Wikispaces Classroom

Wikispaces Classroom is something that has been getting quite a bit of press over the last few weeks that I decided to post about after receiving a promotional email.

Here is detailed information from their blog...

• Simplicity. Wikispaces was built to help people work together. All kinds of people, in all kinds of contexts. Over the years we made it easier and easier for teachers and students to use Wikispaces but there were always parts of Wikispaces that weren’t designed for the classroom and frankly, got in the way. In Wikispaces Classroom, all that is gone. It’s streamlined and focused, it puts everything you need to manage your classroom right up front, and it gets everything you don’t need right out of the way.

• Engagement. Wikispaces has always been about engaging teachers and students in meaningful activity and communication in and around the learning process. For Wikispaces Classroom we’ve designed an entirely new way to manage and talk about everything that goes on in our class. Featuring a modern newsfeed, and a simple way to manage assignments, announcements, events, and all of your resources and work, it’s everything you and your students love about social networking but private, in your classroom, and integrated with your day to day work.

• Improve Outcomes. We know that the key to improving student outcomes, however you define them, is to help teachers understand what is happening with each student every day, so that they can spend their time helping each student the way that student needs to be helped. Wikispaces has always had an enormous amount of data about what students are doing, and how they are doing, under the hood, and so we just decided to give that data to teachers in a way they can actually use. In formal terms, it’s formative assessment. In our terms, its our way of making the lives of teachers easier, and helping them help more kids, more efficiently, and more effectively.

And of course, Wikispaces Classroom is free for teachers and students.

You can create a new Wikispaces Classroom now, or convert an existing wiki to Wikispaces Classroom in your Settings area.

Click here to give Wikispaces a try.