BP4_Wikispaces

Wikispaces.com is a fabulous, free educator Web 2.0 tool since it has a private members only option, easy creation of student accounts, effortless posting of various media, and site customization. Creating your wiki is straightforward and making it private is just a click of a radio button. Inviting your students and creating their accounts is painless because you don’t need their email addresses. In my case this is important because I’ll have 192 students in the Fall. Yikes! Did I say that out loud? I like the idea of customizing the way my wiki looks by choosing the theme and colors I want to give it that personal touch. It allows posting of files, images, videos and other media. Additional awesome features include as many wikis as you need or want, infinite storage, and across wiki administration or site admin.

Finding a way for my online students to collaborate can be challenging, but Wikispaces will solve some of that by providing a safe online environment where students will rate the games they play, comment on other student’s game ratings, and learn from each other. Furthermore, it allows me to track or monitor each student’s post with an email notification system. That makes it practically trouble-free for me to check what each student is doing and be able to address any concerns I have right away.

In a couple of minutes I had my Game Design Wiki setup and with another a couple of hours I’ll have an amazing wiki to share with my students. The interface is fantastic! There is a great “help” section, FAQ area, wiki walk through or tour, and a link to educational wikis’ to see what other educators are doing.