Your+Wiki

Plan and set up your own wiki.

Planning
Before setting up your wiki, you need to make a plan. Here are some things to consider to make the planning run smoothly.

What do you want to do with your wiki? See the "Uses in the Classroom" page for ideas or consider ones of your own. Will you use your wiki for - posting assignments - all subjects - parent communication - projects - discussions - evaluation activities - all of the above?

What are some pages you will include on your wiki?

How will you introduce your wiki to your students and parents? (Home page)

How much student input do you want included on your wiki?

How much wiki instruction will they need? How will you go about this?

What do you want to name your wiki? (Helpful tip: make it an easy name for younger students to type)

Parental permission. How will you ask parents for permission to post pictures?

What kind of wiki will you choose? __Public__ (anyone can view and edit) __Protected__ (anyone can view, but only members of the space can edit) __Private__ (only members can view and edit)

__Set up__
You will create your wiki on wikispaces.com 1. Go to http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers100K when you are ready to set up your wiki
 * Create your wiki**

2. When you set up your wiki, it will immediately take you to a "Getting Started" help page. You can choose to skip this or look it over for help. If you skip it, you will see your Home page. Click the "Edit this page" button and you're ready to begin your page. Type your introduction to your wiki, as this will usually be the first page students/parents see when they sign on. For our workshop, just begin with an introductory sentence. Click "Save" when you are finished.

Click on "New Page" on the top left corner to create new pages for your wiki. When a new page is created, you will be taken to that page and be ready to edit immediately. Don't forget to click "Save" when finished editing.
 * Making New Pages**

After adding each new page, the page name/link will appear alphabetically in the menu bar to the left of your screen. You edit this menu by clicking on "edit navigation" at the bottom of the menu. This will take you the "space menu" page where you can edit the order or font of your menu. Remember to use double brackets at the beginning and ending of your page names so they appear as links in your menu bar.


 * Look and Feel of your wiki**

After setting up initial pages, go to Manage Space. Click on "Look and Feel" under Space Settings. Here you can choose the layout and colors for your wiki.

Next, you will need to get your students on the site. To do so, they will each need a username and password of their own. You can invite them individually, by sending an invitation to their parent's email, but that requires that the parents will sign on, create an account, and inform their child. This is what I did last year. My experience is mixed. Some success, but not all students will get their own, or remember, their username and password.
 * Getting students signed on**

If you don't want your students to have to create accounts themselves, just email help@wikispaces.com with a list of usernames and passwords in the following format and they will create the accounts for you. (This is what I did so you could get on this site.)

code user1,password1 user2,password2 user3,password3 code

A few important notes that will help them create these accounts for you quickly:

We have a large number of accounts on Wikispaces, so many combinations of first names, last names, and initials are already taken. It's much more likely we can make all the accounts you ask if you add a school identifier to your students' usernames. For example, if your school is called John Smith High, instead of asking us for the usernames, //adam//, //james//, and //dom//, we recommend //jsh-adam//, //jsh-james//, and //jsh-dom//.
 * Usernames**

Please make sure that usernames are at least 3 characters long (we allow letters, numbers, underscores _, or dashes -) and that passwords are at least 6 characters long.
 * Length of Usernames and Passwords**

Finally, make sure to let us know which spaces we should add them to as members.
 * Which Space?**

 * Do not give out your username and password! **As the organizer of the space, you have special "//powers //" that your members do not, like locking pages and editing space permissions.** *

HELP!! You will probably be in need of some help throughout the process of creating, maintaining, and using your wiki. Please go to http://www.wikispaces.com/help or click the word "Help" in the upper right hand corner of your wiki space. Here you will find help on all wiki topics.

Other wiki sites. If you would like to see/learn more about other wiki sites go to this link to learn more about PBWiki and Wetpaint. http://uatim.wikispaces.com/How do I set up a wiki%3F