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= Create Your Own Wikispace =

Getting Started

 * Sign up for an account if you haven't already. Remember K12 wikis have a free upgrade: []
 * Here is a quick Wikispaces tour of the basics to getting started.

A wiki is a collaborative website that can be used in the classroom for multiple purposes to enhance learning and literacy. More specifically, a wiki is a website that allows for easy creation and editing by any user that visits the site. Wikis are generally used as collaborative spaces, where individuals can post text, images, hyperlinks, and various forms of multimedia. In terms of enhancing literacy, wikis provide an authentic discussion forum that allows students to share information and knowledge in a collaborative written fashion.

Your Homepage:
On your Dashboard you will see a list of all of the wikis you belong to. There will also be a record of recent edits. Here there is also a simple button to create a new wiki.

You may add as many wikis as you wish. This may help if you want to invite small groups to collaborate on separate wikis.

The Mail tab allows you to email members of wikis as individuals or whole group. Students also have access to this feature and can email you questions. You may also access this from any wiki in the upper right hand corner of the page where the envelope is. The Settings tab has your profile settings. Here you can add a picture of yourself and create a profile page.

Manage Wikis:
From any wiki, you can click on "manage wiki" on the left side of the page. Here you can manage content. For example, to delete a page you go to "pages" and delete the one you do not need.

You may invite or add people as members of your wiki here as well.

This is where you need to upgrade to a free K-12 subscription by clicking the "subscription" icon. This way wikispaces can create accounts for your students.

This icon will appear under "People" in K-12 wikis so that you can create accounts for your students without the need for email addresses. You can choose the students' usernames and passwords.

**Navigation Bar:**
To organize your pages, it is easiest to start with your navigation bar. Click on "edit navigation" and list the pages you want to include. One by one you will need to link the page.

To do this, highlight the page you want to link and click the link tool. You will see this screen. At this point, it will not recognize the name of your page. Just "add link" and when you edit the page, wikispaces will create the page for you. *Notice on the navigation bar of this wiki, I added an image, bold headings, numbered sessions, and bulleted links. It was very easy to add new pages using this function.

Editing Tool Bar:
When in editing mode, the tool bar is very similar to Word. This just takes practice and trial to become comfortable.

Page Functions:
You will find these at the top of each page.

Page Tab:
A very helpful option here is to lock a page so that members can not edit.



**Discussion Tab:** Students can click on "new post" to add a comment. Then, others can read and reply in a discussion thread. Settings automatically allow for a new discussion on each page. However, you can change the settings under "manage wiki" to make a common discussion for every page in the wiki.



History:
Here you can look at all past revisions. You can select more than one change to compare. In the picture on the right, I have chosen a specific date and have the option to "revert to this version". This would be particularly helpful if you wanted to start over with a new class of students.



More Help:
Visit the Wikispaces Teacher Help page for answers to frequently asked questions.