327,534 Free Wikis! 5 Questions With Wikispaces
I just had a great meeting with Adam Frey and James Byers fromWikispaces. For those that aren't familiar with Wikispaces, they've given away nearly 330,000 free, advertising-free, wikis to teachers. Here's the recap of my conversation with Adam and James (note, I'm paraphrasing their responses, these are not direct quotes):1. Why give away so many free, advertising-free, wikis when it clearly represents a loss of revenue for them?
When they started Wikispaces they weren't sure who would use the tool. So they made the wikis free and eventually realized that a lot of teachers were using the service. Today, roughly 2/3 of wikis are education related. In the end they don't look at giving away wikis as a loss of revenue. Rather they view giving away the wikis as grassroots marketing. If teachers like using Wikispaces and want more features such as greater privacy controls, they or their schools can purchase a premium plan, but Wikispaces isn't going to give a "hard-sell" on that. A lot of teachers are content with the free education plans.
2. Do you have plans for adding real-time components to your service?
At this time they don't have immediate plans for releasing a real-time component. Their focus is simplicity of use and making the features that they do offer, the best they can possibly be. They don't want to fall into a situation
Educational Change Challenge
Here's a good video that would be appropriate to share at the beginning of a workshop/ presentation/ conference about teaching with technology in the 21st Century. The video has me excited about the conversations already taking place at ISTE 2010 and the conversations still to come.
Some highlights from the video:
Who seriously believes that locking 25 students in a small room with one adult for several hours each day is the
Some highlights from the video:
Who seriously believes that locking 25 students in a small room with one adult for several hours each day is the
Five Real-time Search Engines for You to Try
Today at Edubloggercon the post-lunch session was labeled as a technology apps smackdown. A smackdown is organized as a fast-paced presentation of many tools by many people. Everyone takes a turn sharing for two minutes. I came to the session late and missed out on the chance to share three real-time search engines with the audience. Real-time search engines draw their results from popular social media services like Delicious, Twitter, Aviary for Education Launches in Beta
Over the last year Aviary's suite of tools has become one of my favorite free resources on the web. This week Aviary took another step up the ranks of my list of favorite free tools. This week Aviary launched, in beta, Aviary Animated Explanations
Animated Explanations is a website for finding animated explanations of topics and concepts in the fields of health, technology, and work. The 
