Monday, April 23, 2007

Wiki


I've used PBwiki ("Make a PBwiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich!") to create class sites for a couple of my courses, and I like it pretty well. It's easy to use (they've recently changed to point and click editing, which is supposed to make it easier, but I actually haven't updated any of my wikis recently, so I don't know), even if I would prefer to use good old html instead of some nonce code.

It looks nice. And now, they're making all educational wikis ad-free, which will make it even nicer. And--I can't lie to you--they're offering me more space on my wiki if I tell you about them. So I am.

Here's a wiki from my Women's Lit class last summer. I'm also using a wiki in 8010, the class for our MA students who will be teaching for the first time in the fall. But that latter wiki is very much still in process. (Hmm. I guess wikis are sort of meant to stay in process, aren't they?)

At any rate, I'm sure the purists among you will tell me I should download wiki software onto my own server, and probably I should. Probably I should download some blogging software, too. But right now, PBwiki works for me. (As does Blogger.)

I mean, hey. At least I don't use Blackboard.

2 comments:

comoprozac said...

This looks interesting. I'd be interested as to how it could work in elementary and high school classes. We should talk.

Anonymous said...

Zac - also see Will Richardson's blog (and possible links).
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/
He does a lot of k-12 work with blogs, wikis, etc. I don't know how many k-12 folks are doing this, but I think there is a significant number.