I spoke to a room of educators last week in Detroit at the MACUL conference.

At first, I was nervous because I didn’t know how many people would attend the talk! But in the end, it turned out to be a lot of fun — and by the end, we had a standing-room-only event! I spoke for about 45 minutes, then answered questions and gave away a few PBwiki t-shirts. We need to get more of those shirts out through our Presenter Packs! (If you’re an educator giving a talk about wikis anywhere in the country, check out the details.)

Kevin Clark, who attended the talk, wrote up a great description of the talk called Behind the Scenes with PBwiki.

So…I think it’s really cool that Ramit Sethi, the VP of Marketing for PBwiki, has come all the way here to give us the latest on what PBwiki is all about. I think it demonstrates some commitment from them that they want to reach out to educators.

[...]

They took the suggestions of educators and listened. Teachers hate ads, so they removed them on educational blogs. They want students to be engaged, so they continue to add features. They also want it to be easy, so they made a new WYSIWYG editor. They’re trying to listen to their hundreds of users and incorporating their suggestions.

[...]

For those of you who use PBwiki (or just wikis in general!) and tell others in workshops, PBwiki offers Presenter Packs which include

• a PDF handout with general PBwiki information
• a T-shirt of your choice
• a PowerPoint presentation to use in your workshop/session
• and three PBwiki upgrades (worth $750)

[...]

Again, I’m really impressed by the approachability of Ramit, and through him, PBwiki. These guys (actually five guys and a gal) are really trying to get it right and to create a useful tool for educators as well as the web community in general. Keep in mind…Ramit wasn’t down in the vendor area and wasn’t pushing his product (you get the Presenter Pack no matter what type of wiki you’re focusing on), but instead is extending a hand to teachers to help create meaningful online content and collaborative activities.

In his full post, Kevin also writes about what’s coming next for PBwiki, as well as some common concerns about using wikis that we’ve heard from educators. Check out the full post: Behind the Scenes with PBwiki.

Over the last three months we’ve been offering our users PBwiki presenter packs. If you’re interested in giving a presentation about PBwiki (or Web 2.0 technologies in general) we’d love to ship you our presenter pack. It’s free!

The presenter pack includes:

Here’s a couple of pictures of the goodies from our presenter packs, courtesy of our PBwiki users.

Check out our PBwiki Presenter Pack page for more information on how to obtain the presenter pack.

Here’s a special 2-page PDF that answers basic questions about PBwiki, specifically for educators. Some questions answered:

• What’s the difference between a wiki and a blog?
• Who controls the content?
• Is it easy to use? What about safety?
• What are examples of successful educational wikis?

This might be perfect if your IT administrator or principal has been wondering exactly what a wiki is. Ask them to read these quick 2 pages!

Read the PDF here: Q&A about PBwiki
-Ramit