Head to your wikis this week and check out our improved tagging system.

If you are unfamiliar with tags, they are labels you can put on your pages or files to sort them into different groups. As a teacher, you can mark all pages related to a specific assignment with a particular tag; or as a manager, label all files related to a particular project with one tag. You can then view that tag and quickly find all of the work categorized into this group.

With our new tagging system, we’ve made it even easier for you to categorize and manage your wiki. You can now:

• View page tags directly on wiki pages.
• Add, rename, or a delete a tag on any page you can edit, regardless of who posted it.
• Tag files on your wiki.

To view, add or delete tags on a page, go to the “page” tab, and then to “Details and Tabs.” If you would like to instead tag and categorizes files on your wiki, go to “Manage Wiki,” then “Files,” and click on the file name you’d like to tag.

With all these changes, you can still view and manage all the tags across your wiki by going to “Manage Wiki,” and then “Tags.” You can rename or delete a tag for all pages or remove tags by particular users.

Try out your new tags and let us know what you think at help@wikispaces.com .

Note: If your wiki has a customized theme, the old tag formatting will still appear at the bottom of your page. If you would like to remove it, edit your theme and find either:

<$WikiPageTags$>

or

<div id="showTags" style="display: none;">
<$WikiPageTags$>
</div>

Delete it from your theme, save your theme and you’re all set.

This Saturday through next Tuesday we will be at NECC in Washington, DC. NECC is always a great opportunity for us to meet as many of you as possible and to learn. This year we are hosting a party, presenting, running a wiki roundtable, and holding office hours. Please make sure to introduce yourself if you’re going to be there. If you can’t find us, email us or tweet @wikispaces and we’ll find you.

EduBloggerCon Wikispaces After Party: Saturday 27th June, 6pm - 8pm

For those of you in DC on Saturday, we are hosting a party after EduBloggerCon from 6pm - 8pm. We’ll be celebrating another fun EduBloggerCon, Classroom 2.0’s 25,000th member milestone, and Wikispaces’ 4th Birthday and 1 millionth wiki. Free food and drinks will be provided and everyone is welcome, regardless of whether you can attend EduBloggerCon or not. Full details are at the party wiki page and make sure to register on the registration page if you are coming.

Wiki Roundtable: Monday 29th June, 2pm - 2.30pm

We’ll be presenting with Vicki Davis on “Wonderful World of Wikis: Practical Classroom Wikis” at 12.30 on Monday the 29th. The session is sold out so if you can’t come or if you just want to continue the conversation, we’ll be holding a wiki roundtable at the NECC Unplugged lounge after the session from 2pm - 2.30pm. Come share your experiences with using wikis in your classroom and hear tips and tricks from others. No need to sign up, just show up and participate.

“Office” Hours: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, 11am - 12 noon

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, we will be holding “office” hours at 11am at the Bloggers Cafe, right next to the NECC Unplugged lounge. Please come by and say hi. We want to hear about how you’re using Wikispaces, what you’d like to see from us in the future, and we’ll be glad to meet you in person. Let us know when you plan to come by.

Have a great show and we look forward to seeing you.

Tomorrow, June 24 at 10am PST, we’re holding our second Introduction to Wikispaces webinar. Our first one last month was a lot of fun and very rewarding as participants learned how to get started with their wiki and left being able to edit, personalize and manage it.

If you’re new to wikis, and are looking for some help in getting started, we encourage you to attend tomorrow’s webinar. We’ll help you edit your wiki, teach you about the permissions and settings on your wiki, show you how to manage members on your wiki, and answer your questions.

For more information and to register for the event, visit: http://wikispacesintro0906-4.eventbrite.com/. We look forward to seeing you there.

Update: If you missed the event or would like to watch it again, you can find a recording of it here: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2009-06-24.0530.D.CA090BE1CFC3C94CF7321D6A717393.vcr

Join us this coming Monday, June 22 at 3pm PST for our free education webinar. We’ll show you features that can help you get more from your wiki and introduce you to fellow educator Anthony Armstrong.

Anthony is a social studies teacher at Del Mar Middle School in California who has been using Wikispaces for several years. He has integrated his wiki into each class unit to better engage his students in the material both inside and outside the classroom. Come to the webinar, hear what Anthony has to say about his wiki, and ask your questions of him and other educators.

To register for the webinar, visit: http://wikispacesineducation0906-2.eventbrite.com/

Update: If you missed the webinar or would like to watch it again, you can find a link to a recording of the event here.

Please join us for a free webinar tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday 16th June at at 12 noon PST. We’ll be presenting an overview of our Private Label service and we’ll be joined by Krissie Wisniewski, Technology Resource Teacher in the Office of Media & Educational Technology at the Howard County Public School System.

Howard County Public Schools has been using Wikispaces Private Label since 2007 and Krissie will be sharing their experiences and what they have learned over the last 2 years. Come and hear what she has to say and ask your questions. And we’ll be covering all the topics we usually cover to help you get started quickly and easily with Wikispaces Private Label.

To register and join the event, visit:
http://wikispacesprivatelabel0906.eventbrite.com/.

Last fall, we held our first monthly education webinar, showing you how to create your classroom wiki and hearing from educators using wikis in their classrooms. Several months ago, we began holding Private Label webinars, introducing you to our Wikispaces Private Label service and letting you see how others use it in their schools, companies, and organizations.

Many of you who attended these webinars let us know what you thought, what you enjoyed and what you would like to see in the future. Based on your feedback, we are beginning a new webinar series this month - An Introduction to Wikispaces. This webinar is designed for new users looking to get started with their wiki. We will introduce you to basic features of your wiki, such as editing pages, adding media and calendars, and inviting others to collaborate with you. Our webinars are free and open to everyone and we look forward to seeing you there.

Our first Introduction to Wikispaces webinar will be on Thursday, May 28th at 2pm PST/5pm EST. To register for the event, visit: http://wikispacesintro0905-4.eventbrite.com/.

Update: If you missed the event, you can find a recording of it here: https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2009-05-28.1014.D.CA090BE1CFC3C94CF7321D6A717393.vcr

Wikispaces Private Label is a complete wiki environment for your school, company, or organization. Create all the wikis your organization needs, while centrally managing them on your own customized, secure, and integrated site. With your Private Label site, you get unlimited collaboration, central administration, control and privacy, and full integration with your existing systems.

Join us at 12pm PST for our May 26th webinar. Learn more about Wikispaces Private Label and see how others are using it for their collaboration needs. We look forward to meeting you, answering your questions, and helping you see if Wikispaces Private Label is a good fit for your organization.

To register and join the event, visit:
http://wikispacesprivatelabel0905b-6.eventbrite.com.

Join us for our upcoming Private Label webinar this Thursday May 7th at 9am PST/5pm GMT and learn about our wiki product for your entire company, school, or organization.

Wikispaces Private Label lets you create an unlimited number of wikis and user accounts in your own controlled, private, and secure environment. We will be happy to answer all of your questions and share tips, tricks, and examples so you can get the most out of Wikispaces Private Label.

For more information about the event and to register, visit http://wikispacesprivatelabel0905-6.eventbrite.com . We look forward to seeing you there.

Update: If you were unable to make it to Thursday’s webinar, you can find a recording of the event here.

Join us for our May Education Webinar on May 5th at 3:30 pm PST. Our education webinar series is designed to help teachers learn how to begin a wiki in their classroom, take advantage of features on Wikispaces, and meet other educators doing interesting things with wikis.

We are joined this month by Jennifer Barnett, an English and history teacher at Fayetteville High School in Alabama. Jennifer is a long-time Wikispaces member and her wiki has become an integral part of her classroom. She uses it to post assignments, foster collaborative group projects, encourage peer-review, and more. Come learn from Jennifer’s example and get more out of your classroom wiki.

To register for the event, visit: http://wikispacesineducation0905-2.eventbrite.com.

Update: We had a wonderful webinar with Jennifer yesterday. You can catch a recording of the event here.

Wikispaces now offers page level permissions on our Super and Private Label plans! You can control who has access to view or edit individual pages on your wiki, giving you an even more customized wiki for your company, school, or organization.

Don’t yet have a Super or Private Label plan? Create a free 30-day trial and try out this powerful new feature in your organization.

With page permissions, you can now decide which of these four groups can view or edit each page:

• Organizers of your wiki
• Members of your wiki
• People who are signed in
• People who are not signed in

So let’s say you are a non-profit with a protected wiki that anyone can visit. You want your team to coordinate some projects privately. With page permissions, you can set more restrictive access to these pages, making them viewable only to members.

If you’re a business with a private wiki for your company, but are looking to open a dialogue with customers, you can change permissions on certain pages, opening them up to anyone.

To turn on page permissions for a page, go to Manage Wiki, Pages, and then the Actions drop-down next to the page you wish to change. You’ll see an option there to set page permissions for that page. When you turn page permissions on, they will override your wiki permissions. You can also set permissions for a page by going to that page, clicking the drop-down menu on the page tab and then clicking on page permissions.

Begin a free 30-day trial and enjoy the increased customization and flexibility of page level permissions.

Let us know what you think by sending us an e-mail at help@wikispaces.com.