Google does wikis

Jotspot was a hosted wiki service, similar to wikispaces or pbwiki or wetpaint, that was purchased by Google in October of 2006. There was some anticipation of a Google wiki service which finally appeared rebranded as Google Sites a few months ago as part of the Google Apps suite. Google just announced that they have set Google Sites free so that anyone with a Google Account, can set one up. So I created one called Technologies for Learning and Teaching.It looks like a pretty feature rich wiki. The WYSIWYG editor looks similar to the one in Google Docs. Images and videos can be inserted, as can content from other Google services like Google calendar, Google Docs, spreadsheets, and presentations. There is a menu item for inserting a form. I haven’t tried it yet, but that sounds like an excellent way to create a web page for surveying or simple assessments. And it seems to have the nice collaborability (I just made that word up, by the way – do you like it?) that are found in other Google tools. You can invite people to view or collaborate on the site, or to be a site owner. I have no idea exactly what that means, but I would guess that it allows to add someone else who can edit site settings.

If you’ve used Google Pages, Google Sites seems like the grown up version. I’ll probably end up using this with some classes, or show it to other teachers who might be interested.

</googlefanboy >