home

Building a Wiki

Overview
A [|wiki] is software that allows you to build a website without any knowledge of [|HTML.] You can create and edit information on your site as easily as creating an email message. You can add links from other websites, as well as photos, videos, and other files. You can also allow others to share in editing and in the creation of your site's content, making it a truly collaborative effort.

Examples of Curricular Use
There are so many sites that give examples of wiki use in the classroom. Scroll down to the " 5) Examples of educational wikis" list in the coollessons.wikispaces.com/Communication_Learning_and_Connectivity wiki. Or see the [|wiki-walk-though] for an explanation of wiki and more examples of classroom use. [|wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/] will also provide you with a good selection of wiki uses in the classroom, as well as templates for classroom, group, and teacher to peer wikis, if you want to sign up there. There are also subject specific wikis from Mike Baker's site eduwikis.us. plain English" by Lee Lefever and CommonCraft explains the power of the wiki over e-mail. || a wiki, you may want to see [|Mike Baker's wiki building video]. || media type="custom" key="587561" ||
 * media type="youtube" key="-dnL00TdmLY&rel=1" height="355" width="425" || "Wikis in
 * Before creating

Build a Wiki
Go to www.wikispaces.com and sign up for a free account. As a K-12 educator you will be able to sign up for a free "Plus" subscription after you give your first wiki a title. You'll go to the Manage Space section on the left, scroll down to Space Settings and then Subscription, and click on the free subscription. One of the neat features of the "Plus" subscription is that your wiki becomes ad-free. Next, click on "Home" to get back to your wiki. Look above the toolbar and you'll see "Home" and four tabs. Click on "edit this page" tab to enter or edit your material. Click on your page title and highlight it. Next, click on the down arrow of the format box above (where you see "NORMAL") and click on "heading 1" to change the size of the title.

Next, you may want to organize your thoughts into an outline form. Beside helping you put information in order, the headings you provide will become [|anchors,] helping you and your students to navigate the wiki more efficiently without having to scroll through a lot of information. Begin by typing two left brackets, type toc, and close with two right brackets. This will organize the following headings into an outline. Write your headings, one per line. Then highlight each heading, go to the toolbar again, and click on "heading 2" to change the font size. Press the "Preview" button to see if you're satisfied with your work, then press "Save". Save your work **everytime** you're done editing the wiki and **before** you click on the task bar. This brings you back to home and you should see your outline in the upper right hand corner. You'll notice that the smaller the font size, the further to the right the words are indented.

Okay, now you're ready to fill the wiki with information. You can link to objects from other websites to the wiki, i.e., in the "examples of curricular uses" above, the wiki-walk-through example is from another website. On your page, type your example word or phrase, then go to the site where you found it and highlight and copy the URL in the address box. Come back to the wiki and highlight the example, and click on the link icon (world with the closed link) in the visual editor. That will bring you to a dialog box. Click on "external link" and paste the URL in the box. That's it.

If you want to [|embed] a video, audio, chart, or anything else, click on the TV icon in the visual editor. That will show you the widgets, or applications, to use to embed elements on your wiki. If you want to embed a video, click on video and choose the option where you will get the video. Once you find the video, click to begin playing it so you can find the "embed code". Highlight and copy the code, then paste and save it into the box created in the video widget. Presto! To insert a photo or a file, use the photo icon (tree) to upload it.

There is no text box to write in so use the table icon to create rows by columns and drag the elements into the cells. For example, I put the videos in one cell and a caption about them in the other cell.

Now we can talk about who will edit your page. Go to "manage spaces" on the left side of the wiki and scroll down to "members and permissions". The third option lets you choose who can see and edit the wiki. Next, scroll down to "invite people", click and type in the email addresses of those you wish to access the page. Hit the Send button. Your students will receive an e-mail invitation from you to join the wiki. You can also lock any page that you don't want others to edit. Go to the page icon and click on the down arrow, then click on "lock".

Add a Page
Before adding a new page, save any work that you have done on the home page. Type the name of the new page where you want it to show up on the main page. Then scroll to the top of the page, look in the left margin and click on New Page under Actions. A box will pop up asking you to give the new page a name. Once you've typed in the new page name, save it and go back to the home page. In edit mode, highlight the new page and click on the link icon and link it to the Wiki-link.

My new pages are entitled Activity A. and Activity B. These are internal links. If you press on the down arrow on the "page" tab and select "What links here?", you'll see all the internal links or new pages that are part of the wiki. 

Integrating with Blog
To introduce a blog within a wiki, you must first create an account on a blog site like Blogger.com or Edublog.com. Once you have an account you can write a post and add it to the wiki, again by using the link icon. Save. For example: [|blog entry]. has good examples of classroom blogging. || media type="custom" key="556589" || .
 * Amy Capelle

More Tab Information
Staying with the down arrow on the "page' tab, "print" will let you print only what is in the body of the wiki (not the blue margins). "Delete", "rename", and "redirect" only apply to the home page. The "History" tab is where you will find all of the edited drafts that you have saved. You can go back or revert to an earlier version of the wiki if you really mess up on the present one. Use the "Notify me" tab if you wish to monitor the activity of others on your website. On the wikispaces homepage, [|A Classroom Wiki Webquest], you'll see that one way to use the "Discussion Tab" is for students to critique each others' comments. On the editor tool bar, the icon to the right of the bullet icon is called a horizontal rule. Use it for page breaks--where you naturally end one idea and begin another--like the grey horizontal line between "Integrating with Blog" and "More Tab Information."

(Copyright)
If we borrow material from others on the web for use in our own web projects, it will be very important to check those sites for any copyright restrictions and make sure that we give credit where credit is due, even if we are borrowing from the public domain. Many people are also allowing others to build on their works without our having to ask for their permission. You may also want others to build upon your work too. It works both ways. Permission is granted through a "Creative Commons License." Teachers First [|Twiki Issues] has a good section on copywrite and student conduct. This link [|www.commoncraft.com/show] shows an example of sharing with restrictions.

"Wanna Work Together?" from Creative Commons.org to find out more about Creative Commons. || You can find photos and songs that you can use for free at the creativecommons.org site or you can use the advanced search feature at www.google.com to find the "usage rights" menu and use the free to use share modifiy option. Here is another site: educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Free Image Libraries
 * media type="custom" key="507911" || View the video

Classroom Tasks
See [|welkerswikinomics.wetpaint.com] for an example of a "code of conduct" for wikinomics by Jason Welker. See also Kathy Schrock's [|Guide for Educators, Critical Evaluation Information] for evaluating weblogs, blogs, and podcasts.

Resources
Capelle, Amy. "What's a blog?" Voicethread.com c2007-08. Cove, Sarah. "A Classroom Wiki Webquest." [Blogpost] Interview with teacher Michelle Haiken. cFebruary 8, 2008. blog.wikispaces.com/2008/02/a-classroom-wiki-webquest.html February 2008. Vesper, Suzie. "Free Image Libraries." Educational Software and Web 2.0. c2007-08. educationalsoftware.wikispaces.com/Free+Image+Libraries. February 2008 Levin, Rich. "Communication, Learning and Connectivity through the Use of Wikis and Blogs." Cool Lessons Consulting. c2007 coollessons.wikispaces.com/Communication_Learning_and_Connectivity February 2008. Teacher's First. "Wiki-walk-through" Network for Instructional TV, Inc. © 2006-2008. www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/ February 2008. Teachers First. "Twiki Issues." Network for Instructional TV, Inc. © 2006-2008 www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/issues.cfm February 2008. Welker, Jason. "Wikinomics" c2007 wikisineducation.wetpaint.com. February 2008. Baker, Mike. "Subject specific wikis." c2007 eduwikis.us. February 2008. Lefever, Lee."Wikis in Plain English" CommonCraft, c2007. via YouTube [|http://www.youtube.com. February 2008. Baker, Mike. "Wikispaces Training." www.eduwiki.us. c2007. via Teacher Tube. [|http://www.teachertube.com. c 2007. February 2008. [|http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=9d065f4a9a6c451ba020. February 2008. Steuer, Eric. "Wanna Work Together?" Creative Commons.org c2007 creativecommons.org February 2008. Schrock, Kathleen. "Guide for Educators: Critical Evaluation Information." c 1995-2008 Discovery Education. school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/evalblog.html February 2008.. "wiki." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wiki. c2001 [|http://wikipedia.org. February 2008. "HTML." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML. c2001 [|http://wikipedia.org. February 2008. "anchor." Searchsoa.com c 2001-2008. http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci211563,00.html</span</span</span, February 2008. "embed." 5 Star Support. www.5starsupport.com/glossary February 2008.