used these in many ways over this year, including making eco posters to encourage green behaviour in the local area and design movie posters for their animated cartoons. Wikispaces has provided a good, easy place to embed these posters and add extra information on the same page. 4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, "Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!" About six months ago, during a period of heavy snow, our school had to close for two days. I posted the news to the jubilant children on our wiki page and suggested a few snow related tasks the children could do when they finally got too cold from building snowmen and throwing snow balls. What I found on our wiki page the next day was remarkable. Many of the children had made collaborative snow and winter project pages with videos, stories, blog posts, animations, scanned images and photos. It was a wonderful surprise. 5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you? I would like to think that my ICTmagic Wiki says that I am a dedicated teacher who enjoys sharing resources with colleagues from across the world to aid them in their teaching and help bring IT skills to more children. While that is true, there is also the enjoyment I have had creating the wiki and watching it grow during the long insomnia ridden hours of the early morning.

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 August: Great stuff for the start of the year Sure, you’ve set up your room and finalized your lesson plans. But isn’t there still time to squeeze in a few new ideas? What is literacy today? The Daring Librarian explains - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post Jeff_Zoul: "Wiki of ideas for 1st days of school. Categorized by content area. Looks good; like the syllabus idea: http://bit.ly/dp84pG HT @blairteach" Erie County, Erie schools going green by saving paper and cash | GoErie.com/Erie Times-News BethEilers: "And don’t forget to scroll down to even more first day/week ideas! http://firstday.wikispaces.com/General #ntchat #edchat" Resource collections One of the great things about wikis is how easy it is to use them to pull other resources together. Here are a few of the collections you’ve built: TinaBarnhart: "Great web 2.0 resource for teachers: http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/" SenorG: "Spanish teachers: start planning your year w/this amazing categorized & alphabetized resource collection http://ow.ly/5p7HK #WLeach" TechTeach33: "Cool wiki for math sites: http://cesa5mathscience.wikispaces.com/Math+Interventions" CliveSir: "My collection of Ed blogs - 1108 of them! http://bit.ly/goCyt0 #edchat #edtech #ukedchat #eltchat" SenoritaSelchow: "Insert evil laugh here - education blogs sorted by discipline! http://movingforward.wikispaces.com/Education+Blogs+by+Discipline" Cool projects And, of course, the other great thing about wikis is how simple they make long-distance collaboration. Here are a few of the great projects out there, looking for people like you to pitch in: CYarzy: "Trying to connect with all 50 states this year! Please join my wiki to help out! http://50statechallenge.wikispaces.com/ #edchat" ewitt43: Great wiki that is made by kids for kids. http://bit.ly/gqtJvH. #5thchat" abfromz: "Greetings from the world goes Africa! - the sixth continent in our participants list http://bit.ly/nH5KQ2 #gftw" BriteEyes49: ""Pen Pals Who WRITE" project Everyone loves tech, but actual letters create a buzz in the classroom as well! Join us! penpalswhowrite.wikispaces.com" LParisi: "Still looking for participants in VirtualUSA. Children grades 4-5 from around the world are welcome. Come take a look sgp.cm/7ccfab"