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Hi, this is Janet Yu, Senior Product Manager at PBwiki. I'd love to talk through our proposed design for supporting classroom wikis in 2.0. Please email me this week at janet[dot]yu[at]pbwiki[dot]com if you're interested.

Hey all,

We've come up with a few options to fix the login problem and we'd like to get your feedback.

We are setting up short presentations on June 11, 2008 between 3:00 - 6:00 PDT. If you are interested in joining us to see our ideas on educator logins (for students without email address), please sign up here - http://tinyurl.com/6bxc7w

You will need to have access to a phone and an internet connection.

Thanks!
Kristine

If you create custom userspaces for wikis or general no-password logins or magic URLS that create unique logins (or whatever the solution) do you think that you'll make this support available for any wiki that wants it, or do you think that easy no-signup-required access will just be for educators?

test – Rachel Pennig, on May 29, 2008 19:34

Who's idea was it to require that an administrator have an email address for every single person they want to be able to use his or her wiki... how do we invite people to use the wiki without putting their email address in that little box? – James, on May 16, 2008 20:26

I like the idea of an option at setup, as another person described above. There are times when an invite key is appropriate - when the invitee does not need their own wiki username/password. At other times, the email access option is extremely useful. – Teresa W., on May 16, 2008 13:16

I like this idea best. The decision can then be based on what the wiki or assignment entails. – Teresa W., on May 16, 2008 13:11

David, wow, a whole hour? I participated in one of the online conf calls in early March. (Also about an hour.) We were told that some exciting things were being developed and were to be released 'soon'. I convinced people here to pay for the nice PB license based on the many 1.0 wikis that we had and now I'm feeling the pressure since the easiest part of group teacher training is gone (invite key).

I don't assume that it's an easy thing to fix, but there has been months of feedback and PB needs to make any change they are going to make or stick with the decisions already made so we can choke on our money and find the other alternatives we need.

While we're working on this, I'd be nice if account login could set different notifications for different wikis. I'd rather hear from some once a day and others immediately. It's a pain, but not a deal-breaker.

I use my PB's and enjoy the simplicity of use. I have 4th graders tearing through pages and adding media content easily. There are so many good things about PB. But if it's a pain to get teachers trained in large groups, I will have to go elsewhere. There are so many other alternatives.

Thank you for the update. I realize this is a difficult problem to solve and would like to say that I appreciate the effort PBWiki is putting into finding the right solution. – Carolyn, on May 09, 2008 11:59

Hi! A couple of people have asked why we didn't just put invite keys into 2.0. After all "the code exists", right?

The issue is that 1.0 had a lot of very different ways to get into a wiki. The login page itself became very confusing (are you logging in with an invite key? Or a user account?) and we couldn't make guarantees about exactly who had done exactly what on the wiki. This generated a lot of support requests and it just wasn't a good, simple, "peanut buttery" solution. We tried several different iterations of login screen to see if we could message the dual systems more clearly, but this generally didn't pan out.

When designing 2.0 the team therefore made a decision to first have a unified and simplified login system that just asks for a username and a password. We recognized that this wouldn't solve the needs of everyone in 1.0 and that therefore we'd need to put some time into thinking about ways we could have our cake and eat it too to get to a place where we had a system effective for educators.

I appreciate the intensity on this thread. It's quite clear from the volume and passion that you want the 2.0 features and a mechanism to get students in that's as straightforward as an invite key. Some very specific and very helpful suggestions have been put forth on this thread that we'll be taking into account.

Just so you guys know, this is one of the very top issues at the company - all of the company managers got together for over an hour today (with this GS thread on the projector) to discuss how we were going to resolve this. We are determined to get you a timely solution that meets your needs.

Our apologies for the bumps along the way as we grow and work to provide you with the best wiki solution ever. Thank you for your patience.

I agree. I just did a workshop with 150 teachers and there would have been no way and no time to have them all create accounts in the time I had so I was limited to 1.0. I like the features in 2.0 but am now looking for other options to use in trainings and presentations with educators. I think it's time to move on to a new application. I told the teachers about the problem and suggested that they need to explore other options as almost all of them told me that creating individual student accounts was not an option for them. – Dan, on May 07, 2008 16:53

Hi Judy, I'll check in with the engineering team and see what I can find out today. In the meantime, would it work to create a 1.0 wiki (which still uses invite keys)? – Rachel Pennig, on May 07, 2008 15:47

Hi Anne-Marie. Let me check in with our engineering team and see what I can find out today. Thanks for your patience. – Rachel Pennig, on May 07, 2008 15:46

The invite key was part of 1.0. The code exists. I'm failing to see why it is so hard to just put it back in 2.0 or to come up with something that will let us revert our 2.0 PBwikis to 1.0.

I just got an announcement for other new features for educational PBwiki 2.0. While I can now annotate and keep track of references, that is all very nice but if my students can't get in to use the system b/c there is no invite key to give them, how on earth does this update help?

I'd much rather see you fix the missing features from the move between 1.0 to 2.0 then to spend time on new features I've never used before and have therefore successfully lived without.

Five days ago they said they are working on the "request access" feature that we've "been asking for", in response to this situation. When I pointed out that making users "request access" was just as bad as the current setup, they replied that they "have other solutions that will be implemented as this develops that should meet the needs as described above". Given the current progress on this issue (none), I would begin researching alternatives if you have pressing needs for open wikis in the near future.

I agree with Anne-Marie. Where are we on the invite key/password issue? I am conducting 2 workshops for teachers in July and August. I was planning on using pbwiki since I am a big fan- BUT if the password/invite key format is not resolved I will use a different wiki. pbwiki worked great for teachers and students when we used a password. PLEASE bring this format back.

Is there any update on this issue?

I can continue using my 1.0 wiki...but that doesn't help all the teachers out there (some in my district) who thought that "page level access" in 2.0 was what they wanted. So they've wasted time--and sometimes money--creating 2.0 wikis that require e-mail addresses for log-ins. If PBwiki doesn't move on this issue soon, you're just going to lose the educators to different wiki services. I also have a lovely platinum 2.0 wiki...that is COMPLETELY useless for my primary school kids. – Anne-Marie, on May 06, 2008 22:11

I would love to see pbwiki go back to invite keys/passwords. That has offered the protection my students need without putting limits on who is accessing the wiki. For example- I may send home a wiki address for parents to add comments or edit within a table. It would take huge amounts of time for me to enter every parent email address. My hope is that you will move back to a password/invite key before my summer training sessions. I will not be able to use pbwikis in my teacher training workshops unless this issue is resolved and I love pbwikis!
Judy

Login and passwords need to reflect ease, security, and anonymity. My students do not have email accounts they can use for school projects. I can't use their names. I have 70 students in grades 5-8 for which the wiki is a fantastic forum.

However, I need to know who is on and who is editing what.

I need to restrict certain pages (locked is nice).

I see a "page-level" access in 2.0, but I don't know what that means.

I'm thinking it would be nice for students to be able to create their individual pages which are locked except for their password. Some pages would be locked, others are for collaboration.

I just created a whole site in 2.0 (silver), not realizing that each person had to login (and they don't have emails) and that I can't control the level of use.

I thought at first that I could have editors, moderators, writers, and page-level only passwords. Oops, I blew that one. Copy and paste to 1.0, I guess, although the new folders and page security is great !

A way I've heard other wikis use, is the teacher sends in student names and passwords which are set up for the site by the wiki admins.

I see why 2.0 went to PB Identities, but I need more control over the students' use, instead of giving them PB access like adults have -- the PB identity page invites them to create their own, add other wikis, etc. I wish the world were a nice place, so open and free. But I've must provide a more in-house solution. The techy kids will still go off on their own -- but not on my watch.

I noticed one discussion mentioned something like adding student names to their emails? like teacher+student@gmail.com Is that possible? I wouldn't use the students' names, but I could use their class code. I would not suggest using any "official" student number.

So: easy to set-up student usernames (not real) and passwords; still need differing access levels; would like page level access code for certain pages to prevent others from editing their final work.

Thanks. Sheri