Hackpad - A Simple Wiki Platform

Hackpad is a new, simple wiki service that I learned about from one of Jackie Gerstein's Tweets earlier this week. People who have used services like TitanPad or PrimaryPad will notice a lot of similarities in the user interface between those services and Hackpad.

At the simplest level Hackpad can be used for collaborative note-taking and writing outlines. Beyond that Hackpad allows you to include video and images by simply copying and pasting links into the document that you're working on. If you have Dropbox files that you want to link to, you can do that on Hackpad too. The layout options on Hackpad are very limited, but you can create a table of contents with links in the margins of your Hackpad page. To organize all of the Hackpads that you participate in, you can create a Hackpad collection in your account.

There are two sharing options for your Hackpad pages. You can make the pages public and open to everyone with the link or the pages can be private and viewable only to the people you invite. Joining Hackpad can be accomplished by using your Google account, your Facebook account, or by creating a Hackpad-specific account.

Applications for Education
Hackpad's tag line is "the best wiki ever." I'm not sure that it's the best wiki ever, I'm still partial to Wikispaces, but Hackpad is quite nice. If you're looking for a clean, simple platform for your students to use to create outlines together, share notes, or build reference pages, Hackpad is definitely worth giving a good look.

Almost Everything You Need to Know About Wikispaces

If there is such a thing as an "old reliable" resource in the world of ed tech, Wikispaces qualifies. I've been using Wikispaces for various purposes and recommending it to others since I started this blog. Over the years I've created screencast videos about how to use it, created slideshows about how to use it, and linked to other educators' tutorials on it. But until very recently, Wikispaces didn't have its own YouTube Channel dedicated to showing you how to use the features they offer.

The Wikispaces YouTube channel contains 25 screencast videos created by Wikispaces to show you how to utilize some of their useful features. Below I've embedded their introductory video and their video on creating an educational wiki.





Learn more about the new Wikispaces YouTube channel on the Wikispaces Blog.

New Drag and Drop File Uploads in Wikispaces

The popular wiki-building service Wikispaces recently made an handy enhancement to their user interface. The new feature is the option to upload files by simply dragging them from your desktop to the wiki you're working on. I've included two screenshots of the process below.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Applications for Education
The addition of drag and drop uploads doesn't revolutionize the way that you and your students create wikis or what you do with them, but it is still a helpful little enhancement.

If you're looking for ideas about assessing student use of wikis, check out these rubrics from the University of Wisconsin.