This is an email I received from The PBwiki Team <support@pbwiki.com> They clearly said that they wouldn’t mind if the email was forwarded to 10 of my friends, and since I’m not sure if my readership actually has broken into the double-digits, I figured they wouldn’t mind if I shared it here. (Actually, there are a few more of you than 10. See my ClustrMap here.)

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Hi,

We have two free new goodies to announce for educational PBwikis.

Don’t feel guilty if you have the urge to forward this email to 10 of your friends. We won’t mind.

1. PBwiki Presenter Packs
If you’re giving a presentation about wikis, we’ll ship you a free PBwiki t-shirt, an easy-to-read PDF about wikis, a Powerpoint with pictures of real PBwiki users, and 3 FREE Gold Premium wikis to give out to your audience. We’ve already distributed over 100 Presenter Packs to educators round the world, and we’d love to give you one, too.

Get your PBwiki Presenter Pack here:
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki%20Presenter%20Packs

2. The coolest videos in the world
We went out and filmed real educators who use PBwiki, asking them questions about how they use PBwiki, what they like, what we can improve, and common concerns that they had using PBwiki. Now we’re thrilled to unveil 7 gorgeous videos about using wikis in education:

* “How do you use PBwiki?”
* “Is PBwiki safe?”
* “How does collaboration work?”
…and more. Use these videos in your classroom, show them to friends who are new to wikis, or just watch them endlessly over and over.

The PBwiki Educator Videos:
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki%20educator%20videos

Enjoy!

David, Ramit, Nathan, Emily, Brian, and Darren
Your PBwiki Team

The dream was dependent on my student having internet access when she was in India. Turns out, she didn’t have access. So, alas, my dream was not yet realized. However, the fact that I was able to think that way, and come up with that plan was really an important learning/growing experience for me.

I do have some positive news to report, though. One of my top students, also one of my most “online” students, has been sick for a few days. She has tended to blog quite a bit, and does so from home most of the time. Since we are working on a project right now where the students are in pairs, her presence in class is becoming more and more missed by her partner!

I decided to email her parents and ask if it’s possible, if she could find her notes about the project, and type them up on our class wiki. This way, her partner (who didn’t have any of the notes) could continue with the project! We’ll see how this turns out…

She’ll probably show up at school tommorow, making this entirely un-dramatic, but again…..the idea is what’s interesting!!

Hopefully this will inspire you to use wikis in your classroom.

If you are totally new to the idea of wikis, here’s some links to get you started:
http://del.icio.us/wark/wiki

Here is my classroom wiki (such as it is):
http://34eagles.pbwiki.com/

And finally…
This is the original blog post that I posted the following comment to:
http://durffsblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/wiki-ideas.html

I have been using wikis for about a year now (with 6th graders). Here are some of my favorite ideas. (Not that I’ve been able to successfully implement them all yet):

A glossary of vocabulary words that can be categorized, or just put all together. My current sense is that categorizing is better – puts things in context. However, having a section for words that students encounter on their own in their self-chosen books should exist. I’ve had a real hard time getting students to use this. Perhaps because of lack of internet access at home…

Similar to what you’ve described – I’ve been jigsaw-ing some of the topics that we’re studying. 1. Assign sub-topic to student or small group. 2. Require them to type the written portion of their project on the wiki.
This can be for whatever topic you’re studying.

Vocabulary for topic – on the fly:
Sometimes, I have copies of a form ready to hand out – In the middle of a lesson, I’ll be teaching a certain word (parallel, Israelite, food web, or whatever) and I’ll put the form on a random, or not-so-random, student’s desk, and ask them to include on our wiki:
definition (at least 1)
sentence (at least 1)
part of speech
the source of their information (if applicable)
their first name (so I can give them credit)

Finally, one last idea (may be more appropriate for younger grades, though):
1. Write a few story starters.
2. Make a new (numbered) wiki page with each of those story starters.
3. Repeat the story starters & pages enough times so that there is a wiki page for each student.
4. Then have everyone get on the wiki, and “edit” their page (the one with their class number). They will add to the story at this point.
5. At the end of 20 minutes or so, everyone clicks, “Save”, and goes to the next page (different story starter, and with one other student’s work added)
6. After another time period, repeat Step 5. Then they will see a 3rd story starter, with 2 students’ work added.
You get the idea.

I suppose this could work for persuasive essays, too. One page for each of several Theses. Students log on (”Edit”) and add a supporting point, or a counter-argument. They would have to know how to deal with the error message that comes up that tells them that someone else is editing that page. Possibly not a whole-class-at-the-same-time activity.

Thanks for asking about this. Writing this for you has encouraged me to work harder at some of these ideas, or to implement some I haven’t actually tried yet…