Best options for web 2.0 applications

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Permalink Reply by Alice Mercer on May 5, 2007 at 8:03pm

There is another blog possibility and that is edublogs.org which I use. It has no adds, and you can upgrade to a personal domain. I'm fond of it, because I teach elementary and I don't like the "next blog" feature in blogger. Also, it has word press themes which are, imho, much more elegant.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on May 6, 2007 at 4:58pm

I'm with you, Alice.
Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Shayne Train on May 7, 2007 at 3:24pm

An edublogs caution, learned the hard way :): learnerblogs and edublogs are separate entities. I assumed from the home page (http://edublogs.org) that teachers should use edublogs and students learnerblogs, however they are not compatible.

If you want, students can comment on a teacher's entries. However if you want them to be able to post their own entries as well, register your main classroom blog in learnerblogs first, then add students as users (they have to also be registered). They can then be given status as contributors (you moderate) or authors (they can publish directly).

Students can certainly register on their own and keep their own blog (you can link from the main classroom site) however for teachers who would like to maintain control over student accounts, and have a gmail account (I don't know if this works with any other e-mail system), you can register new users with the e-mail:
youraddress+studentname@gmail.com. This ensures that all account e-mails including password information comes back to YOUR e-mail. In fact, the student doesn't even need to have his or her own blog, just participate in the main one.

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Permalink Reply by Terry Fogarty on May 5, 2007 at 9:23pm

I prefer wikispaces. I use the spaces/for/teachers option which is ad-free (crucial IMHO for student use).

Prefer Blogger for student sites as it does not require password activation.

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Permalink Reply by sdroyer on July 6, 2007 at 12:59pm

Check out wikispaces and make your spot private.

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Permalink Reply by Laura Gibbs on July 6, 2007 at 1:41pm

hello Lino! I have been using pbwiki very happily this past year, and with their new WYSIWYG editor and the ability to paste in HTML directly (source), it has become wonderfully easy to use. there is also a very good and helpful forum where people help troubleshoot questions and problems (there was some problem with the Search feature, for example, and I got great help at the forum in addition to a bug fix from the pbwiki guys themselves). make sure you do the pbwiki FOR EDUCATORS option - that allows you to have locked pages and to have the ad-free version without having to pay the premium price.

I have not used wikispaces since I have found that pbwiki definitely meets my needs - I'm looking forward to the discussion here to see if maybe I should also be using some other wiki platform instead of pbwiki... but at least ofr right now, pbwiki has definitely met my needs!

one of my wikis is something I published in support of a book, including materials and commentary that could not be included in the printed version for reasons of space. being able to add these materials online makes the book so much more valuable I think!

http://LatinViaProverbs.com

and, like Skip, I am also a drinker of port... delicious!

:-)

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on July 6, 2007 at 3:11pm

Zoho wiki is also an excellent solution,free, no ads, wysiwyg editor, double click to edit directly in the page, paste html, auto updating side bar.

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Permalink Reply by Hans Feldmeier on July 7, 2007 at 4:07am

Hi Lino, I followed the discussions about your request: which wiki or blog?
Have a look at the forum on our group Digiskills as well!
Additionally go the menu Groups - click on it - and once more click on "Join ..." - you will be able to be a member of DigiSkills grou.ps and to get more infos or add content ...

As to your request:
In my opinion - I recommend for a newbies at a lot of lectures to teachers - start with blogger.com because it is very easy, you only need a Google account!
As to wikis: I prefer wikispaces.com - and if there is a problem - your support is very fast.
Greetings to you, enjoy the weekend
Hans

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Permalink Reply by Mitch Fowler on July 7, 2007 at 3:13pm

Hey Lino,
It just so happens that I use both Wordpress and pbwiki. I am a second year 5th grade teacher in Michigan (US) and have been using these tools for the last year. Obviously with a 5th grade audience, I don't need advance options or tons of storage space. As for Wordpress, my blog (www.mrfowler.wordpress.com) allows me to do most of what I want for free. The majority of staff in my district use Wordpress and I think it serves everyone well. The interface is very user friendly, writing a post is similar to using Word, and managing discussions is very easy. The one drawback that I have is that I like to incorporate video into my post every now and then. Wordpress requires you to use YouTube, Google Video, and a few other existing video sites in order to imbed and play video via Wordpress. I got around this by having a collegue host some of my videos on her server and then linking to them, allowing the video to open in WMP. Above all, for an elementary teacher, Wordpress works very well.
I have recently started using pbwiki and do not have a lot of experience with it in the classroom setting. Currently I am setting up a regional science wiki in order for students across our state who use the same science curriculum to share ideas and resources. My only concern however is that pbwiki may not allow multiple useres to edit pages at the same time (I don't know for sure, but I need to check into it). If you would like, my wiki can be found at www.fowlerswiki.pbwiki.com... any feeback would be great.
Hope some of this helps!
Mitch

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