In the beginning, individual teachers bought our Classroom Edition.  Then as word spread, entire schools bought our Campus Edition.  Now, just in time for the 2009-2010 school year, we’ve taken the next logical step and launched our District Edition.

PBworks District Edition gives each K-12 school district that signs up an *unlimited* number of wiki workspaces and users.  Now you can share PBworks with every single student, teacher, administrator, parent, and yes, janitor in your school district.

Already, districts like Baltimore County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System have signed up…maybe you can convince your district to be next!  Here is our announcement.

Each time, we’ve been surprised by the enthusiasm for our larger Academic packages, but we think District Edition is probably the upper limit for size.  Unless….

Country Edition anyone?

We’ve just announced two new back to school programs for educators that will let them get free Gold upgrades and other gifts like LEGO sets and up to $1,000 for buying school supplies. Here are the details:

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Program for Teachers and Librarians

PBwiki’s Back To School Challenge
(http://www.backtoschoolchallenge.com) allows up to 100,000 individual
teachers and librarians to sign up and earn a free one-year Gold Upgrade
(regular price $250) by using, blogging about, and referring others to
PBwiki. In addition, top performers in the challenge will receive donations
such as a $1,000 gift certificate from PBwiki for purchasing school
supplies, educational products from LEGO(R) Education (The LEGO Group’s
educational division), autographed books from award-winning science author
Janice Van Cleave, and the bilingual board game GiftTRAP (named “Best Party
Game” by both Games Magazine and Creative Child Magazine). “With sales of
more than two million copies, and translations in fifteen languages, my
books are tools used by educators around the world to expand science
education beyond the textbook,” said Van Cleave, the author of popular
books such as Janice VanCleave’s Teaching the Fun of Science. “By enabling
collaboration, wikis can add binomial expansion to the educational value in
my books.” For a list of these donations, visit the PBwiki web site
(http://pbwiki.com/content/btsc-sponsors).

Program for School Districts and Educational Organizations

PBwiki’s Partner Program for Education allows school districts and
organizations that standardize on PBwiki to offer free one-year Gold
Upgrades (regular price $250) as an exclusive membership benefit. Already,
organizations such as the Mathematical Association of America, and the
Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers have signed up to offer PBwiki to the
individual educators they serve. “We use PBwiki to help promote our annual
meetings, and as a collaborative tool for a variety of special projects,”
said Michael Pearson, Associate Executive Director of the Mathematical
Association of America. “There is growing interest in the use of wikis and
other interactive, web-based tools for the classroom. Providing a free
trial of PBwiki will allow our members to experiment and learn how to use
wikis to benefit their students.” School districts and organizations
interested in joining the program should visit the Partner Program page
(http://pbwiki.com/content/edupartners).

The Back To School Challenge and Partner Program for Education run
through October 31, 2008.

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But don’t take our word for how cool this is…here’s what CMSWire had to say:

“These applications and services will allow teachers and students to collaborate in ways that students have never imagined. The uses are virtually unlimited.

Most of us here at CMSWire probably can’t even count the ways we could have utilized such technologies back when we were in school.

The effects of this could inspire students and teachers to familiarize themselves with technology, Web 2.0, and collaboration. This won’t keep students out of the principal’s office for using their cell phone during class, but it is nice to see companies like PBwiki giving back to the educational system. More companies should have similar programs.”

For the last several months, we’ve been researching and designing a new way to add users to wikis without email addresses — notably, K-8 students.

Today, we’re happy to announce a new feature, Classroom Accounts, which will let you add users without email addresses. In consultation with dozens of educators, we’ve created a system that makes it unbelievably easy to add your students to your 2.0 educational wiki.

First, I’ll show you a video of the feature. Then, we’ll go into detail using a short tour with screenshots.

Video overview of Classroom Accounts (0:43):

Classroom Accounts from PBwikiWebinars on Vimeo.

Now, let’s look closer at each of those screens to see how they work.

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In your new PBwiki 2.0 settings panel, you’ll see a small graphic to invite users without email addresses.

Enter in how many students need accounts and what permission level they should be assigned. Note that you should have a printer to complete setting up Classroom Accounts.

Type in your students’ names and we’ll automatically create student-friendly passwords. Don’t have time to enter all your students’ names? Just click “Continue” and we’ll automatically create usernames for you.

That’s it! Now click “Print” to print your usernames and passwords.

Here’s a view of the handy PDF so you can hand it to your students. We paid special attention to the design of the PDF to make it easy to cut and distribute. We also email you a copy of your new Classroom Accounts.

Q&A
Q: “I’m still on PBwiki 1.0. How do I switch to 2.0?”
A: If you haven’t converted to PBwiki 2.0 yet, please click the “Convert now” flag at the top of your wiki to update for free. If you don’t see it, please sit tight for a short time while we finish polishing a few features for your wiki. We’ll enable you to update to 2.0 as soon as possible.

Q: “I have PBwiki 2.0 but I don’t see this option. Where is it?”
A: This feature is enabled for educational wikis only. If you need to switch categories, please click “Help” at the top-right corner of your wiki and let our support team know. They’ll switch you over right away.

Q: “I have another question about Classroom Accounts.”
A: No problem. To get help, check out the PBwiki manual entry on Classroom Accounts.

Based on testing, we’ve heard some great feedback on this feature. If you’re an educator, give it a shot. And, as always, let us know what you think!

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Note: Attention educators! Are you interested in getting a free Gold Premium wiki (value: $250) for your classroom this year? Sign up to get an early look at the PBwiki Back to School Challenge.

Other feedback? Please let us know!

Yesterday, we posted feedback from educators called 10 reasons educators love us. Today, we’re posting feedback from superstar educator Kathleen Ferenz’s seminar on PBwiki. She asked the educators in her seminar…

“How would you use PBwiki?”

“I can see this as really useful for having students create and share book reviews.”

“Would want to redistribute this presentation to our region and the counties we service.”

“After fiddling around with wikis for awhile, I plan on implementing them into the curriculum.”

“I could use this at work as well as at home.”

“Helping teachers create them for their students, Book Reviews”

There’s more!

“Daily in the library media center and in inservices.”

“I am definitely going back to start my library wiki tonight. IT’ll be ready to roll out when school starts next Monday.”

“After school programs, during library time.”

“Will set up a Wiki with the classes which I give orientation to, a poetry Wiki and a picture book Wiki.”

“I will definitely use it in all my computerized schools. I look forward to beginning by having 3rd graders share book reports on their pbwiki”

…and still more ways educators would use PBwiki:

“After more thorough exploration of the wikis, I will most likely start having the students use the wiki that I create to post their research work and projects at the end of the semester.”

“I will definitely use the wiki with my class this year. I have already begun creating a wiki over the summer and plan to use my class as test bunnies this year.”

“I can use PBwiki as a resource which parents can access and also develop curriculum that I can use in the classroom with students.”

“After using the wiki wiki website for a couple of months I would like to use it with my students as another teaching method.”

“I would use the Wiki web pages to create pages for students to post their work right away and to do grades at home.”

Our friend and top educator Kathleen Ferenz sends us a report from a workshop she recently lead on PBwiki:

“Here are some winning quotes from this week’s workshop evaluations,” she writes:

• “I love the ability of the wikis to easily create webpages for students and classroom use. The students can easily add information and student work for all to see through the use of the wiki.”
• “Learned about the power and usefulness of Wiki.”
• “Useful tools for sharing information with students, parents and other teachers.”
• “The introduction to wikis and google docs.”
• “PBwiki and Google resources are very useful skills that I aquired during this workshop!”
• “Good ideas to use in my classroom and in my professtion life.”
• “I can see the benefit of using wiki wiki with students and pass on the skills to fellow teachers at school.”
• “Wiki web pages for collaboration for teachers and students.”
• “Using Wiki is a fantastic opportunity for collaboration!”
• “Vast potential, fun, practical. Will immediately implement at my school.”
• “Setting up a pb wiki is invaluable.”

Coming up tomorrow: An answer to the question, “How would you use PBwiki in education?”

We’re announcing an awesome new feature today: voice chat on your wiki. You can talk to anyone (using voice) for free. This works for 1-20 people with no software download needed — and it’s ready to use today.

Watch the video below to see how it works:

Click To Play

What the video says:
We partnered with YackPack to bring voice chat to the PBwiki community. The Voice Chat plugin (also known as WalkieTalkie) brings live voice to your PBwiki pages. Everyone looking at the wiki page can hear your voice when you push down the “live� button and talk into your computer microphone. They can push the button and talk back. This makes it easier to collaborate with your team, classmates, or work group.

Insert the Voice Chat plugin on any PBwiki page, or you can put it in your sidebar (this makes it visible from all pages).

A very good use: You can leave your wiki page open all day and benefit from a “push to talk� voice connection. Any time you have something to say to your team, push the button and talk. It’s simple.

WalkieTalkie Widget . . .
* is free
* requires no installation or registration
* works on PC or Mac
* works anywhere in the world you have Internet
* connects your group with high-quality voice

The big news: You can use voice chat on your PBwiki today — free. Just insert the Voice Chat plugin by clicking Edit Page >> Insert Plugin >> Chat.

We have some free PBwiki materials I want to share with you.

Lots of our users give talks about wikis. Some are teachers, like the 1,000+ who responded to an email I sent out a few months ago asking if they plan to present about wikis. (They presented in places like Maine, Malaysia, and Texas — see pictures.) Others are just casual users who want to show their friends what a wiki is. Sometimes, employees in big companies want to communicate the idea of a wiki to their boss.

For everyone, we’ve developed the PBwiki Presenter Packs, which include videos, how-to guides, and more. Until now, you had to sign up to get them (and if you want a free PBwiki t-shirt, you should still sign up).

But now you can download the PBwiki Presenter Pack materials and use them for free right here. Enjoy!

-Ramit

Cindy Lane, an instructional technologist, recently presented at an educational event about PBwiki using our Presenter Packs. Her giveaway was one of the most creative we’ve seen!

Yesterday was my pbwiki event…Half of my teachers had actually gone on and logged in and had contributed to the wiki, so I pulled them up front, gave them each TWO packages of 100 calorie peanut butter cookies and told them to find a teacher that had NOT logged on and teach them how, (and give them a package of cookies).

The big prize (peanut butter stuffed pretzels) went to the first person who had logged on, the Project Peanut Butter rubber bracelet went to the last person that logged on…and the three gold wiki keys (coming my way soon I hope!) went to the first two teachers that emailed me (both did this within the following 2 minutes).

Thanks for taking care of my teachers…as you can see, I love ‘em too!! and P B W I K I !!!

Cindy even included a video for her educators:

Click To Play

To get your own PBwiki Presenter Pack (including a free t-shirt, white papers to give to your audience, and 3 free Gold wikis to give away–click here.

Are you trying to view our PBwiki videos but your work or school is blocking YouTube?

Don’t worry, we’ve uploaded all of the PBwiki videos to TeacherTube. TeacherTube is a great video site that doesn’t appear to be blocked by most employers and educational institutions. It’s completely safe for work and has other helpful videos and tutorials for both educators and students.

Take a look at the PBwiki videos on TeacherTube.

Here’s a PBwiki video uploaded on TeacherTube that has educators covering their favorite features on PBwiki.

St. Francois Xavier Community School is using PBwiki as the school’s website for students, parents, and faculty. It’s been a smooth integration for them with a lot of things learned through the way. John Evans, the administrator of sfxschool.pbwiki.com spent sometime with us to go over his experience with PBwiki.

PBwiki: What’s sfxschool.pbwiki.com about?
John Evans: sfxschool.pbwiki.com is our school web page. I’ve taken the information that I had for several years on a free hosting site and moved it over to PBwiki because I liked the ease of editing and contributing it allowed myself as the admin, as well as the freedom it gave the teachers and students who would be able to make contributions to the wiki.

PBwiki: How do you use your PBwiki?
John Evans: Similar to the response above, we are using the wiki as our website primarily for its ease of use, and the levels of access available to a multitude of users. Currently only the professional staff in our school has authorization to post on the wiki. With further training, my expectation is that staff will begin to use the wiki with their students at least in grades 4 – 6.

I have also created two other wikis for training in Literacy with Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
(http://joevans.pbwiki.com) and for Teacher Wellness
(http://wellteacher.pbwiki.com)

PBwiki: Why’d you choose PBwiki?
John Evans: PBWiki was the wiki of choice for several colleagues of mine teaching ICT to staff and students. I looked at others and felt PBWiki was the easiest to use. I originally thought wikis would be hard to use but taught myself the basics in about an hour by looking at the code of other wikis, saw the potential and took off from there.
PBwiki: How many people are active on your wiki?

John Evans: See Above for our school wiki users. I have several other free wikis that I have had students in grade 4 work on. The first group last year at http://rockhound.pbwiki.com did some great stuff for their first time working with a wiki. They were really pumped with the content they produced and proudly showed it off to their parents.

PBwiki: What has been the biggest surprise for you in using PBwiki?
John Evans: While not really a surprise, the best part was when teachers say to me “You mean I don’t have to wait for a week or more to have the IT guy approve my website before they add it to the school site? I can do it myself!”

In our latest series of training with K-8 teachers on wikis we had planned a half day, but teacher were so into it we allowed them to have the whole day. When I asked one of the originally reluctant teachers what they liked most about the day, she excitedly said “Wikis! I LOVE Wikis!!”

PBwiki: Would you tell others about PBwiki?
John Evans: I use PBWiki in all the workshop training we do in our school division. It’s easy, straight forward and now with the new editor should be even easier to use. I rave about PBWiki all the time to other teachers.

PBwiki: Have you used our new Point-and-Click editor? What are you thoughts on it?
John Evans: …I like the new plug-ins you’ve included. I will be looking at it this week as I prepare for our divisional SY Technology training session on Friday.

PBwiki: With so many people contributing to your wiki is it difficult to manage?
John Evans: When I had the free version of the wiki, I had one student who maliciously changed the pages of other students in his class. He was in grade 4 and followed my instructions to login so he was easily tracked and discovered. This is why I went to the upgraded version of PBWiki purchasing a Silver package for the school. The various login levels make it safer for everyone, including teachers who are more leery of the technology.

PBwiki: How long did it take to implement PBwiki at St. François Xavier?
John Evans: It took me about 2 weeks time – a bit here and there to transfer all my materials over to the wiki. Now things are so easy to maintain. I subscribe to the various pages in my RSS aggregator and I can see whose made changes and if necessary make corrections or edits. I really like the lockable pages that came with the Gold upgrade which I received in the presenter’s package. We’re still technically in the implementation stage as our staff is still learning how to do things with the wiki. Our next session is going to be on uploading images and files. Though it is easy, if staff don’t do it on a regular basis they soon forget.