Triggered by yesterday’s post on how one of our Spanish teachers started using PBWiki, I got a nice email from Ramit, one of the PBWiki co-founders, seeking ideas on how to “spread” the peanut butter / wiki concept to other teachers:
I also noticed you’re involved in instructional technology, so I wanted to ask your advice. We’ve been making PBwiki better and better for educators to use, and we’re really interested in spreading the word in the educational community.
It seems like educators talk to each other pretty often, and I’m wondering how we might reach them to encourage them to use wikis. Do you have any ideas? Are there specific people or places we should be talking to?
I would appreciate your advice. Wikis are a fantastic way for educators and teachers to collaborate in the classroom and we’re eager to help teachers do it using PBwiki.
Thanks,
-Ramit
PBwiki TeamPS–We developed a new overview page of wikis in education:
http://www.pbwiki.com/eduAnd we have tons of examples, like:
* Penn State’s English 15 class:
http://epochewiki.pbwiki.com/RhetoricAndComposition
* A Texas teacher’s wiki,
http://teachingtechcomm.pbwiki.com
I provided my own feedback, along with my own love of PBWiki, and asked him also to contact Maricopas’s Alisa Cooper, who I mentioned previously recently for her workshop done here using PBWiki.
But hey, more blog readers/commenters are much better than me, so I encourage you to add some of your own ideas and Ramit can find them in the comments below. What does it take for teachers to take that leap into wikis?
Hi Alan,
Got the message. PBWiki just changed their pricing plans for the wikis starting April 1st – not so much free stuff with a free account. And I’m not clear there will even be a free account available. Check out: http://eg372.pbwiki.com/upgrade.php (Hope the spam roaches let this through)
I’m hoping they incorporate some kind of educational pricing. I can handle having to pay $50 total out of my own pocket, but $25 a month to get lockable pages is a bit stiff. I’d have to go elsewhere. But lucky me, being an early adopter, I get the bargain. I don’t know for how long, one year or indfinitely.
I’m still getting use to the new features they have rolled out and trying to incorporate them in to my classes, but I like your suggestions.
I really love pbwiki. It’s one of the most elegant and easy to use wiki sites out there right now. I sincerely hope they do not eliminate the entry level free accounts. A lot of my work with wikis right now is very experimental so I’m unwilling to pay for it when there are so many free alternatives. If one of my wiki experiments really does take off then I can forsee a time when I might be willing to pay a small fee for a more tool rich account but in the early phase of growth for any k-12 wiki I can’t imagine any educator paying for something that may not work when they don’t have to.
I do not see anything that suggests the free version will disappear. That is all I have used, and seems to offer more than enough for the basic wiki-fying work teachers might do. It is the route I would go hands down over trying to install my own wiki sotfware.
But I will ask Ramit, as before I leave I am trying to do an article on free wiki software.
Thanks for your comments.
The free version of PBwiki will remain there–we don’t plan to take it away.
If you have other questions, let me know!