Wikispaces

For my tech journal entry this week, I chose to explore wikispaces.  I chose this particular tool because even though it is required, it just so happens that I heard several teachers talking about their "wiki's" this week and I was intrigued.

Initially when I went to the site I wasn't impressed-it was okay.  But then I signed up for the educational wikispace and was pleasantly surprised!!  I REALLY like how it (by choice) walks the user through the set up.  For someone like me who isn't confident in technology use, it was an easy way to get my wiki set up!!  

https://karastory.wikispaces.com

While you will only find my rough set up at the above link, what was cool was how easy it was to get this wiki up and going.  The tutorial literally walked me through everything.

For fear of sounding stupid, I will admit that I am not sure how I am to use this exactly.  Yes I see that you can collaborate with this site, but I am still feel unsure-so this would be what I need to research more.  Would this be a way to plan our literacy lesson if I had to work with a colleague that was outside of my building?  Something to think about.  I know that in the past, our jr. high teachers used a wiki to house curriculum content, homework assignments, updates, etc and it worked nicely for the parent/student/teacher communication.  

I definitely used the start up tutorial and will go back and view the additional sources as well.  I think the online support is very helpful, and I like how there is a tool bar in the upper right hand corner that is easily accessible.  

I think I would use this tool if doing a collaborative unit with a teacher on something like informational literacy.  It could also be used to collaborate with a librarian at a different school on a variety of topics like the Monarch Awards-maybe a few school librarians could track the favorite book for their school and then see what a multi-school vote would be?  My question still is can this be used like a blog?  I don't think the purpose is to be used to simply update or present information-again, this is something I need to explore.  

The visual part of me does like how there is choice for background color, font style and layout.  

I think overall I prefer the Weebly over the wikispace-but again I am thinking that they are to be used for two different types of communication.  I can see that I need to familiarize myself deeper with the wikispace.

Using these different technologies has been helpful-especially since there are so many that I am totally unfamiliar with!!