WhyWiki

One minor annoyance with WordPress is that you can’t insert just “any” code on to your pages. Here is an example. I would have liked to embed this video on this page, but it’s not working. Like I said, a minor annoyance but an annoyance nonetheless. So, I encourage anyone who to know why wikis are so great to watch this “Common Craft” presentation on “Wikis in Plain English”.

Those of you who may consider using PBwiki or a similar service in the classroom should check in at the PBwiki weblog, “The Daily Peanut”. Here are a couple of recent education-specific posts:

• PBwiki: A great compliment to Blackboard, though it’s more accurate to say that this educator supplanted Blackboard with PBwiki

Here are a few things the instructor learned from her experience with PBwiki:

Lessons learned
I think the class did a fantastic job with the site. I will be teaching the class again next summer, here are some thoughts on what I learned.

• In the future I will have each student create a PBwiki sign-on so I can be sure I always know who is making contributions. I will send out individual invitations then with contributor privileges, instead of giving them all administrator privileges–something the class saw as a drawback to using wikis for their own classes.

• One note is important here. I chose wikis as our Web 2.0 tool because they are more collaborative than blogs, and I thought they would be more
effective in creating a sense of community. There was some initial resistance to “blogging” on the wiki, but when I explained that I only wanted to introduce one new tool and wikis are more flexible than blogs, that died down. By the end of class, everyone seemed quite enthusiastic about the wiki, and I think they were all pleased with their final public product.”

• PBwiki at Bentley College (includes a screencast “how to” that you might want to check out)