Wikispaces - Introducing Wikispaces Classroom

You're receiving this email as a member of Wikispaces.com. Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser. Don't want to receive this newsletter anymore? Unsubscribe instantly. APRIL 2013 Introducing Wikispaces Classroom We're pleased to announce Wikispaces Classroom, a brand new product designed exclusively for teachers and students. Over the years, we've distilled what we do and why we do it down to the one simple thing: help teachers help students. Wikispaces Classroom takes this to a new level by focusing on simplicity, engagement, and student outcomes. Read more about our exciting new product for educators. Join our Twitter contest Tweet or share how you're using your Wikispaces Classroom site and enter to win a goodie. Just add the hashtag #wclassroom to your Tweet to enter. Wikispaces Private Label An integrated collaborative wiki environment for your school, district, or organization. Give Wikispaces Private Label a try. What's happening? Get all the latest news on features, events, and more on our blog, or follow us on Twitter. Stay in touch Have any questions? Drop us a line at help@wikispaces.com. Wikispaces News Feed and Formative Assessment We'd love to share with you two new and exciting features that come with Wikispaces Classroom. With the News Feed - and streamlined Discussions, Projects, and Events - you can easily manage your classroom and engage your students. Formative Assessment lets you track each student's contributions in real time, and support students when and where they need it. Take a look. We think you're going to love what you see. Webinars: Learn About Wikispaces Classroom Join us this month for one of our Wikispaces Classroom webinars and learn how our newest product makes it easier for you to manage your classroom and support the learning of each of your students. Wendy will run you through some of our great new features - including the News Feed, Formative Assessment, and simplified Projects - and show you how to make the most of them in your classroom. Get a head start on Wikispaces Classroom. Register today. Featured Wiki: CBCL Showcase Environmental Monitoring Moritz Lehmann started the CBCL Showcase wiki in Jan of 2013. 1. Briefly describe your group, your wiki, and what you use it to do: CBCL Limited provides excellence in engineering and related services in Atlantic Canada, headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We use wikis to set up project-specific websites serving primarily as knowledge bases, communication platforms and progress-tracking tools. This wiki is used to manage a large environmental monitoring project. We take thousands of samples per year all across the province. The wiki allows us to keep track of our progress and provides essential information to staff in the field. 2. Besides the Edit button, which wiki feature is your favorite? We love the ability to easily integrate content from services such as Google Earth and Picasa. This provides functionality and a rich experience to our users. Keep reading. A message from Adam We spend most of our time talking to and thinking about teachers. But recently we've gotten involved in a different conversation. A conversation about the education technology industry. We've always considered ourselves fortunate that we found a calling and a business model that works for us. Teachers came to us when we started Wikispaces, we figured out we could give them something they needed, and we built a great business by selling our services to the schools, districts, and universities that teachers work for. So we just focused on building great products and delivering great service and everything we've accomplished has flowed from that. In the last couple of years, investment in education technology has experienced a resurgence as people see big opportunities to disrupt a large and sometimes archaic industry. And that leads to different business models and approaches to business. People prioritize raising large amounts of money from investors, growing as big as possible as quickly as possible, generating hype and press rather than focusing on customers, and building flashy technology that fits into the latest trend rather than great products that help real people. We're trying to use what we've learned to influence the new generation of education technology entrepreneurs to think about this market the way we do. We encourage you to lend your voice to the discussion as well. There's so much opportunity in education technology, to make a real difference in people's lives, and to build successful companies that it's worth the effort. Read more in our recently published article "How to Succeed in Education Technology". What will you do with your next wiki? Good idea: Organize a field trip to the local park to bring your classroom to nature. Bad idea: Introduce nature into your classroom - it's only a matter of time until the raccoons take over. Sent by Wikispaces.com - 67 Langton St, San Francisco CA 94103 help@wikispaces.com If you no longer wish to receive this email you can unsubscribe instantly.