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