Wikispaces - The Best Educational Wikis of 2010

You're receiving this email as a member of Wikispaces.com. Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser. Don't want to receive this newsletter anymore? Unsubscribe instantly. JANUARY 2011 The Best Educational Wikis of 2010 We're excited to announce that the winner of the 2010 Edublog Awards Best Educational Wiki is part of the Wikispaces community. Greetings from the World and the runner-up wikis demonstrate just how engaging and captivating a wiki can be. Take a look! Still getting to know Wikispaces? Check out our video tours for helpful how-to's. Try Wikispaces Private Label Looking for a self-contained environment with unlimited wikis? Find out more about Wikispaces Private Label Ready for more? Get the latest news, helpful tips, and event announcements on our blog and Twitter We're here to help! Send any comments or questions to help@wikispaces.com. See how wikis can transform education On Tuesday, February 15, Connie Lindsey of Education Service Center Region XV will be joining us for a webinar specially for people interested in Wikispaces Private Label for their school or district. She will be showing us how her professional development wikis get important information and tools to educators across multiple rural districts in Texas. Sign up today. Interviewing Journey of a T-shirt In late 2010, four education students in Hamilton, Ontario built a stellar lesson plan wiki. We caught it when they announced their wiki on Twitter. And we were so impressed that we asked them to tell us all about it. Read the interview. Featured Wiki: Digistore 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 Pātaka 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. 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 wiki includes examples of how digital content has been embedded into existing programs 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. 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. Keep reading. A Message from Ryan What does the word "wiki" mean, exactly? You know it to mean a place on the web where people can work together to build content. As a concept it's made a huge impact on the world and especially, of course, what we do here at Wikispaces. If you want to get technical about it, though, wiki means "quick" in Hawaiian. And changes can come quickly on a wiki site. If you ever lose track of what's been happening on a wiki, the "Recent Changes" link is the place to go. And if you haven't visited Recent Changes in a while, you'll find two new ways to use it: by user and by date. Just type in a user's name (your own is a good way to try this out) and you'll see only the changes made by that user. It's a great way to answer those questions like "I know I edited a page on this wiki, but which one?" or "What has my friend been editing lately?" that come up as you're working. Date ranges give you an even better focus. We added this functionality in response to your feedback. It's so handy that I started using it myself even before I completely finished making it. So, thank you! What will you do with your next wiki? Good idea: An open cookbook wiki where students share favorite recipes with students in other countries. Bad idea: An open cookbook wiki where students share favorite recipes with students on other planets. (They don't even have almonds on Mars.) Sent by Wikispaces.com - 67 Langton St, San Francisco CA 94103 help@wikispaces.com If you no longer wish to receive this email you can unsubscribe instantly.