Creating+a+Wiki

Creating a wiki To create a wiki, go to [|Wikispaces.com for teachers]. Wikispaces is giving away 250,000 wikis free to be used for K-12 education. You can always get a free basic wiki from Wikispaces, but this gives you an ad-free, unlimited user wiki for free! Enter the information required, then press “join.” A box will pop up that says “Getting Started With Your New Wiki.” I recommend that you look through this to familiarize yourself. After looking it over, close the box. You are now ready to begin your wiki!

Personalizing your wiki To personalize your wiki, there are a couple of things you can do. The first is to change the layout. In the left sidebar, click Manage Wiki. You will see a page of icons. Under Settings, click on Look and Feel. The top option is Theme. Click the blue link that says “Change or Make New Theme.” You have several options to choose from. I like Bubble, but you are welcome to choose something different. When you have selected the one you like, click Apply. Up in the right hand corner, you should see a link that says Look and Feel. Clicking that will take you back to the Look and Feel menu. Under Theme, you will see Colors. You can click the color wheel to play around with color combinations. When you have selected your colors, click Save. You can keep scrolling down and add a logo as well, if you wish.

Editing pages In the sidebar, click on Home. This will take you back to your homepage. Click on the box that says “Edit This Page.” There will be a getting started message there. You can highlight and delete it, then add whatever information you want on the page. Since this is the homepage, you will want general information on this page. Notice at the top there is a toolbar. Towards the left side of the toolbar, there are tools for modifying your text. If you want to add in headings or titles, type the words, then highlight them and click on the dropdown menu in the toolbar. This will give you several heading options of different sizes. If you want to link anything on your wiki page to another website, highlight the words you want to link. Then, click on the chain icon in the toolbar. Click the blue box that says External Link. You can then type the website address in the address box and click “add link.” You can also link a words to another page on your wiki, but you have to wait until you’ve created more pages. We’ll talk about that in a bit. When you are finished with your page, don’t forget to click save! Making New Pages To create a new page, look at the top of your sidebar. Click on the words New Page. You can call this new page anything you want. If you want to do a page on Discipline, type Discipline. If you want a page for the Holiday Party, type Holiday Party. This is where you can really start to break your class down into all of the different events that you want parents to know about. After you’ve entered the title, click Create. You will be taken straight to that page where you can type the information you want parents to read. Don’t forget to click save when you’re done! After you save it, you will see that it has appeared in the sidebar. Any page you have created can be edited over and over again by clicking the “edit this page” button.

Linking Pages Once you have created your pages, it is easy to link them. For example, if you are typing on a page about the end of the year reward carnival and you want to remind parents of your discipline plan, you can simply type something like, “Students need to be doing their best in class to come to the awards carnival. Any student who has moved his clip more than ten times will not be able to attend. Please see Discipline Plan page for more details.” Then, you can highlight the words Discipline Plan and click the chain icon. At the bottom of the box that pops up, you will see the words “Choose an existing page.” Click that link and it will give you the option to add the Discipline Plan page. Just don’t forget to click Add Link!

Uploading files One of the great things about wikis is that you can upload all kinds of different files- pictures, movies, calendars, homework assignments, etc. To insert any of these files, the process is the same. Click “Edit this Page” for whatever page you want to add the file to. Once that page is open for editing, click on the photo icon in the toolbar. A box will pop up that has three tabs in it. Click on the one in the middle, Upload Files. You will then click Browse to locate the file you want to add from the place where it is saved on your computer. Once you have selected the file, click Upload. Once it appears in the box, double click it. The file will then go onto your page and you can drag it to move it wherever you want it to go. This works for any of the files stored on your computer.

If you want to embed a video from YouTube or another similar source, you will click on the TV icon in the toolbar and follow the prompts it gives you. If you wanted to add a YouTube video, you would click on Video, then YouTube. From there, it gives you detailed instructions on how to embed the video. But Can’t Parents Edit What I’ve Written? Yes...and no. When you set up your wiki, make sure you choose the Protected or Private Option. If you choose Protected, everyone can see your wiki, but only wiki members can edit the pages. The simple solution is to not invite any members. As long as the parents aren’t members, they cannot edit the wiki. If you choose the private option, it makes it a little more secure, but parents will have to be members to view it, also giving them access to edit the information.

Questions? Contact me or google “Wikispaces Tutorial.”