I am happy to hear that Wetpaint is now offering ad-free spaces for education. I have played with Wetpaint and do like the features / templates, but until now Wikispaces was where I (and staff/students at my school) resided simply due to it’s ad-free program for educators. It was simply an option that carried too much weight.

My workshop on wikis at the Laptop Institute in Memphis is five weeks away…now I’ll have to have another look at the Wetpaint version. Darn you for making more work for me Utecht!!! LOL

Cheers my friend,
Whip

It will be a new adventure…..one I’m excited about with endless possibilities.

Don’t get to disappointed. My “full time job” is working for the International School of Bangkok next year in Thailand so hopefully we can hook up for some collaboration.

For me this is the best of both worlds, working at a school who understands that need for technology people to have PD time of their own to learn and explore which ISB is allowing me to do, and partnering with a company like Wetpaint as part of the PD for myself as I help others learn about their product and use it in the classroom.

So one foot in the school one foot out of the school. We’ll see how this goes next year and if I can balance the two. Still being tied to a school and to students is important to me…keeps my head out of the clouds and my feet on the ground where real change happens.

My first reaction to your move was disappointment, as I have been following your blog for some time now, and have been inspired by the expertise you have displayed in incorporating ICT and Web 2.0 in school. I was also trying to plan a way of collaborating with your students/classes in some way, as I am at a school which enrols Chinese nationals.

Then I realised how important it is to have an educator on board with the development of Web 2.0 tools such as WetPaint (which I have used) – to enable best practice examples for others to be shown to new users, and to help in their development.

Look forward to following your future posts, and I hope to be less tardy in setting up a link to international users from now on.

I hope to soon open a ‘sand box’ for educators to play with Wetpaint before they have to create an account. As soon as I have that up and running I’ll post about it.

In the mean time, let me know how I can help!

Jeff

Good Luck on finding your “different”. Don’t be afraid to dream about the possibilities that are out there. We talk all the time about teaching the wonder, excitement, and curiosity out of our students. But we as adults are many times the same. We allow “life” to get to us and we quit dreaming…quit reinventing ourselves, and that’s when you fall into the trap of life.

When I quit my job I was excited (wife was a little freaked) but it allowed me to dream. I contacted every company that I thought it would be cool to work for wanting to try something outside of education. I have been ‘in’ education since I was 6 years old….and there is a strong part of me that believes that is not a good thing.

Get out of the box, allow your PLN to help you and explore the possibilities…the digital world has opened up so many!

Let me know how I can help!

It should be a fun adventure and I’ll see if I can find some information that compares the different wiki services.

I see that Michael has already responded to you but just wanted to point you and others to the wikis in education wiki.

http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com

There you can find more information on who is eligible for ad-free wikis…and yes all higher-ed wikis that deal directly with education qualify!

w00t!