Probably one of the hardest steps in creating this wiki was choosing a topic. Since the school year has come to a close, it didn't make sense to build a student projects site. In all of my classes I like to build assignments I can use later, so I decided to build a professional development site for teachers. My hope is that this site will appeal to educators that embrace technology and don't require face-to-face time with an instructor. I like the idea of a wiki for this because it becomes more interactive with teachers posting examples, questions, and tips.I have used Wikispaces in the past and it was good to see that it is still an easy process. It only took a couple of minutes to have the wiki up and running. Of course I had to start looking at how to customize the look of the wiki. There is a number of themes and even more if the site is an approved K12 site. Adding a new logo was very easy.
The hardest part I had to deal with was the navigation widget. In other wikis I created, when I created a new page it automatically showed up in the navigation sidebar. This layout did not do that so I had to edit the navigation widget.
To make sure that it was still simple to embed work from other sources, I decided to create the intro to the site in Google Docs. The experiment worked! Just like in the past, I chose the "other" option to paste in the presentation embed code. In a couple of seconds the Google Doc was on the wiki and running very well.
I love that you took that extra step to try something new to your wiki. I am sure that we will all benefit from your experimentation.
ReplyDeleteI didn't really have much trouble with the navigation bar, but I did have trouble finding some of the settings.
I, too, created my wiki for use with adults but can see how it can be easily adapted for use with students.
Good luck with the use of your newest wiki!
I love your idea of using a wiki for professional development for your teachers. I love it so much that I'll probably "steal" your idea. I had them used to using the "Technology Tips & Tricks" section of our Blackboard e-org site and had almost gotten to the point that everyone was comfortable with using it. Then the county decided to drop Blackboard and go with Google apps so I had to try to move everything over to a Google site. It was a lot of work and there is no guarantee that the county will not change their minds again and decide to switch us to another format. I think we might be better off with a wiki as it's not so dependent upon "paying" for a certain technology platform, at least, not yet. Wikis have been around for a while and seem to be maintaining popularity over the long haul. Thanks for posting this -- you've probably saved me a lot of work in the long run and I appreciate the chance to improve what I'm doing with another medium. Great thinking!!
ReplyDelete