techteach's dashboard

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. Email me this week at janet[dot]yu[at]pbwiki[dot]com if you're interested.

I would suggest a variation of this. If you signup with IDs with your name and then sutudent1... up to say 25. Then you can reuse these from year to year. Just make cards with name and password to give to the students. Keep them in a spreadsheet for easy reference and add the names for that year.

example: esempiostudent1 or esempio2 etc.

Use spreadsheet at http://www.google.com to always have it on hand. You can display it on screen for students as well to see their assinged names.

We've been doing some usability tests on one option - we should have more information coming soon! – Rachel Pennig, on June 29, 2008 16:22

Rachel,
I read in Krissy's blog that there was an idea now of how to do this in V2, but haven't seen the answer posted. Any update on the progress. I prefer PB Wiki V2 to wikispaces but for now am still locked in to wikispaces in my classroom because of the email issue.

Thank you so much... I would love to use PBwiki in our school. However, the email issue is a big concern. Our school does not issue student email accounts and does not have any plans to do so.. – techteach, on June 12, 2008 12:43

Rachel, Will this login solution be usable before the new academic year begins? I want my students to be able to edit without a separate email address. Could this be a login unique only to an individual teacher? I am still very new to wikis, so I am learning. I may try Gaggle.

hopefully this solution will work for everybody that can't or don't want to use an email address to track editors – Tim, on June 02, 2008 16:56

Hi Roberto- thanks for the great suggestion. One of the nice features about the above trick is that you're not actually creating email addresses for your students, these are just variations on your own email address. So students will still have access to PBwiki, without actually having an email address. – Rachel Pennig, on June 02, 2008 04:34

Just to update everyone on this thread - we realize 2.0 isn't working well for educators when their students don't have email addresses. Which is exactly why we're working on a new log in solution specifically for educators. We LOVE our educator users, and we want to make absolute certain we have the best solution coming out. So please be patient, it's coming!

Hey Wil, As I mentioned a couple times in other threads, we realize 2.0 isn't working well for educators when their students don't have email addresses. Which is exactly why we're working on a new log in solution specifically for educators. We LOVE our educator users, and we want to make absolute certain we have the best solution coming out. So please be patient, it's coming! – Rachel Pennig, on June 02, 2008 04:15

Really, Clif, I didn't need clarification on any of that, either. I already participate in the educators wiki, I actively use v1.0 with classes and groups, and historically I've been a strong proponent of PBWiki for educators. Unfortunately, the direction y'all seem to be going in with v2.0 makes that version of PBWiki unusable for many educators. .......... You're welcome to make security as strict as you want. In the process, as I tried to suggest, you're making the new PBWiki model unusable for a vast number of educators who are in federally and/or district mandated lock-down situations with respect to new technologies. All I'm asking for is a demonstration of sensitivity to those issues, if you intend to keep courting the education community. .......... Comments from staffers like "use this as a teaching opportunity" and "if you *really* don't want them to have email addresses..." (as if it were the teachers' _choice_ to work in a restrictive technological environment) demonstrate an insensitivity to those issues. – WilDoane, on June 02, 2008 04:06

Hi WillDoane,

The discussion above is not about us denying anyone access to PBwiki if they don't have an email address. It's about the requirements for using v2.0 of PBwiki.

PBwiki has been offering our free wiki hosting services to educators and non-profit organizations for nearly 3 years now. Hundreds if not thousands of educators and students use PBwiki every day.

We are sensitive to the email issue. In fact, you can still create a v1.0 wiki that allows students and teachers to log in without using any email other than the one email address required of the wiki owner.

Our requirements for teachers using PBwiki have not changed. Only access to 2.0 wikis requires everyone to use email. The 2.0 wikis needed to have stricter security options that 1.0 could not offer.

Students using PBwiki 1.0 can log in using the wiki invite key, any email address and their name.

Let me clarify the email address at login I just told you about. Any email address that you enter will work when logging into a v1.0 wiki. It does not have to be a real email address. I believe in many cases, the teacher assigns a standard email address for the students to enter into the login page. Whether or not it's an address that truly exists is up to the teacher. Only a wiki owner needs to have a real email address.

There is no work around needed to invite students to a PBwiki 1.0 wiki. Simply share the wiki Invite Key with them and tell them where and how to log in.

Creating a 1.0 wiki is essentially unchanged and only requires that you use your email address for verification and uncheck a single check box at step 3. Go to http://pbwiki.com to get a free wiki so that you can see for yourself that we still continue to offer a great free service.

If you need help or advice on using PBwiki for classrooms, please visit our Educators wiki at http://educators.pbwiki.com.

Is there anything else you need clarification on?

As I just mentioned in a different thread, PBWiki needs to be sensitive to the realities of K-12 schools -- many schools PROHIBIT use of email for or from school; doesn't matter whether it's gmail or not. Teachers are being put on probation and worse for using work arounds such as the GMail idea posted in this thread. CIPA, COPA, FERPA, and other alphabet soup laws strictly restrict what teachers can expose students to. If you're serious about K-12, and even 13-16 where FERPA is still an issue, you need to be very sensitive to these issues. – WilDoane, on June 02, 2008 01:27

Thanks for adding your comment TechTeach. We will be working on features that will make adding students much easier. I can't promise you when this will be available, but you can keep an eye on our blog for announcements.
http://blog.pbwiki.com

I have the same problem. Our students do not have email addresses. Our school does not issue student email.
I would really like to have the ability to add students with a user name.