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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Wikispaces Classroom

Wikispaces Classroom is a social writing platform for education. We make it incredibly easy to create a classroom workspace where you and your students can communicate and work on writing projects alone or in teams. Rich assessment tools give you the power to measure student contribution and engagement in real-time. Wikispaces Classroom works great on modern browsers, tablets, and phones.
Wikispaces Classroom is free for teachers and students. We have over 10 million registered teachers and students on the platform.
Learn more about Wikispaces Campus, our Wikispaces Classroom solution for entire schools, school districts and universities.

Why Wikispaces Classroom?

Our mission is to help teachers help students. Since 2005 we've been listening closely to the millions of teachers who've used Wikispaces. Wikispaces Classroom is the result of everything we've learned.
Wikispaces has been adopted and loved by so many teachers and students precisely because it has done these things implicitly. Wikispaces Classroom is about doing them explicitly.‍
Read more below about how Wikispaces Classroom delivers on this promise.
What We Call It

Make teachers' lives easier.

What the Industry Calls It

Increase teacher capacity.


If you give teachers technology they love, that is simple to use, and that helps them do the work of the classroom, the benefits are obvious. More often than not, though, technology is a hindrance: poorly designed, hard to use, or not actually built to help with teaching and learning. We're different. Millions of teachers love Wikispaces. We designed Wikispaces Classroom from the ground up to eliminate everything that gets in the way while delivering what teachers and students need to work together. Teachers can get started and be working with their students in a modern, powerful, collaborative, private social environment in seconds. They can monitor their students' work as it happens so they can give feedback, assistance, and encouragement as needed, while all the time focusing on the work of the classroom, not the tools.
What We Call It

Help students achieve more.

What the Industry Calls It

Improve student outcomes.


Wikispaces Classroom gives teachers immediate, relevant, and direct insight into student engagement and contribution. That means that teachers can help those who need it most and challenge those who don't. Often referred to as "formative assessment," this type of assessment is not about test scores used for ranking, admissions, or school evaluation, but information that actually helps teachers in their day to day efforts to help students. And the more and better help each student gets from their teacher, the more they will achieve.
What We Call It

Make teaching and learning fun.

What the Industry Calls It

Improve student engagement.


Wikispaces Classroom is built around a familiar communications newsfeed that encompasses the work of the class and a private social network. Teachers get the tools to quickly communicate with their students as individuals and groups. Students get the flexibility to engage with their peers at their own pace without sacrificing privacy. The end result is more participation and enthusiasm in the classroom.

How is Wikispaces Classroom Used?

Classroom Management

Having a place to manage all the activity, resources, conversations, and projects in your classroom is essential for keeping students, and teachers, organized and working together.
Wikispaces Classroom gives you the features you need to get your classroom organized. Our philosophy is to make managing the day-to-day work of your classroom easy, and to let you bring in the best resources, content, and tools from around the Internet under one roof.‍
‍We give you the tools to quickly and easily create assignments, share resources, make announcements, and foster discussion and community.‍

Project-Based Learning

Project-Based Learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying.
Wikispaces Classroom provides a simple structure that allows you to create projects, define teams, assign students and manage them all through successful completion of their projects. Starting from pre-built templates, or a blank slate, students can work in private groups until their work is due. At the end of the project you can share the results with the rest of the class or even parents and other participants.
Our formative assessment reporting let you track student progress on their projects in real-time. You'll know which students are succeeding, which are falling behind, and how much they are contributing to their projects so that you can help remediate, motivate, and challenge when you most need to.

Safe Social Networking

Your classroom is no longer tied to your building and school-day hours. Parents and students expect to work, communicate, and share at the times and places that make most sense for them.
With Wikispaces Classroom, you now have a safe social network for your classroom. ‍You can decide who can participate and when.‍ And since your newsfeed is built around the work your classroom is doing, all of the discussion and activity is tied directly to the goals and work of the class.

Knowledge Communities

When you turn the individual pockets of information in your class and school into collaborative knowledge communities, you build the capacity of every student and of your entire institution to contribute, learn, and achieve.
Professional Development resources, curriculum development groups, and student-built study guides are all examples of turning informal knowledge into formal resources.
Wikispaces Classroom makes collaboration and community building easy and encourages the use of a myriad of Internet resources, content, and tools.

Online and Remote Learning

Face-to-face and in-class time is essential for effective teaching and learning. Why not open the classroom so that each student can learn and work wherever and whenever they can? ‍And why not enable the enthusiasm different students have for different kinds of engagement to broaden the reach and effectiveness of your class.‍
Wikispaces Classroom creates an online presence for your classroom, students groups, parent teacher association, faculty groups, and any other need you have so that people get the information they need and contribute their energy whenever they can.
And Wikispaces Classroom is great for connecting your class with people who can't be there in person. Collaborate privately with students in another country, remote family members, and members of the community to enhance your classroom.

What Does Wikispaces Classroom Do?

Social

  • Create a safe, private network for your students
  • Connect and communicate using a familiar newsfeed
  • Monitor complete history of student discussions, writing, and file uploads

Writing

  • Collaboratively edit pages using our visual editor
  • Embed content from around the web, including videos, images, polls, documents, and more
  • Comment on sections of text or the entire page

Projects

  • Create individual or group assignments in seconds
  • Choose to set assignment start and end dates, or create long-running projects
  • At the end of the assignment, automatically publish projects to the entire class or students, parents, or others in your community

Real-Time Formative Assessment

  • Watch student engagement in real time, literally as they type, without changing how you work
  • Report on contributions to pages, discussions, and comments over time
  • Focus on particular students, projects, or view reports across your entire class

Who We Are

Wikispaces is Adam, Dom, Eric, James, Jeff, Julie, Max, Ryan, Sarah, and Wendy. We're a close-knit team in San Francisco, California.
We launched Wikispaces in 2005 and have grown to support 14 million members and over 35 million monthly visitors.
Our mission is to help teachers help students.‍ There are countless ways to teach and learn. Our job is to make fast, simple, delightful tools that respect and empower teachers so they can spend their time helping their students.‍
We have grown Wikispaces entirely by focusing on our users and helping them spread the word. We have never raised venture capital and haven't chased trends. Along the way we've formed some strong opinions about the role of technology and business in education. We encourage you to read more in our paper How to Succeed In Education Technology.

Questions

What is Wikispaces Classroom?

Wikispaces Classroom is a new product from the people who brought you Wikispaces. We think of it as social writing with formative assessment. That means that its a great place for your classroom to work, connect, and communicate. Wikispaces Classroom has brand new tools to keep track of everything going on in your class, communicate better, and for you to assess your students in real time so you can provide the help and encouragement each student needs.

Do I use my Wikispaces account to use Wikispaces Classroom?

Yes. Wikispaces Classroom is delivered on the same platform as Wikispaces so if you have a Wikispaces account, just sign in to get started.

Is Wikispaces Classroom free for education use?

Yes. Classroom is only for use in education, and it's free. Wikispaces Campus, our solution for schools, school districts, and universities who want to provide Classroom to all of their teachers and students is a paid service. Wikispaces Classroom is always free for teachers and students.

What's the difference between Wikispaces Classroom and the Wikispaces I already use?

Wikispaces Classroom builds on the editing and collaboration features of Wikispaces and adds our new social newsfeed, real-time formative assessment, a new mobile experience including an iPad app, a streamlined theme, a more education-focused feature set, and a host of other enhancements you'll love.

Can I still use the old Wikispaces?

Yes! The old Wikispaces isn't going anywhere, and you're welcome to create wikis for education or other use there at any time.‍

Can I still use Projects with the old Wikispaces?

If you'd like to create a new wiki with Projects, you'll need to create it using Wikispaces Classroom. In the coming months we will be migrating all existing wikis using Projects to Wikispaces Classroom. Don't worry -- your wiki address, pages, files, and members will remain exactly the same and we will give you lots of notice beforehand. Contact us with any questions at help@wikispaces.com.‍

Schools, School Districts, and Universities

Wikispaces Campus is our solution for schools, school districts and universities. Get your free, no obligation trial or learn more now.
Are you already a Wikispaces Private Label customer? Contact us now about how to convert to Wikispaces Campus.

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