I'm a teacher. How can I get my students logged into a wiki when they don't have e-mail addresses?

As a teacher if I sign up students for google mail or any other system that can be spammed, I'd hate to be the person responsible for any inappropriate materials that arrive in their teacher provided email accounts. If you still want to provide emails for your students there are more secure alternatives. I don't use this, but I've read some good reviews. www.gaggle.net, it promises "safe email for students." I'd love to hear what you think about it. :)

Roberto

I don't have a GMail account but will look over the suggested naming convention. This might work if the account can only be used by me.
Anyone see any problem in this? Do I have to put time in every afternoon and evening monitoring that account for the kids to accomplish day-to-day activities on the wiki?

As a public school fifth grade teacher in a semi-rural community with less than 1/8th of my students having access to a computer -- and certainly even fewer students with their own e-mail -- if I set up a independently-usable e-mail account for a student without a carefully worded signed letter from the guardian/parent, I'd run the risk of serious reprimand. Parents are scared of this for their kids. My Principal is already worried about my having a wiki at all.

Any way to use IDs in systems like Moodle? We don't use that yet so I don't know tech details for their servers, messaging protocols, etc.

If you’ve ever done a workshop that requires teachers (or students) to use GOOGLE, you know how chaotic things get because most teachers come into the workshops without Google Accounts. And you lose valuable class time setting them up.

Even if you create a “public wiki,” the new PB wiki now models a behavior similar to Google. The moment workshop participants try to edit a page, it throws everyone onto a page that requires them to log in or create an account.

But the wise people at PB Wiki left a work-around that saves the day!!!!

It’s called MAGIC URL. If you go into wiki settings and click on “SHARING”, you will see a very long URL. I took that URL and converted it to TINY URL. Then, I pasted it on the opening page of my workshop wiki.

When it came time for teams to write on the wiki, I simply had them click on that URL. It gave them immediate access without ever having to create a PB Wiki account.

This tip could save your day!

Remember, however, this will leave no paper trail on who did the editing. So it's best used when participants will only have one-time use.

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Bonus Tip:

I create a lot of wiki "templates" for my workshops. Each team is assigned a page that they can write on. They can also click through the other team pages to see how others have responded. If I want to give the same workshop a month from now to an entirely different group, I simply revert to the last revision I made before the workshop started. And in an instant, I get a clean slate!

Anne

Please keep in mind that MANY schools and districts block their students (and sometimes teachers) from accessing email accounts like yahoo, hotmail, and gmail. Students do not have access to email accounts at all where I teach, nor are there plans to allow this anytime soon (actually are considering tighter restrictions).

My school has used Gaggle for the last 3 years and we love it. The e-mail gets filtered for inappropriate language (although all of the "acid" rain projects got filtered. They also have pornography filters and digital lockers and blogs. Teachers have access to their students files.