Two weeks ago in class, we had the task of creating a Wiki. We went back and forth about how to group ourselves, and I ended up in an 'Upper Elementary' group with 2 fabulous classmates. We decided to base our wiki on blogging; more specifically the safety of it, topics to blog about, and leaving quality comments. Three brains is far better than one, so without further adieu- check out Blogging With SWAG !
When I got my job, I knew that I wanted to have a classroom website so I explored a few different options. Wiki-spaces was one of them. However, I decided against it. I thought that there were many other options that were more student friendly, as well as eye catching. This past experience creating a Wiki I left the site with the same taste in my mouth. I asked myself the same questions and made some of the same comments. "Why can't it be more customized?" "There is no preview option!" "Can I make the homepage more eye catching?" I guess it boils down to not loving the design options
As far as posting information, I think this is a great forum. I like how you can have one main page with links to others on the sidebar, and I like the ease with which you can insert your info. I think 5 years ago this would have been all the rage. As for today, I am going to stick with Blogger and blog my heart out.
Courtney, I really loved your groups wiki and think it would be great to use with students and parents when proposing and/or beginning to blog in the classroom. I had some of the same problems with wiki! I tried to use it to create my classroom website and had extreme difficulty. I am a very visual person, and using blogger I previewed my site like crazy to make sure it was "just right!" Wiki to me was more geared towards business people rather than educators!
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