which wiki?

[Bill Kerr]

http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://pbwiki.com/

I'm planning to setup free wikis for school use for a game design project. I've looked at the above choices and they both seem v. good. If anyone has advice or recommendations about these or others then I'd like to hear

More details about the game design project here
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/2006/04/my-new-game-africa.html

thanks,
- Bill
--
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
http://beam.to/billkerr
skype: billkerr2006

[Leigh Blackall]

I prefer wikispaces Bill because it displays RSS and the developers respond to my questions and suggestions within a couple of days. Also, while wikispaces does offer privacy, its not as obvious as PB therefore wikis getting set up in wikispaces tend to be open, giving the authors a chance at least - to experience the connectivism. Sadly I find most people I present the idea of wikis to opt for the closed wiki if it is at all an option and therefore never experience the accidental networks.

--
--
Would you like to buy my book? http://www.lulu.com/leighblackall
--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)34780079
skype - leigh_blackall
http://leighblackall.wikispaces.org/

[Bill Kerr]

thanks leigh

I found a site that compares wikis in some detail and also offers a choice wizard and such
http://www.wikimatrix.org/

[Leigh Blackall]

nice find Bill!

[Sean FitzGerald]

Agreed - great find!

I find Wikispaces easy to use, however a quick look at the comparison between Wikispaces and PBwiki reminded me of what I consider the biggest shortcoming of Wikispaces - it doesn't do HTML. I think with video sharing sites booming we should expect to see lots of great educational content on video (like Dennis' screencasts) and it would be great to be able to paste the flash players into a wiki site.

Also it would be nice to lock individual pages.

Sean

-- 

Sean FitzGerald
Tel: +61 (0)2 9360 3291
Mob: +61 (0)404 130 342
Skype: seamusy
Email: se...@tig.com.au
Website: http://seanfitz.wikispaces.com/
Blog: http://elgg.net/seanfitz/weblog/

People who think they know everything are
very irritating to those of us who do.
-- Author Unknown

[James Neill - Wilderdom]

i've been mainly using dokuwiki

 

DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files - no database is required.

 

from http://www.wikimatrix.org/show/DokuWiki

 

installation on a server is straightforward - plain text file storage makes backup easy - clean, easy to use, reasonably good documentation

 

the only thing i don't like is that the markup is a bit different to MediaWiki which makes editing in both dokuwiki and MediaWiki a bit tricky

[brent]

While i'm a fan on the open networked learning approach, one thing that
consistently bothers me about it is that it never seems to acknowledge
the effects of commericalisation on the tools that it promotes.
Wikispaces, like this very discussion board (originally just the old
newsgroups), are riddled with Google ads. I'd probably not use
Wikispaces for a class for this very reason - as of yet I don't have a
fantastically thought out reason/argument for this, it's just more of a
gut feeling. If it's about learning, then i'm not sure that having ads
is appropriate. What do others think?

Personally, I like MoinMoin as a wiki engine.

brent.

http://auckland.wiki.org.nz/

[James Neill - Wilderdom]

Brent,

I'm likewise reluctant to contribute much to add-supported pages and
recently declined to contribute to a psychology wiki being run via wikia
(commercial hosted arm of mediawiki)
(http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) because it runs Google Ads so
prominently down the sides. For educational purposes, why not just install
and use the ad-free version of MediaWiki (in this case)?

At least at this stage the google ads on this list are only on the web
interface, not in the emails like most free email providers. We'll see how
long that lasts. At the moment though GG web-ads seems a small cost for the
overall functionality.

I also think there's something to be said for simply providing students,
classes and teachers with ad-free server space, the use of which they can
configure themselves, e.g., installing their own wiki. But that would
require a pretty different mentality from institutional tech people and
teaching staff. Not likely to happen around these parts in the foreseeable
future. So, currently it seems to be a questions of which set of problems
do you want to live with:

- Institutional tools - limited range and content that tends to be locked
away in LMSs

- Free space - pastiche of stuff spread around in multiple locations on
often ad-supported free tools/space sites

- Get your own URL and use either:
-- existing free space (e.g., most ISP providers give 10MB or so which goes
unused),
-- free file storage sites,
-- purchase some hosted space (not that much) (I figure teachers have always
dipped into the own wallet for some class materials and to me a few hundred
bucks a year is worth it)
-- run yr own server (not that hard if you've got a permanent IP address and
broadband - ha - but I'm on ISDN 128K dialup here - it stuck in my mind that
Jendie pointed out in our online meeting that Australia ranks ~20th in OECD
countries for bandwith speeds and that its illegal in several European
countries to even call 256K broadband :(

Thoughts? Good topic for debate/discussion.

Sincerely,
James

PS Brent, I checked out http://auckland.wiki.org.nz/ - looks very
smooth/clean/simple/good/fast - only hassle I'd have with it is that I'm
still working with my host to get Python on the server.

[Leigh Blackall]

Do we seriously take issue with advertising on the one hand, but in the other only teach Microsoft, and Adobe ways of operating?! Do you hand out news papers in your school? Do you cut up magazines? Do you teach media literacy? Are there ads on the school bus? Is there a bill board outside your school? Is there a coke machinie inside your school?!! Oh.. OK then what are we talking about here? I hate ads as much as the next person, but...

I think the economy of Google Ads change what it is we are talking about. They are not the ads we have all grown to hate so much. Google Ads are considerably more targeted and somewhat topical, and are not the unrelated, distractingly animated and obnoxious advertising you find on services like parts of Yahoo, Myspaces and MSN.

Also, the opportunities for people to actually make money by running Google Adds, not to mention the freedom to customise and control the adds.. I wonder if this changes things a bit for the education sector and its highly spoken of but often all too inconsistent stance on commercialisation within schools? Are Google ads something we should be in fact teaching people how to understand use effectively? Do Google ads afford more diversity in services and software development? Are they handy bits of pocket money rewards to people who deserve some form of income for their work, when donations and philanthropy are all but dieing out? Does an add that has something to do with what we are talking about in a wiki, actually become a resource? I know I have found them useful from time to time.

What I do know is that for my uses, Google Adds in particular are not a concern to me, and for the most part are an economic element that makes many of the wonderful web services and small time software developments possible.

In saying that though, I do prefer an add free service, for the cleaner design and all, but when I can't find one, I'll look for the RSS so I can display content elsewhere and add free, if this still can't be done, then I usually ask myself, "is having topical and fairly modest adds on my resource worth it?"

On 4/17/06, James Neill - Wilderdom <ja...@wilderdom.com> wrote:

Brent,

I'm likewise reluctant to contribute much to add-supported pages and
recently declined to contribute to a psychology wiki being run via wikia
(commercial hosted arm of mediawiki)

( http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) because it runs Google Ads so

[Shaggy]

spot on Leigh,

what is it with people and free services?

Dedicated servers with fat piplines, a UPS and generous monthly
bandwidth allowances cost real money (start at around $US300 a month),
and that's without factoring in wages for security experts, web
administrators, developers and network engineers. Then add the costs of
planning, expansion, extra servers for load balancing and databases,
backups, disaster recovery...

I worry that the google ads aren't going to be enough to keep the whole
show going - it frightens me to think of the amount of material people
have out there in wikis, blogs, and photo and video sharing sites that
could disappear whenever the VC runs out. Stuff that folks somehow
expect to be stored safe and sound and instantly accessible (while at
the same time they rail about a couple of targeted ads being shown
alongside their precious content).

Maybe it should be a public service. Perhaps the Government could pass
on some of our tax dollars to the folks at google and yahoo for the
services they provide, so we can avoid the ugly advertising material.

[James Neill - Wilderdom]

When I send my kids to school I don't expect them to come home with
textbooks full of ads. Neither do my uni students paying thousands of bucks
per course expect to access ad-loaded content. That's why if the
institution can't provide the functionality I'm after, my first preference
is to host it myself without ads, second preference is to use other free
services. The readability of screen text and online attention span is
fragile enough esp. for novices without the additional distractions of
increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques designed to trick people
into thinking its genuine content. Sure, we could deconstruct it all as we
go along, but when that's not the educational objective, doing so is a side
issue at best.

[Michael Coghlan]

James et al - don't ask me to produce the evidence, but I know there has been some research into this. When students were asked how they feel about ads being displayed on pages with educational content (as part of a course for example), most students said they didn't care as long as the content of the ads was relevant to the content they were studying.

That doesn't discount what you are saying about novices, but I for one have long since stopped noticing the advertising stuff in the margins. Like you I'd rather it wasn't there, but somewhere along the line someone somehow has to pay for all this 'free' stuff don't they?

- Michael

--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.2/314 - Release Date: 16/04/2006

[Leigh Blackall]

Good point James. We do pay far too much for our education don't we. If we could only get our departments to stop spending the 100s of millions of dollars on IT that doesn't even come close to what we need, perhaps we could also lower the understandably inflated expectations of students who should be very pissed off

[Leigh Blackall]

...at the amounts they are being asked to pay. I like Shaggy's suggestion to ask these services to be provided for by gov departments, but in a way that is what we have now, a service (if you could call it that) that is almost useless... if we could get our government IT departments to simply agree to archive our content in a similar way to the Internet Archive  only better, then that would be enough... alternatively donate money to the services we enjoy so much :) It springs to mind that the Australian National Archive set up a Flickr group for the collection of images of contemporary Australian life... I wonder if they have a contingency plan, or if they simply consider the risk of Yahoo shutting down Flickr as very remote...

On 4/18/06, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com > wrote:

Good point James. We do pay far too much for our education don't we. If we could only get our departments to stop spending the 100s of millions of dollars on IT that doesn't even come close to what we need, perhaps we could also lower the understandably inflated expectations of students who should be very pissed off

On 4/18/06, James Neill - Wilderdom <ja...@wilderdom.com> wrote:

When I send my kids to school I don't expect them to come home with
textbooks full of ads.  Neither do my uni students paying thousands of bucks
per course expect to access ad-loaded content.  That's why if the
institution can't provide the functionality I'm after, my first preference
is to host it myself without ads, second preference is to use other free
services.  The readability of screen text and online attention span is
fragile enough esp. for novices without the additional distractions of
increasingly sophisticated marketing techniques designed to trick people
into thinking its genuine content.  Sure, we could deconstruct it all as we
go along, but when that's not the educational objective, doing so is a side
issue at best.

--
--
Would you like to buy my book? http://www.lulu.com/leighblackall

--
Leigh Blackall
+64(0)34780079
skype - leigh_blackall
http://leighblackall.wikispaces.org/

--
--
Would you like to buy my book? http://www.lulu.com/leighblackall

[Sean FitzGerald]

I wonder what it will take for the politicians to see that all of the content being created is a valuable asset and that storage should be provided for free. What change in consciousness would be required? Maybe we will have to wait until the current crop of politicians die off and are replaced by NetGeners.

This makes me think of Europortfolio's "ePortfolio for all" project.

Brewster Kahle (who started the Internet Archive) is adamant that when you do the maths storage is actually dirt cheap.

Sean

-- 

Sean FitzGerald
Tel: +61 (0)2 9360 3291
Mob: +61 (0)404 130 342
Skype: seamusy
Email: se...@tig.com.au
Website: http://seanfitz.wikispaces.com/
Blog: http://elgg.net/seanfitz/weblog/

...in the end it is beauty that
is going to save the world.
-- Lyrics from "Nature Boy" by Nick Cave

[jbyers]

Hi,

I'm James Byers, one of the founders of Wikispaces. We share the
concerns voiced by Bill, James, Brent, and others about putting ads in
front of kids in the classroom. After talking with a lot of teachers
who use Wikispaces day-to-day, we decided in January to make wikis in
K-12 education (sorry for the US-speak here :)) completely free. No
ads, all of the features in our $5/month paid service, without
limitations:

http://blog.wikispaces.com/2006/01/free-wikispaces-for-teachers.html

This applies to public, protected, and private spaces. We're also
happy to apply this to existing spaces, just drop us a line at
he...@wikispaces.com.

As Leigh and Shaggy have pointed out, it does cost real money to run a
service like Wikispaces. We constantly try and strike a fair balance
between free and paid services. In the case of wikis in education,
this decision was easy.

Best,
James
jby...@tangient.com

[Kylie Rowsell]

Isn't it great how the internet is flexible to our needs, responsive to
our preferences (and our students) and that we have choice?!!

Just as it should be.

I find the desire to save online things forever is going to be more and
more difficult as time passes.
And I'm not sure its necessary - especially if we are flexible and
responsive professionals.
Just like the 'real' world.
Who remembers stencils that smelled like vegemite? Mmmmmm....
I bet some teachers rushed to put all their worksheets for Year 2 onto
those things.
And then found them obsolete, with no way to reproduce their 'saved'
works.

Frankly, when considering 'issues' with teaching and learning online, I
see very little difference 'in principle' between online and offline.
These problems are similar whether you are considering on or off line.

Thanks,
Kylie

ph: 4978 4016

-----Original Message-----
From: James Neill - Wilderdom [mailto:ja...@wilderdom.com]
Sent: Monday, 17 April 2006 9:33 AM
To: teachAndL...@googlegroups.com
Subject: :: TALO :: Re: which wiki?

Brent,

I'm likewise reluctant to contribute much to add-supported pages and
recently declined to contribute to a psychology wiki being run via wikia
(commercial hosted arm of mediawiki)

(http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) because it runs Google Ads

[mobology]

Leigh Blackall wrote:
> Do we seriously take issue with advertising on the one hand, but in the
> other only teach Microsoft, and Adobe ways of operating?!

> A: Agreed Leigh. Macromedia and so are great operating systems however I do jump into the contextual ads. and occasionally....only occasionally mind you do I find anything interesting.

Do you hand out
> news papers in your school? Do you cut up magazines? Do you teach media
> literacy? Are there ads on the school bus? Is there a bill board outside
> your school?

> A : None...but the glocalised pinup board in the break away rooms beep at me occasionally.

Is there a coke machinie inside your school?!!

> A : Several....with aeriels on top to monitor who passes what machine at what time and what time to flash lights on the refill areas.

Oh.. OK then
> what are we talking about here? I hate ads as much as the next person,
> but...
>
> I think the economy of Google Ads change what it is we are talking about.

A: Sometimes but not always for any real purpose other than for
distraction.

> They are not the ads we have all grown to hate so much. Google Ads are
> considerably more targeted and somewhat topical, and are not the unrelated,
> distractingly animated and obnoxious advertising you find on services like
> parts of Yahoo, Myspaces and MSN.

A: Sheesh......have we forgotten about popups and blogs inundated with
"news" and dud trackbacks.

>
> Also, the opportunities for people to actually make money by running Google
> Adds, not to mention the freedom to customise and control the adds.. I
> wonder if this changes things a bit for the education sector and its highly
> spoken of but often all too inconsistent stance on commercialisation within
> schools?

A: Come on Leigh. The education sector pays more for filtering than any
other aspect of commercialisation that could but into the user
space.....I could reel off a number of organisations who if withdrawn
from education sector underpinning would collapse whole departments or
at least wings in 70's decor ridden corridors.

Are Google ads something we should be in fact teaching people how
> to understand use effectively? Do Google ads afford more diversity in
> services and software development? Are they handy bits of pocket money
> rewards to people who deserve some form of income for their work, when
> donations and philanthropy are all but dieing out? Does an add that has
> something to do with what we are talking about in a wiki, actually become a
> resource? I know I have found them useful from time to time.

A: Ah......so there we have it ....you have found them useful from time
to time ...if not for anything more than what to avoid when googling.
Google ads. would have to be more clever than they are for them to be
really useful

>
> What I do know is that for my uses, Google Adds in particular are not a
> concern to me, and for the most part are an economic element that makes many
> of the wonderful web services and small time software developments possible.

A: Cant say I need them however if it supports economy and growing
touchmaps then I'm all for it. Most of the time we are employed to keep
our mouths shut and support that which have been voted in a year before
.....often the 'c' in ICT as Prof. D. H says has been neglected for
that of keeping copper networks in order when we could have all gone
wireless decades ago.

>
>
> In saying that though, I do prefer an add free service, for the cleaner
> design and all, but when I can't find one, I'll look for the RSS so I can
> display content elsewhere and add free, if this still can't be done, then I
> usually ask myself, "is having topical and fairly modest adds on my resource
> worth it?"
>

A; Google ads. keep costs down and communication sometimes
inter-operably open and transparent. Google ads. are just that. Damned
easier to look at than many of the media sites I frequent

[mobology]

Alex Hayes wrote:

> Wikispaces has been a constant constructive onlinecompanion of mine and one which I've recomended to hundreds of Australian educators either by default or by choice. I dont have the ability to endorse products as a government employee except those pushed by the department however when prompted for personal advice I am happy with the response rate for support and the overall structure of wikispaces - html would be an added bonus.

I have my own server space and hosting a wiki is dead easy - its the
community of users that are the important element in a wiki as a is a
blog or a mobile blog etc.

Cool - ad free wikis for educators might persuade my own institution /
organisation to consider the site differently.

Regards,

Alex Hayes

[Bill Kerr]

Wikispaces has a visual display of their main features here I have already used most of these features in the past couple of days and they work just fine.

The only feature which I would like to see change is to not provide the http:// starter for external links, since I always cut and paste external links, so, I have to remember to go back and remove the http:// from the cut and paste

James, thanks for offer to remove ads for educational sites - I have written to your help requesting that for my new wiki at http://africagame.wikispaces.com/

I have blogged the process I went through which ended in choosing wikispaces from the 45 choices at wikimatrix
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/2006/04/which-wiki.html

For me word of mouth played a decisive part of the process in the final analysis since rigorously checking through a 100x5 grid is not really my cup of tea. In the first place I noticed that Sean was using wikispaces so he was voting with his feet, then when I posted my query at my  blog, fellow SA blogger Graham Wegner recommended it along with pbwiki and then Leigh further supported wikispaces in response to my query in this thread. Word of mouth from trusted peers is very powerful.

- Bill
--
Bill Kerr
http://billkerr.blogspot.com/
http://beam.to/billkerr
skype: billkerr2006