Anne Fox :: Blog :: PB WIKI trials

January 20, 2007

PB WIKI trials

I have chosen to use pbwiki over wikispaces in the Experience Based Learning project which is starting up here in our local area. I have been hearing for weeks now that the off-putting 'classic' editor was about to be replaced by a 'point and click' editor from amongst others Ewan MacIntosh but it never seemed to come to my pbwiki. So I have gone hunting and have now discovered how to activate this much more user-friendly editor (akin to the one used here in elgg).

The information was buried in a community forum and I hope that in altering my settings this will be the editor which all users see when they try to use the wiki. I also had trouble discovering how the tagging function worked and finally had to ask a question in the forum to discover the secret.

So pbwiki may be great but I for one need more accesible information on how to use it.

Keywords: pbwiki, point and click editor, tagging

Posted by Anne Fox

Comments

I really must agree! More than a year ago, we started using pbwiki with great success. Their basic editor even performed it's duties on Safari, wich can't be said about most other editors ( it's WebKit's fault, not the editors! ), including this one on Elgg. I really look forward to hear about your ongoing experience with this user-friendly wiki-implementation.

Lars Clausen on Saturday, 20 January 2007, 19:41 CET # |
Well so far there is only one other contributor apart from me. To be fair, not many people know about the wiki yet but I have a feeling that people are too frightened to edit it. We are using it for different purposes. Yours was a collaborative effort involving a limited number of two people with a high stake in the outcome. This is a more open-ended effort with low stakes for everyone else apart from me. It will be interesting to see how it goes over the next few months.

Anne Fox on Sunday, 21 January 2007, 21:49 CET # |
I did use a wiki about a year ago, wich had a similar feature called "private" pages - like the access control here on Elgg. We actually managed to get most pupils on board, partly to these private pages, as they weren't afraid to play with a wiki without anyone but themselves able to view the outcome. After some time, the pupil's interrest in sharing their pages with others - to demonstrate their abilities and progress, made them open up the pages to others.
Only then, the pupils overcame their uneasyness and som contributed ( about 9 out of 22 ) to a shared wiki, wich was to be presented as the final outcome of a project.
This may constitute a similar situation, where I as a teacher in training had to show my abilities, whereas for the students, no grades were involved.
Sadly, the page isn't online any longer.
Is your page accessible for general public? If so, it would be nice if you drop a link here for everyone to see your progress.

Lars Clausen on Monday, 22 January 2007, 19:05 CET # |
The link is http://experience.pbwiki.com/ and given the nature of the project (addressed to all local teachers in our area) I think it has to be open from the start. Your comments about your work with school kids is interesting though in connection with two langauge classes I have just started. I am hoping that the process you describe will also occur in these classes and that as the product becomes more polished that the participants wil be willing to make them public. But adults have much more face to lose than kids so I am prepared for the prospect that they will never be happy for their products to be made public.

Anne Fox on Tuesday, 23 January 2007, 08:52 CET # |