Wikispaces

Building a great wiki is something that happens over time, it can be an amazing classroom tool and eventually will make many things in your classroom very efficient. It can take time to learn and to set up but it is well worth it.

There are three main functions on your wiki, hyperlinking, adding files (this includes images) and embedding widgets, these are basically moving or interactive things, to embed you must paste HTML code into your site (this is the code that looks like a real mess of letters, numbers and symbols it begins with < and will end with another >.

The best thing to know when you begin building your wiki is to put items into a table, this allows you to control where you want things to be on your page. A wiki will not formatted like a word document or other programme you may be used to.

A wiki is similar to a website in that it is made up of static pages, unlike a blog which displays in chronological order. The wiki is even better than a website however because of the collaboration you can have with a wiki. A website is usually a read only resource, you use it for information. The wiki can be edited and contributed to by many people, anywhere at anytime that suits them. A wiki is a great tool for providing information for students, parents etc, but to really take advantage of a wiki you set it up intending for it to be a place for many people to collaborate or share in the content on it.

Suzie Vesper's Web 2 Wiki has a thorough explanation about what wikis are and how they can be used in education. Click here to get to her detailed instructions about building your wiki.

[|Join wikispaces here]

Look at some wikis other teachers and classes have built. Click here

You can create lots of things with web2 tools that you can share on your wiki. Find some on this site.

You can add lots of things to your wiki to make it more engaging or fun. These are called widgets. Find some here. Make buttons or logos for your wiki at [|Cool text] or make them look like [|street signs]. You may want to put a [|hit counter] on your site to see how many people have visited it. [|More hit counter options.] Or a [|Cluster map], which shows where in the world your visitors come from. [|Find more widgets]

This website [|'Getting Tricky with Wikis']has heaps of tips and instructions to really personalise your wiki. Have fun.