The engineers here at Wikispaces labs are always looking for more and better ways for you to organize your stuff. Most recently, they’ve come up with bulk tagging for your pages and files.

Give it a try:

1. Go to Manage Wiki and select either Pages or Files.
2. Check the pages or files you want to tag.
3. Click the Edit Tags button.
4. Type in the tags you want to add (hitting Enter after each one).
5. Click the Add Tags button.

And there you have it!

Removing tags in bulk is just as easy:

1. Go to Manage Wiki and select either Pages or Files.
2. Check the pages or files you want to un-tag. Heck, go crazy and check them all!
3. Click the Edit Tags button.
4. Type in the tags you want to remove from those pages or files (hitting Enter after each one).
5. Click the Remove Tags button.

If any of the pages or files you’ve checked had that tag, it’s gone now.

We think that this is going to be a huge help — especially this time of year, when so many of you are getting your wikis ready for new classes and the new school year. So go ahead and give it shot. It’s kind of fun!

Let us know what you think below or with an email to help@wikispaces.com.

Julie Ramsay started CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd1 in November of 2009. CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd2, CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd3, and CoasttoCoastChroniclesEd4 followed shortly after.

1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do:
After spending several years having my students correspond and work with students on the other side of the country, I was in search of some learning partners who wanted to expand to a much more student-driven and student created project. Our diverse group includes 200+ students in grades 2 through 6 from five different states and their seven teachers. We wanted for our students to use Web 2.0 tools in order to create, communicate, and collaborate. The students created an online journal, named The Coast to Coast Chronicles, on Wikispaces using a different wiki for each edition. For each edition that the students created, they discussed possible themes and then worked to create content for the other students which reinforced their content standards while teaching their audience. This project was driven and created by the students.

2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite?
My students really enjoyed how easy it was to embed their many different types of projects into the wiki from weblinks to videos and much more. Wikispaces proved to be an outstanding format for the students to publish all of their varied writing and Web 2.0 projects for our audience.

3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects?
Depending on the theme for each edition, the young writers would brainstorm a list of possible project ideas that they wanted to create for the current edition of The Coast to Coast Chronicles. Much of the planning of each edition was done by the students through Skype and Moodle which provided synchronous and asynchronous conversations. They used tools like Wordle, Simply Box, Playcrafter, Wallwisher, ProProfs Quiz Maker, VoiceThread, Storyjumper, and Flickr to create content that not only reinforced their state standards, but also enhanced the content for the other students across the country. One project was a “wiki roulette” where all of the students across the country worked on writing one story together, editing, adding, and publishing. As one student said, “The cool part of The Coast to Coast Chronicles was that we had over 200 teachers working together and teaching us which is a really fun way to learn.” The students really embraced the idea that through these Web 2.0 tools, they were not only participants, but teachers exploring and sharing new ideas and bringing their perspective, background knowledge, and experience to the entire group.

4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, “Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!”
There were so many Aha! moments while using wikis. I’d have to say that the biggest Aha! moment was when we had first begun our project. We were getting ready to upload all of the students’ work onto the wiki for the first time. In the past, I have always posted their work online on the class website. The emphasis being “I.” Students would finish their project, load it to a pen drive, and then I would upload it in the evening or on the weekend for their friends and family to see. With wikis, the students uploaded their own work. They had the instant gratification of immediately seeing their work published which motivated them to keep creating and writing. They also were very mindful that once it was published others would be seeing it immediately, which spurred them into being thoughtful about what they created and the importance of using these tools to communicate effectively. Once they saw their work, they were eager to find another tool or create another writing piece for that edition. These writers were empowered with the entire process of their work, from brainstorming to publication. Wikis put the power of the entire process into the students’ hands.

5. If you could ask it, what do you think your wiki would say about you?
It would say, “These kids rock!” This project was totally about the students. The students took ownership and pride in everything that they created and they were always hungry for more. Their writing and communicating abilities, confidence, and creativity blossomed. It was a truly amazing thing to witness these second through sixth grade students. We gave them the power and they far exceeded any of our initial expectations.

Yes. “Page Includes.” If this is the first you’ve heard of them, don’t feel too bad. They’re one of the things we built into Wikispaces that even advanced users might not know about.

A Page Include is basically a widget that drops the entire contents of one wiki page into another. Which is pretty cool, because it means that you can build content once, and then use it over and over and over again. And it means that you can take large, unwieldy pages, and carve them up in to usable pieces. This gives you the power to do a lot of things. The following are only a few, to get you started:

Bring separate pages together
Maybe you are looking for ways to get a team to work together on a wiki. Each member of the team is responsible for a different part of the project. Which is great — you set up a page for each member of the team, and they get to work right away. But you also want to be able to look at all the work the team has done on one page.

This is all you have to do:

1. Make separate pages for each member of the team.
2. Create a new page. Let’s call this one, “Team Project.”
3. Put headings on the page for each member of the team.
4. Set the cursor under the first heading. Click the Widget icon in the toolbar.
5. From the widget menu, select Contents of a Wiki Page.
6. Type the name of the page for that team member into the Page Name field.
7. Click Embed Wiki Page.
8. Repeat for each remaining section, then hit Save.

And now you have a simple snapshot of the entire project.

Create editable page sections
Now let’s say that, for the sake of clarity and convenience, you want the team members to be able to edit their sections from the Team Project page just as easily as they can from their individual pages. Just add one more step to the instructions above:

1. Make separate pages for each member of the team.
2. Create your new “Team Project” page.
3. Put headings on the page for each member of the team.
4. Set the cursor under the first heading. Click the Widget icon in the toolbar.
5. From the widget menu, select Contents of a Wiki Page.
6. Type the name of the page for that team member into the Page Name field.
7. Check the box that says Editable.
8. Click Embed Wiki Page.
9. Repeat for each remaining section, then hit Save.

Add headers and footers that change when you need them to
Page Includes also let you build content that can be edited in one place and automatically updated all over your wiki.

For example, maybe each of your students has his or her own page, and you want to make sure that today’s assignment appears at the top of every one of those pages every time a student signs in. Here’s how:

1. Create a new page in your wiki called, “Current Assignments.”
2. Add a Contents of a Wiki Page widget for the “Current Assignments” page to the top of each student page.
3. Once a day (or once a week) update your “Current Assignments” page. All the student pages will update automatically.

Explore the possibilities
Because Page Includes are just widgets, like any other widget, you can use them in almost any way you can imagine. Try combining Page Includes and page templates, to get pre-formatted, totally editable pages in your wiki. Or switch to the wikitext editor to customize your page includes with section titles, backlinks, and more.

If you’ve already discovered something revolutionary that you can do with Page Includes, let us know in the comments section below, or send us an email at help@wikispaces.com.

Since 2009, Dan Maggiacomo has been using wikis to beef up the teaching toolkit for his blind and visually impaired students in Ontario, Canada. We asked him what that’s like.

Building a sweet Wikispace is fun, mildly challenging, and certainly rewarding. Building one that’s accessible and meaningful for my students, all of whom are blind or visually impaired, has been one of the most positive turns of events for my teaching.

When I set out to try and use Wikispaces, I thought “I’ll just throw up some notes so they can grab them if they miss them.” That worked on one level, but if you’re not differentiating how you deliver and connect your students to information, you’re not doing as much as you could.

With this in mind, I had my first light bulb moment. I made an audio note with my computer’s text-to-speech function and embedded it. Great, I figured, now the kids with low vision could sit back and listen if their eyes were tired from reading textbooks all day and the kids who use screen readers could hear a different voice for a change.

OK, that worked alright. Now, I need some work in there! One of the problems kids who’re blind or low-vision have is finding information in pages of text. When you have the magnification set so large that you only have a few words on the screen at a time, or you can only listen to the text, it’s pretty hard to scan a document. So I started to manipulate the text to meet the needs of MY students, something that can’t be done with a textbook.

The momentum built and I started to connect the Web to my Wikispace. Other sites, blogs, videos, podcasts, anything and everything that was accessible and meaningful I could gather in one spot. Brilliant! I could check and make sure everything is accessible before posting it, avoiding the dreaded “Mr. M, this doesn’t work with (fill in accessibility software name here).” Sweet!

Many of you have probably noticed something new about your editor toolbar. Right there, between the Table icon and the Preview button, we’ve added two new buttons: Undo and Redo.

So mistakes? You don’t have to worry about them anymore. Just click Undo. And click it again. And again. In fact, you can undo everything you’ve done since you started editing. If that’s your thing.

And, for those moments of indecision, you also have the Redo button: Add an image to your page. Not sure you like the way it looks? Undo. Think it may have been better with the picture? Redo. Repeat until you feel secure in your decision, no matter how long that takes.

They’re just little, tiny buttons, but we think you’re going to like having them there.

You can read about the rest of the changes to the editor here.

Over the last few days we’ve been incrementally rolling out a brand new editor to everyone who uses Wikispaces. While you may not have noticed a big visual difference, a lot has changed under the hood.

This is the story of the third generation Wikispaces editor. Here at Wikispaces HQ we call this project EditorC, pronounced “edit orc.” Pay no attention to the toolbar-wielding orc to the right. He’s really quite friendly.

Earlier this year we took a hard look at our current editor. It’s a system that we largely wrote in-house over the last four years and it’s done yeoman’s duty: millions of people have used it to save tens of millions of wiki pages. However, a lot has changed in the world of web browsers since 2006 and in many regards our previous editor wasn’t keeping up with the times. We made the difficult choice to swap out the core of the editor for one based on the popular open source TinyMCE project — the same used by WordPress and thousands of other applications. Dom, Jeff, and Ryan have been hard at work on this task since then, with copious amounts of support from the rest of the Wikispaces team.

So what’s changed?

• First, the editor looks a bit different. Here are the old and new toolbars:

• You’ll notice two new buttons: undo and redo. More on those in a future blog post!
• The new editor works better in more browsers. We’ve added Chrome support and greatly improved Safari support. You can find our full list of supported browsers on our help wiki.
• A wide variety of formatting quirks and bugs have been fixed across the board.
• We streamlined the look of the toolbar and buttons and made a dedicated area for notifications on top of the bar.
• Warnings when someone else is editing the same page will appear below the editor toolbar rather than in a separate window at the bottom of the page.

Most importantly, the new editor provides the foundation for some jaw-dropping features to come. We hope the new editor works well for you. As always, we’d love to hear both the good and bad. Email us at help@wikispaces.com.

Michelle Harclerode, Lee County’s 2010 Elementary Media Specialist of the Year, started the BookTrailersforReaders.com wiki in July, 2009.

1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do:
I am a storyteller at heart. Last year at this time I discovered both book trailers (short digital videos which promote reading a certain book) and the world of Wikispaces. As a teacher librarian from Diplomat Elementary School in Lee County, Florida, I was excited to introduce both students and teachers to all that I was learning. The Web 2.0 concepts were new to me, but I was inspired to create a useful site for my own school. Book trailers on a wiki that allowed for student discussion seemed to be a natural fit. Originally I designed the site to introduce Florida’s best book list, known as the Sunshine State Young Reader Award books. My wiki started book conversations that helped to connect not only our school, but our district and even beyond to 40 countries. The long-range goal was to eventually teach students to make their own book trailers. However, things moved much quicker and our students immediately wanted to get in on the act and produce their own trailers. Creating trailers that can be seen by the world was a hook that engaged both avid and reluctant readers. Wikispaces became our portal that easily allowed students to produce, present, and publish. They produce using digital video tools, they present their book knowledge, and they publish to the global community. Web 2.0 tools, like Wikispaces, excite the learning process and help students authentically relate to the world around them. When creating trailers or book blogging on the wiki, my students would not only be engaged and focused, but joyfully exclaim, “I love that the whole world gets to see what I just did.”

2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite?
I love the ease of uploading videos (either through my file or embedded widget) and then precisely changing the size of the video by switching to wikitext editor. I am slowly learning to manipulate my pages with the wikitext editor and create pages with a slick, professional look. This feature is an example of the many choices you have with Wikispaces. And the ability to control these choices is also in my hands as well.

3. What is one way you’re using wikis and other web 2.0 tools in your projects?
The discussion tab with my various book trailer pages has provided a safe environment for student blogging at the elementary level. I have set the permissions to ensure this and receive emails as soon as a student blogs. When students create their own trailers, they also assume blog responsibility for their book, and of course I am still supervising.

4. Tell us about a particular moment that made you say, “Aha! THIS is why I use wikis!”
Two different times come to mind. One AHA moment time came when a librarian from another school said, “I could never get my kids to try the Sunshine State books and then they watch one of your trailers and the books just fly off the shelves.” With wikis you are truly reaching out in ways you may not even know. The second happens off and on, when students stop to tell me they are reading a new book and they are going to make me a trailer so great that I will have to put it on the wiki. It will be “wiki good.”

5. If you could ask, what do you think your wiki would say about you?
“This teacher librarian really cares about the story and will use all the creativity and tech-savvy tools she can to get kids to read. Michelle Harclerode knows a wiki is a way to make real connections happen and that teaching digital literacy matters.”

Hi, my name is Julie, and I’m excited to be joining the Wikispaces team as the newest member of the software engineering group. I graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in linguistics, and it took me a few years to realize what I really wanted to do was write code. Outside of programming, I spend my time reading, knitting, and eating my way through the restaurants of San Francisco. I’m looking forward to doing what I can to make your site experience even better.

On Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3 p.m. (PDT), we will be joined by Ken Ostermiller of the United Church of Christ for an informational Private Label webinar.

Ken is running a very successful non-profit Private Label site, giving individuals a place to share their thoughts and experience as they build a reference for the entire community. He will show us how he uses his Private Label site to make writing more collaborative, and to provide a forum where even non-writers can contribute to the composition of a valuable resource on practices.

And, just like always, we’ll be there to walk you through the basics of Wikispaces Private Label, to answer any questions you have, and to satisfy your curiosity about what this tool could be doing for you.

All of that, at 3 p.m. PDT on July 22. So… are you coming?

Your Private Label site has unlimited wikis. And each one of those wikis has unlimited pages. And the more people use the site, the more pages and wikis you’re going to have, and the more information your site is going to hold, and, unfortunately, the more difficult it gets to access the single piece of information you are looking for at a given moment.

Building navigation into your Private Label site will help: links, instructions, and the features of Wikispaces Private Label itself will give you everything you need to guide your users effortlessly through a wiki environment that works the way you need it to.

What do we mean by “navigation”?
Well, we mean a lot of things. There are some tools built right into Wikispaces Private Label that make it easy for users to find the wikis they need and move between them without too much confusion. And you, as site admin (or even as organizer of a single wiki), have resources for building road maps and setting up road signs to tell visitors where they are, where to go, and where to find the information they need.

Simply put, “navigation,” means all those things, all the constructs and tools, that help you and your users move around your site and find the information you need quickly and easily.

Your www wiki as map
The first place that people see when they visit your site is the www wiki, which makes it the perfect spot to put up a map.

You’ll want to think about how people use your site, and what kind of map they need. You could give them an atlas (say, an alphabetical list of wikis), telling your users and guests everything that’s in your site, and what it connects to, and where to find it. Or you could put up a treasure map, showing only the most important parts of your site, and only enough direction to get them there. Or anything in between.

The Link icon in your editor toolbar will let you link to any page in any wiki in your entire site. (Actually, you can even link to any anchor in any page in any wiki on your site, but that’s another blog post.) Link to the Home pages of wikis that people will want to see in their entirety. Or link to individual pages where your most valuable resources are posted.

If you want more instruction about how to set up navigation within a single wiki, check out our blog post on subpages and wiki navigation.

Membership as self-navigation
But we don’t want you to feel like you have to do all the work. In Wikispaces, individual users have tools to build the navigation that’s the best fit for them.

• User Dashboard: When a logged-in user goes to their account dashboard, they will see a list of all their Favorite Wikis. Any wiki that the user is a member (or organizer) of is automatically added to this list, as is any wiki they edit and any wiki where they’ve joined a discussion. They can also add wikis to the list by typing them into the Add a Wiki to This List box.
• My Wikis: The green arrow at the top of every page is a quick menu of the user’s top 20 favorite wikis. All they have to do is move their mouse over that arrow, and pick the link from the list.

That’s the general idea. If you’ve found some specific tricks for setting up navigation in your Private Label site, please let us know about them in the comments section below. And if you have questions about navigation that we haven’t answered, just shoot us an email at help@wikispaces.com.