Just this morning, we gave away our 300,000th free classroom wiki! This classroom has joined over 2.4 million other educators and students in one of the largest educational communities on the internet.
Way back in January of 2006, we pledged 100,000 free classroom wikis to primary and secondary educators. We were so excited by the response that, when we hit the mark in September of 2008, we decided to keep going and give away 250,000 more.
Over the past four years, while we were working hard to get wikis into your classrooms, we’ve seen others make offers of free wikis, free social networks, and other online services for education, only for those offers to end. But we keep getting bigger and better, in part because giving away free classroom wikis is crucial to what we do as a company.
The thing is, free really can work. But first, the offer must be genuine, sustainable, and well managed, and it must be central to a company’s business strategy. For us, there’s no need to spend money on a large sales force or expensive marketing programs. Schools and districts buy our Private Label service because their teachers and students love our free (and private — and ad-free) wikis.
“Doing well by doing good” is most meaningful when the good you do leads directly to your success. Building a business like that is harder than it sounds. We’re proud to say that’s what we’ve done.
Please join us and make sure your favorite K–12 educator is in the loop. Spread the word by sharing this blog post or retweeting our Twitter tweet.
13 Comments
With all of the talk today about Ning, I had to comment about the fantastic online resource that I use more than any other in my classroom Wikispaces.
They are great! I don’t know what I would do without it. Over the last 2 1/2 years my students and I have built what we think is a comprehensive, ever changing, dynamic Health Science website that is our constant classroom companion.
Just wanted to once again to say thanks for providing a place where we can place all of our classroom “stuff” online.
I can’t wait until ITSE 2010 in Denver this June. I plan on stopping by their booth and visiting. Maybe I can talk them out of a Wikispaces Coffee Mug for saying nice things about them!
Really, if you are a teacher and want something that you can’t, in my opinion, live without, create your own Wikispace, you will be glad you did!
We use Wikispaces all of the time in Hoover City Schools. We have the private label program and we truly couldn’t be happier. The students and teachers all really like it and we never have any trouble with it. It’s the best collaborative learning experience on the web.
“Hi world!
I’m starting a new experience in this wiki world so if you have an easy way to use this site like uploading information, articles, photos, videos nor music. PLEASE HELP ME!
I’m an English teacher here in Mexico.
Thanks!
Most of my class has a wiki and some of the teachers do so they can email our work that we missed
How do I get a classroom wiki?
How can I recv a free Wiki for my classroom?
I currently have 3 wikispaces I am using for different classes. I thoroughly enjoy this capability. My students love it, too!
The first two created are free of advertisement, plus plans. I am a k-12 educator. I have this service free. Can I please have the 3rd wiki, French World Cultures, that I am just now establishing, free from advertisement also? Thank you.
You can upgrade your education wiki to our free, ad-free, K-12 plan by going to “Manage Wiki” and “Subscription.” The link is at the bottom of that page.
If you want to create new K-12 education wikis, use this link:
http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers
or the wikis you create will NOT be on the K-12 plan.
Best,
Sarah
If you are just starting your classroom wiki, a great place to check out is http://educationalwikis.wikispaces.com . You can find 100s of examples of educators using wikis successfully in their classrooms.
Cheers,
Sarah
I teach at a school for the blind and visually impaired in Canada and I just have to say that wikispaces has been a huge success here. Why? It’s so easy to differentiate instruction. If I post a picture, graph or map I can add an audio description. I can post audio notes with my text, I can link or embed relevant video. The kids can copy and paste the text into a doc and make it whatever font/size they want (up to 48 or larger!). I can take the text I have and emboss it into braille. I can organize text and questions to provide visual cues. I add headings as needed to direct text-to-speech. It’s accessible too! It works with JAWS, Window Eyes and VoiceOver. It is solid with Zoomtext as well. We’ve had very few issues with it. Fantastic.
hi my class loves wikispace
I’m currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Adolescent Technology and I have just been introduced to using Wikis in the classroom. I teach middle school and high school mathematics and I know Wikis has endless opportunities in my classroom. I am learning more everyday about this collaborative encyclopedia and I am very excited to use it in my instruction next year. So far, I have learned that our students will become efficient readers and writers using the web in education. “ They are using much more complex and flexible digital information by and large without any instruction on how it differs from the paper world” (Richardson, 2009, p. 5). I only graduated high school six years ago, and I can’t believe I have been teaching for two years already and haven’t utilized these advanced learning tools yet. However, I promise to continue to advance my skills that way my students will benefit from the technology that our society has to offer. Does anybody teach math? And don’t mind sharing examples how you used wikis in their classroom? I am very anxious to see how my students react and interact with wikis next year and if there is any insights or direction you can provide will be greatly appreciated. “There is no question that more and more of today’s kids are entering our classrooms having had years of ‘screentime’ and that in general, while they still may have a lot to learn about living in the digital world, they are by and large fearless in their use of technology” (Richardson, 2009, p. 6)
I have to admit, wikispace is just excellent. My class has been using wikispaces for over 2 years and have experienced hardly any issues with it. I would liek to commend the K-12 education plan as it has given us a secure and private wikispace to use. And it’s free, unlike other websites.
Keep up the good work!
2 Trackbacks
[...] as seen through educators’ (idealistic?) eyes. Adam Frey of wikispaces articulately shared their philosophy for K-12 schools and was careful to underscore the fact that every tool has its own unique model. We educators would [...]
[...] we mentioned back when the counter crossed 300,000, we’re tremendously proud of our free wikis for teachers program. It’s just one of the things over at Wikispaces that’s kept me from blogging here in [...]