shirky's dashboard

I think the new option of creating student accounts for students without emails is great. Before you introduced this, I had to let students all share one account, and I couldn't tell which one made a change. It's also great having the flexibility to add people three different ways in one wiki. The one additional enhancement I would like would be the option to change a password once the user is entered.

School starts in just a few weeks. Any updates? – Anne-Marie, on August 03, 2008 21:46

Hi, Val. This is a top priority for us, but I can't say it'll be ready by the end of July. We're working around a Fall start to the school year. If you need to set a wiki up for your students by end of July, I'd suggest sticking to a 1.0 wiki. – Janet Yu, on July 22, 2008 19:47

yes, classroom accounts, please!!! i'm cutting it close; school starts at the end of july for hawaii. i want to be able to know what i'm doing so i can teach the students how to use the wiki.... – val, on July 20, 2008 03:07

You might look into gaggle.net as an email provider that is accessible from schools since no accounts are "secret." Everything is viewable by administrators and teachers and filtered in both directions (in-going and out-going mail) with key words diverting inbound and outbound messages into the teacher's mailbox so they can be reviewed before arriving at their destinations. There's a free version (with school appropriate advertisers) as well as pay versions without the advertising. Account management isn't very burdensome and it's fairly easy to sign up students individually or in batches (even faster). You're not telling your students they "have to have an email to do some work," you're providing them with one that is suitable for school use.

I am looking forward to the solution. I have used PBwiki for a couple of years with high school students. Even High School kids do not have emails, so 1.0 with password was great. They also needed to give their name at login so we know who did work.

BTW I was looking into an online CMS that would have wiki as part of it but cannot use it because it would require students to create an account. We are just not ready to require students to create an online presence that is accessible to the public. Telling them they have to have an email to do some of their work is very similar. Though most already have email, facebook, myspace, we CANNOT require it.

So what is the answer?