PbWiki Responds to my nightmare of a day with wikis

3 comments

Posted on 19th February 2008 by Chris in Software |Web Resources

On the official Get Satisfaction page, the founder and CEO of PbWiki responded to my inquiry.

Hi! This is a tough issue. We’ve had a lot of teachers emailing us asking for us to make sure an address gets entered before proceeding so they know which students are making which changes, so several months ago we started asking that *some* address be provided. It sounds like you’ve just discovered that that solution doesn’t work well for you. Can you help us think of a setup that would work better?

What do you think? I can understand the need for some teachers to record at least a name, but I think requiring an email address is too much.

My suggestion to him will be, require a first name (and I think it’s important to note first name only needed) and make the email address not required. I think if kids are not doing this appropriately then it’s more of a classroom management issue and one not necessarily designed to be handled by software.

Or, make it where the user can decide? In some setting somewhere, make it where I can say, “I do not want my contributors to have to share their email address”, etc.

My thoughts, what are yours?

Chris

Nightmare of a day (an open letter to Pbwiki and Wikispaces)

6 comments

Posted on 19th February 2008 by Chris in Software |Web Resources

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Oh boy has this been a heck of a day.

I had an amazing day planned for my kids, with two days of the computer lab blocked off for our use. I was planning for us to spend our time exploring Ancient Rome in Google Earth and making placemarks, adding descriptions, reading the included Wikipedia articles. Notice I said I was planning…

I got to the computer lab to find out that Google Earth was not available to students. My workaround to that had been “fixed” so now I had no workaround.

And 20 students with nothing to do.

I scrambled and put together a project where they research in Wikipedia (rebellious, eh?) and then put their information into a PowerPoint presentation.

Not much else they can access.

I made sure to talk about the basics of good PowerPoint design, I ruled out clip art use and cheesy backgrounds, and ended up teaching a good design lesson.

It’s still not Google Earth.

I then switched gears after lunch and decided to pilot a wiki-based research project and created a new pbwiki. It used to be that as long as I gave the kids the wiki password they could edit until their hearts were content.

No more.

The recent changes in PbWiki’s login procedures have made it where they have to have a wiki invite key and then enter a name and email address.

Sigh.

Even when I told them the wiki invite key and told them to make up a name and email address I was frought with problems with the software not allowing kids through. A lot of the kids simply didn’t know the basic syntax of an email address. Of course, you can’t not include a name and email address.

I asked for help in pbwiki’s Get Satisfaction page, but as of yet there’s been no answer.

So I switched to Wikispaces. I threw together a new wiki that didn’t have ads and had them go to work. I created new pages for each group and had them edit their own pages. Naturally, there’s a chance someone could edit someone else’s, but hey, it’s a reasonable risk.

Except that I wanted them to create a new page for each of the places I asked them to research.

They can’t create pages. Drat!

So back to the drawing board, they can’t create pages and I don’t have the brain power amidst answering a slew of questions to create five pages for each group (and there are roughly ten groups per block). That would be counterproductive.

They progressed nicely once we got up and running, although I had loads of trouble with them typing in the wiki address.

exploringancientrome.wikispaces.com

How hard is that? Most of them typed exploring ancient rome wiki spaces into the address bar.

This tells me more and more than they know how to play but basic operations are beyond them, at times.

So, I implore you, pbwiki, let my kids edit with only an invite key. Let that happen on the free version.

As for you, wikispaces, please let my kids create new pages. Or let that be something I decide in the manage space section.

And for goodness sake, Wikispaces, it’s time for a more robust WYSIWYG editor. One of the reasons I love pbwiki is due to their integration of FCKEditor. My kids prefer it, too, since it lets you control your text so much more nicely and more fine-grained.

Ok there’s my rant. Am I missing something here?

Chris

Apps I use meme

2 comments

Posted on 6th January 2008 by Chris in General

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I caught this from Doug Johnson and then linked over to Will Richardson’s entry. This is interesting!

I like Doug’s layout, and I’m going to go one further by listing the app, whether it’s open source, and on what platform I use it, since I use so many different platforms in a day…I think this is supposed to be web apps, but I’m listing everything I can think of, just for fun.

I’ve added links where possible for what it’s worth. Some of the links might not be right, as I’ve done this more off the top of my head than anything.

Daily

TheBlast.fm (Internet radio, this is the first thing I turn on every day when I get to work) – through iTunes on PC and Mac, through VLC on Linux

Mozilla Firefox – latest version on all platforms. This is my web browser of choice. The really crucial plugin is Foxmarks for bookmark synching.

Gmail – through Firefox.

Bloglines – the classic version. I can’t get a grip on the beta and don’t like Google Reader as much. I still check my friends’ shared items in GR though.

Twitter – I usually have the previous two tabs as well as this one open all day and refresh periodically.

Novell Groupwise 7.0 – School email, on the PC I use the work installed version and at home the web version although I have a rule that forwards each message to Gmail for my own backup. It stays open all the time while I am at work and I strive to empty the inbox when I check it.

Papers – Mac only, this has become my defacto pdf management tool for research.

Foldershare – Mac and PC only, I use this to synchronize some folders between four machines.

Moodle – for use with my students.

Blackboard – for graduate school use.

Weekly

iTunes – for iPod synching. Mac only for synching, Windows for podcast management at work so I’ll have TED talks and Pogue videos to watch at lunch time.

FileZilla – open source and all platforms, this is by far my favorite FTP application, been using it for years. So thrilled to see a Mac version that works nicely with Leopard.

WordPress – handles all my blogs, from this one to TeachJeffSpanish.com to NextGenTeachers.com.

Google Calendar – I really just use this to keep track of myself and a few others, can’t convince my wife to consolidate the paper calendar to here.

Google Reader – periodically I check in to see what you’ve shared.

Jott – I constantly do Jotts to myself to help me remember to do certain things. I’ve got a rule set up in Gmail to flag it TO DO.

Colloquy – Mac IRC client that I use to keep track of edublogosphere.com.

Cisco VPN Client – to connect to University VPN system

NoodleTools – My current system for organizing bibliographies for grad school – web based. Since I’ve moved to Papers I’ll probably stop using Noodletools although it’s been wonderfully helpful over the last year. I might keep the subscription just because they’ve been so good.

Monthly or just Occasionally

Facebook – I log in periodically hoping the revelation will strike me as to why the heck I need it. So far, nothing, except that a Ph.D. I respect from across the country has accepted my friend request. Not sure what that means…

Audacity – for audio editing – open source and cross platform

KomPozer – open source and cross platform, based on Nvu, for HTML editing when I don’t feel like firing up VMWare Fusion and Windows XP to use…

Dreamweaver – for grad school course that requires it’s use.

PbWiki – by far my preferred wiki.

AuthorPoint Lite – this was given out by the WizIQ folks but I use it to prep my slideshows for my Moodle install. I can’t use Slideshare anymore so I go this route.

Google Maps – for driving directions around town and otherwise.

That’s what I can think of for now, I might come back and add more as time progresses, but for now it is time to smack the publish button…

Chris