Recommendations for Classroom wikis
Clif's recommendations for a free wiki classroom
1. Can I assume that the students do not have their own email addresses? If so, I recommend that your students access the wiki using the password that you assign to your wiki. You can post it on a bulletin board and you can change it as often as you feel it's needed. Only you, as the wiki owner, can change the wiki password by responding to a verification email from us.
2. I actually recommend that you create two wikis. A private wiki for your students to post their pages and a public wiki for the family members to visit. This gives you two things that you want. You want the students' privacy protected. You don't want the family to see a wiki that a student may have sabotaged.
The private wiki is for the students and you. Nobody can see the wiki unless they log in with a password. Since you have created it, you decide the password for accessing it and you decide who gets the password. In a free wiki, there is only one password and all who use it can edit any page and make changes to the settings. Since the free wiki allows any editor the power to delete pages, a student can destroy the wiki. Be sure download backups of the student wiki by going to the Settings and then the Backups page. You can recover lost pages from a backup of the wiki.
The public wiki is for displaying the writings of your students and anything else you wish to show. Only you and those you trust should have the password to it. It is public, meaning that anyone with a web browser can see it. As your students finish their pages in the private wiki, you can copy those pages to the public wiki when they are ready to be shown.
Sure, it's a bit of extra work for you, but in my opinion, it's the best balance short of paying for an upgrade to your wiki. I do recommend upgrading because it can allow you to hide pages and keep your contributors from deleting pages or changing settings.
3. Page hiding and page locking are features only available to a Platinum wiki but can be added to Silver and Gold for an additional fee.
I want better control and more features for my wiki
You can upgrade your wiki to premium for better control over what students can do, features such as more file storage space, hidden pages, and more.
See this page for a comparison of features.
Click the Add Features link at the top of your wiki for pricing.
Can my students log into a wiki without an email address?
Short answer - yes and no. Long answer below.
Most students are given the Contributor password to a (premium) wiki while in the classroom.
Once they are presented with a login screen at your wiki, they need to fill out three fields to gain access. There's also a radio button that you can ignore in many cases.
| Field |
What pbwiki does with this info |
| Name |
not checked by us, any name can be used |
| Email Address |
not checked by us, any email address is accepted |
| Invite Key |
we check to make sure this is a valid Invite Key for your wiki |
| Notify me of changes |
(radio button) see our Notification FAQ for details |
We do require an email address but any email address is accepted. I recommend that the students use the instructor's email address if they don't have one themselves.
If you have a premium wiki, see this FAQ about our Access Controls.
http://newfaq.pbwiki.com/AddingAccessControls
See this FAQ on how to add multiple people to a wiki using the new PBwiki Accounts.
http://getsatisfaction.com/pbwiki/topics/version_2_0_how_can_i_send_several_invitations_at_once
If you have a basic (free) wiki, you will have to share the admin password which is the only password it has. This does allow students to delete pages and comments. If you can't trust your students, you should try to get a premium wiki so that you can limit the damage they could do. See this page for a comparison of premium features.
Click the Add Features link at the top of your wiki for pricing.
How can we organize our pages in PBwiki?
See this page in our FAQs.
http://newfaq.pbwiki.com/Advanced+FAQ#HowdoIorganizepagesinawiki
I'm getting flooded with email notifications is there a better way?
I think RSS feeds are easier to manage for large groups.
See my new RSSfeed wiki for more information on using feeds.
http://rssfeed.pbwiki.com/
See this page to see how you can turn email notifcations on or off.
https://newfaq.pbwiki.com/Sharing%20your%20wiki
How many ways can students log into a wiki?
Three ways.
1. With a password
2. With a magic URL (sharing link)
3. With an Identity (see the next section about this)
What's the best way? You decide.
Please note that #2 does have an UnknownAdministrator problem.
Should I force my students to use Identities?
To use this advice, every student must have his or her own valid email address that we can contact them at. Now I'll tell you a bit about the PBwiki Identity service (at my.pbwiki.com) and what it's advantages are.
The advantages you gain are the following.
A. Your student's email addresses are protected.
B. You now have a list of every student using the wiki in your Users page in Settings.
C. You can add, change and remove student access on the Users page.
D. If you change the access passwords on the wiki, the students can still log in using their my.pbwiki.com page.
E. Item D is actually an advantage. The students now do not know your wiki passwords. They can't tell anyone else.
F. If you do change the passwords, you will never have a student logged in whom cannot be identified by you and removed or demoted as needed.
What you will have to do is this ...
1. Invite or tell every student to sign up for a PBwiki Identity at http://my.pbwiki.com
You can tell them and walk them through it, or you can "invite" them from the Users page in your wiki Settings. Here is a page explaining the Identity service: http://newfaq.pbwiki.com/PBwiki_Identity
2. When they sign up, they will be asked to verify their email address when we send them an email.
They must be able to receive an email from us and they must click the verification link in it to prove to us that this is a valid email address.
3. As they click the verification email, they will be taken to their Identity page at my.pbwiki.com to set their own personal password, fill out the registration info and set their options there.
As they fill out their personal info there, they will be asked if they want their email address to be shown or not. Naturally, you may want the students to hide the email address. Make sure that they are aware of that option.
4. Once they have registered, they may have to add your wiki to their Home page at my.pbwiki.com.
Here is a page explaining this:
http://help4all.pbwiki.com/Adding%20Wikis%20to%20MyPBwiki
5. Finally ready to roll ... from now on, your students should log into their own private my.pbwiki.com page using their own password.
They will not use your wiki password if they have set their own password when they registered. They can then click the link to go to your wiki to contribute there.
This whole process accomplishes what you want at a small cost in time.
How do I create a classroom wiki so students can't see each other's work?
You cannot do this with one wiki. However, it can be easily done.
Let's say you have 5 teams (or students).
- Create 5 free wikis yourself. This makes you the "owner" of them.
- Now make sure you assign a different password for each wiki.
- Mark each wiki as "Private" or leave the "Public" box unchecked during sign up.
- Assign each team to it's own wiki.
- Give the password for each wiki, to only the team it is assigned to.
- When it's time to share results, then go into the wikis and make them "Public" or share the passwords.
Note: We do plan on allowing you to set page level access in the future. That means you can pick and choose who can see what page. This will allow you to have 5 teams in a single wiki and they won't be able to see each other's pages.
Here is our blog post about page access control and more.
http://blog.pbwiki.com/2007/08/15/were-going-to-make-logins-and-access-controls-much-better/
How do I set up different access levels in a premium wiki?
First you will have to create passwords for each level of access that you want to create.
- Log into your wiki as administrator (as you normally would)
- Click on Settings at the top right of your wiki
- Go to Passwords and Access
- Use the pulldown menus and the password entry fields to create passwords for each level of access you wish to have in your wiki
For more details and info on what the access levels mean, see this FAQ on Access Levels.
Now when you later click on "Share this Wiki" at the bottom of every wiki page, you will see the additional levels of sharing that you have created.
Access Levels can also be used with PBwiki Identities.
How do I share a free wiki without letting students go crazy in it?
Easy answer, you can't. Anyone editing a free wiki has the same powers to create and destroy as the owner does. The only power the free wiki owner retains above anyone else, is the power to change the master password for the wiki. That can only be changed by email verification.
You can limit the damage anyone can do by making some addition wikis for a kind of backup. Here's what I told a teacher once.
I recommend that you create a special (free) wiki for only your students. If you allow them to edit your free wiki, they will have the same administrative rights as you do.
Actually, three wikis might work better for you.
- One for yourself that is marked Private and that nobody can see.
- One for the class that is marked Public, that the whole world can see, but only you have the password for.
- One (or more) for the class marked Private, that they have the password for.
You can always copy pages back and forth between their wikis and yours if you want to keep those pages "safe". The public wiki is yours alone and you can post your own and student articles in it after you have approved them in the student wikis.
Make use of links between the wikis to each other. No need to worry about links to private wikis. Only those with a password can get into them.
Make liberal use of the backup.zip feature. Go to Settings and then Backup. Download a new backup every day after class or assign a student to do it for you. The backup.zip files contain copies of every page in a wiki and you can use these to restore deleted pages if needed.
How do I know my wiki is secure?
This is a big topic and I'll address it in several sections.
1. I invited myself with a contributor sharing link but I'm recognized as Admin. How is that secure?
That's because you didn't log out of the wiki the last time you were in it as admin.
See our FAQ about cookies and private wikis.
2. Access with a Sharing link does not a require password, why is that?
Yes, that is true. The Sharing links were designed to make wikis very easy to use. With that in mind we made it so that a person has no need to actually log in. If I wanted to invite a person to a wiki who is new to the internet or has problems remembering passwords, I'd use the Sharing links to invite them.
If you need more information about who is making edits, you can simply give your students the wiki's contributor password. That would require them to log in with a name and email address. See our section on logging in if your students don't have email accounts.
3. What does Private mean for a wiki?
A private wiki can only be viewed by a person with the password or someone who has already logged in and received a browser cookie from PBwiki. Nobody on the internet can see the information on a private wiki unless they have the password an invitation from the owner.
4. Premium wikis have Access Controls: How do I use them?
See http://newfaq.pbwiki.com/AddingAccessControls
5. Do you see people's names already in the login field when you go to a wiki?
(on a public PC)
Did the last user forget to log out?
A wiki can only be edited by a person with the password or someone who has already logged in and received a browser cookie from PBwiki. This is only a security concern if the wiki is being viewed on a public PC. When a contributor uses that PC, he should be told to log out of the wiki after he makes his changes.
Please be aware that this same issue is true for many internet enabled services. If you go on vacation and log into a public PC to look at your email, the next person who uses that PC can get right into your email account if you forgot to click the Log Out before you closed the browser window.
I myself have gone to the public library and many times I've been able to open up the Instant Messenger accounts of the previous (usually school aged) users.
What happens when an online predator finds an open IM account for a young person? These kids just don't know that they could be in danger. We need to make them aware.
Everyone should know this. Always log out of any online service before you leave a Public PC.
Auto Complete
When you log out, PBwiki erases the login cookie we set on your PC. That's all we can do to keep your login information safe. You may need to make some changes on your end to make sure that you don't pass any information on to the next user of that PC.
The name and email address that are seeing may be there because of a feature called AutoComplete in Internet Explorer. You will have to change some settings in your Internet Explorer options to keep that from displaying. Firefox browser has a similar feature that does the same thing.
See these article that explains what you can do.
Internet Explorer: http://netsecurity.about.com/od/quicktips/qt/iestorepassword.htm
Firefox: http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/ac_firefox.htm
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In conclusion:
I feel that PBwiki private wikis are just as secure as your own private email accounts. Keep in mind, you don't share your password to your email account. Don't be surprised if one of the students thinks it's cool to share his contributor password with a student who isn't supposed to have access to it. That's why you should get Access Controls. With Access Controls, the damage a student can do to your wiki is very limited. When it happens, you should make the students fix the damage (if they can). This is another opportunity for you to give them responsibilities and for you both to reap the benefits when they show they can be responsible.
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