This presentation is used in a half-day pre-conference training session at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Conference in Minneapolis on Oct 27, 2011.

2. Why Wikis?

3. What is a wiki?
A wiki is a website with a “what you
see is what you get” editing interface.
It allows the user to easily create
basic, functional websites.

4. Benefits of Wikis

5. Librarian Examples
• Inter-American Academy Elementary School
• http://iamslibrary.wikispaces.com/home
• Mt. Harmony Elementary School
•http://mhesmedia.wikispaces.com
• Central Middle Library
• http://centralmiddle.wikispaces.com
• Monarch Academy Library
• http://monarchlibrary.wikispaces.com
• Springfield Township Virtual Library
• http://springfieldlibrary.wikispaces.com
• Westbrook Middle School
• http://media-in-the-middle.wikispaces.com/home
• Jamestown Elementary School
• http://jamestownreads.wikispaces.com/home

6. Student Examples
• Jane Adams Research
• http://nickim-janeaddams37.wikispaces.com/Questions
• Athens, Greece
• http://8taylorrodney.wikispaces.com/home
• Monet
• http://monet2.wikispaces.com/Images
• Population of Japan
• http://japanpopulation.wikispaces.com/home
• World War I
• http://asiamericans.wikispaces.com/home
• Explorer Louis Joliet
• http://holmes19.wikispaces.com/home
• American Revolution
• http://american-revolution3000.wikispaces.com/home

7. Getting Started

8. Polldaddy Poll

9. Create a Wikispaces Account
http://www.wikispaces.com/content/
for/teachers

10. Your Brand-New Wiki
Step 1: Customize it to make it your own.

11. Go to “Look and Feel”

12. Browse for a logo on your computer. The logo
must already be sized correctly. It will appear
on the upper portion of your new wiki. Hint:
Create your own custom banner in PowerPoint.
Save as a .jpeg, then use as your logo.

13. Select “Themes and Colors” to further
personalize your wiki.

14. Choose a layout & colors that you like. Select
“Preview and Customize” to more highly
customize your wiki.

15. The editor toolbar allows you to boldface, italicize,
or underscore text; resize text; add bulleted or
numbered lists; add horizontal rules; and perform
other functions.

16. More Text & Toolbar Options
Note “undo”, “redo”, “preview”, &
“cancel” options.
Select heading
sizes.
Further edit text by selecting fonts, size,
text color, background colors, and
strikethrough options.

17. Internal & External Links
Add internal & external links to your wikis by clicking on the
“Link” button on the Editor Toolbar.

18. Uploading Files
Documents
MS Word (.doc, .docx)
MS Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
MS PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx)
Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Text, HTML, and XML documents (.txt,
.html, .xhtml, .xml)
OpenDocument Formats (.odt, .ods, .odp,
.odg, .odf)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Other
Outlook mail folders (.pst)
Java class files (.class)
Image metadata (.png, .gif, .jpeg, .tiff,
.bmp)
Audio metadata (.mp3, .wav, .midi, .aiff,
.au)
Add downloadable files to your wikis by clicking on the
“File” button on the Editor Toolbar.

19. Uploading Images
Use the image editor toolbar to align, resize, caption, or add
a link to an image.

20. Looking at Widgets

21. Embedding Widgets
3. Click “save” on the widget box,
1. Copy the code from various “save” on the editor toolbar to
embeddable objects, such as view your embedded object.
forms, video, polls, calendars,
VoiceThreads, Glogs, etc.
2. On the Editor Toolbar, select
“Widget”, “Other HTML”, then past
the code in the box. Hint: You can
easily alter the height and widget
of the object, if needed.

22. Adding Tables

23. Google Form Survey

24. Adding Pages
Click on the top left to add a new page. Name the page and add tags, if you
choose. Go to Manage wiki > Pages to lock/unlock, tag, or delete pages

25. Discussion, History, Notifications
Use the discussion tab to allow other members to comment on the page. This
is a great way to support formative teacher & peer assessment, as well as foster
collaboration. Use the history tab to monitor contributors to the page and roll
back to previous versions, if necessary. Set up notifications to receive emails
when the page is changed.

26. Editing Navigation
1. Traditional navigation lists every page.
With many pages, that becomes
cumbersome. You can select “edit
navigation” to create a more
manageable navigation list
2. Delete the “Include navigation” widget
to create your own custom navigation.
3. To create your navigation, build lists of
section titles and links to specific wiki
pages.

27. Navigation Trees
Create navigation trees to
manage tiers of related
pages and to keep the top
level navigation simple.
For example, this page is a
top-level page called
“training” which leads to
various other pages.
Librarians may create top-
level pages that lead to
various teacher pages,
electronic pathfinders, or
online centers.
Wiki:
cpsproflib.wikispaces.com

28. Management Features
Special features under “Manage Wiki”
include the ability to manage wiki
members & organizers, to control the
ability to join the wiki, and the ability to
monitor user statistics.

29. Creating Student Accounts
Under “Manage wiki” > “User creator”,
you can create student accounts –
without emails, if desired. Upload your
generated user names & passwords.
An list of accounts will be emailed to
you. The new accounts will be
associated with the teacher’s wiki.
These accounts can also be used to
create student wikis.

30. Tips for Using with Students
• You can create up to 100 student accounts at once in bulk; repeat, if necessary
• No student emails are needed
• Create a list of student user names in advance; create user names unique to your school
• Create unique passwords for each student or let Wikispaces generate the passwords
• Save the account information for future reference; account information will also be
emailed to you
• Students (or the librarian, in advance) must create wikis associated with the account to
permit students to have their own wikis.
• Make librarians and collaborating teachers members of each student wiki
• Turn off private messaging in account preferences
• For librarians, wikis are a great tool to use as a container for student research. Use wikis to
hold student research information; related artifacts, such as images; to maintain a running
bibliography; to foster collaboration; and to house formative & summative assessments.
• Advise students to avoid using last names or personal, identifying information in their
wikis, unless you have signed parental permission. Keep wikis private, if desired.
• Collaborating teachers often like it if the librarian creates a page dedicated to the project
with one list linking to each student wiki to assist in the grading process

31. Creating Student Wikis
Once students have their own accounts, associated with your teacher
account, have students log in and then create their own wiki. Be sure to
indicate that it is K-12. Some librarians may want to create these wikis in
advance themselves. Template pages can be created within one wiki (in
“Manage Wiki”), but not across wikis. Keep a list of all of the wikis in a class; if
the list is kept on a librarian or teacher wikipage, the student wikis are easily
visited.

32. Projects
http://help.wikispaces.com/projects - In some cases, it may be more convenient to have
students create their own projects within a wiki. Projects allow the teacher to group
students into work teams. Automatically or manually add/delete teams & drag/drop
members. Project home pages will appear in navigation. Within each project, new pages
can be added.

33. More Wiki Tips
Make buttons for your wiki to
create more visual interest.
An easy way to do this is to
create a design in PowerPoint,
save it as a .jpg, and crop it to
the desired shape. Upload the
images to the navigation pane
and link the image to the
corresponding page in the
wiki.

34. More Wiki Tips
Tables are a great way to spread content evenly across a page. However,
Wikispaces does not automatically create even columns. To deal with this, you
can insert blank rows in between used rows. Use rows of periods to make the
columns your preferred width. Then, use the text editing, colored-globe icon
on the Editor Toolbar to make the periods white and, thus, invisitble.

35. More Wiki Tips
Even if you don’t know HTML,
you can easily tweak embed
code to increase widget height
and avoid unnecessary
scrollbars. With a few trials,
you can get embedded forms
& other objects to be the
correct height.
Always keep more recent versions of browsers on your computers for a
variety of reasons, including viewing wikis properly. Note: Some embedded
objects that use Flash, such as many videos, will not display properly unless
Flash is on your computer and browser.

36. Help with Wikis
Wikispaces Teacher FAQs: http://help.wikispaces.com/faq+teacher+wiki
Contact Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/site/help?src=help

37. Last Words
• Start with your own Library wiki before trying wikis with your students
• Go slow and let your wiki grow organically
• The only way you can “damage” your wiki is to delete it. Otherwise, you can
always recover your work. (Drafts are saved or you can revert to previous pages
in the History tab.)
• Teach students to create their own wikis; that is the best use of the technology
• You have full permission to use any of my materials on any of my wikis for your
own training. Just cite the source.
Have a “Wiki” Good Time!!

38. Survey Monkey
Exit Survey

39. Contact
leperez1@cps.edu
Twitter: @leperez1
Facebook: Lisa Perez