Monday, March 7, 2011

No adverts on Wikispaces for higher education

One of my favourite wiki platforms is Wikispaces which I use for my ePortfolio and facilitating collaborative projects such as the Virtual International Day of the Midwife. However, the problem with many wiki platforms is they run adverts, which is not desirable when you are using them for education purposes. But the only way to get rid of the adverts has been to pay for ad-free functions.

For some time, Wikispaces has provided ad-free wiki to K12 educators but not for higher education. But I have just heard via Steve Hargadon that Wikispaces is now providing ad-free wiki to higher education - this will save you 50$US per year. It will also allow you to set up private wiki.

I am really pleased that Wikispaces has done this because I think is so much easier to use, especially compared to the wiki inside BlackBoard which I am currently using with students and staff.


Image: 'Magic! between the trees'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8264376@N03/2984569992

5 comments:

Carolyn said...

Wetpaint have provided advertisement free wikis for educators for a while now Sarah. It too is an easy to use format. I have my Eportfolio there and chose it particularly because of its ad free status. As an educator I could also have acquired ad free wikis for my students. However my E portfolio has never really taken off in the way yours has. This is nothing to do with the website and more to do with my lack of time and energy for it.

Sarah Stewart said...

and of course, Wikieducator has never had adverts :)

Lee said...

This is giving me some great ideas already. I had set up a network on ning ahead of some research next year but then they started to charge - currently looking for and evaluating alternatives. Thanks both :-)

Sarah Stewart said...

@Lee What research are you planning?

David said...

You may also want to consider creating a different kind of webpage for certain projects that includes features for requesting, scheduling, and managing specific assistance, along with the usual media sharing, discussion forums, and privacy options. These differences can really help with organizing action and encouraging collaborative engagement. I recommend looking at http://www.LifeEventNet.com because it is free and ad-free, can be totally private or public, and has a terrific set of canned features.