Juliana+Liebke



I teach 7th grade Social Studies/Art at Pacific Beach Middle School in SDUSD. Recieving both a mulitiple subject and a single subject credential for social science I was fortunate to begin my career in Fall 2001 teaching 7th and 8th grade English at Samuel Gompers Secondary School. After two years, I accepted a position in 7th grade social studies at Pacific Beach Middle School where I have been teaching for the last five years. I have recently returned to my alma mater, San Diego State University, where I am currently working on my Master of Arts in Education Technology.

Comparing Wikispaces to [|PBwiki]

Wiki is a Hawaiian word for “quickly” and can be defined as: a type of website that allows the visitors to add, remove, and sometimes edit the available content. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring (http://groups.involving.org/display/STR/Glossary).

I chose to compare Wikispaces to PBwiki over our two other choices (Mediawiki and Socialtext) because it was really easy to spot the “educator” section and the large button for “create account.” The other two were not a simple initially and therefore turned me, an educator, away.

1. How easy is it to set up? - How easy will it be to invite others? PBwiki was very easy to set up: Follow 3 easy steps, check my email, get account. Then create a page, upload easily. And to invite others, simply type in their email address. Wikispaces is just as easy to set up, but I couldn’t work out how to invite others just yet. PBwiki is easier to invite others.

2. Your article should explore the way the 2 (or more) of the wiki software handles editing. (Is it WYSIWYG? Does it have templates? Automatic Headings?, comments?) • I think Wikispaces is slightly more WYSIWYG than PBwiki, but PBwiki is close. I am using the pages so my students can share videos and comment on them. I like that in Wikispaces, the video shows up on the page, and you just hit play. • For comments, I like how there is a tab for “Discussion” on Wikispaces. PBwiki is slightly less WYSIWYG. The video shows up as a link that must be clicked on and then the video automatically plays. Comments are to be placed below the page more like a blog. • I like the templates and headings on both wikis, however, I think I prefer Wikispaces because it doesn’t look like a blog and is more WYSIWYG.

3. Version Control - How is page history handled? • I like how when PBwiki is edited, the history is emailed to me. It automatically acts like an RSS and that makes it easy to monitor students. • With wikispaces, however, the history is right there, accessible by a tab. I think this could be more effective for me because I would prefer not to be bombarded with emails and I’d rather get my grade book ready to give students their participation points. This can be easily changed in the notification tab if I prefer.

4. Discussion - Is there a place to talk about the article outside • I’m not sure I understand this question. There is a way to send emails so that comments can be private rather than show up on the wiki. This is a good feature, but I’m not sure that’s what you were asking.

5. Subscription to articles - How can you be notified of changes to the pages you contribute to? • Both wikis have the ability send notification of changes via email, through RSS feed, or by looking at the history of edits on the site itself.

6. Security - How will you be able to control page edits? • PBwiki has a page security tab that is easy to control. Under the “manage space” tab, all security needs and the ability to invite others can be located.

7. Contributions - How can teachers see what each student has contributed to the wiki? • It shows up as described in #5.

All in all, both wikis do the same thing, however, I like the look of Wikispaces better because I think it’s more WYSIWYG. I also appreciated that Wikispaces allows teachers a free upgrade. Finally, the template is simpler, not as many widgets and links, and I like Wikispaces because it has a friendlier design.