Tech in the Classroom: PB Works

This is part of a series of reviews of websites, platforms, and social media sites. Some are useful for teachers in a SMART classroom (with a teacher-station computer, internet connection, and projector). Others lend themselves more to a lab where each student has her own computer. Hopefully these can help us communicate with our students, present information effectively, and encourage collaboration, feedback, and active participation. See our previous review of Wordpress and Facebook.

Here's a review of the very first content management platform I ever used: PB Works. 




In technology age, four years seems like a lifetime. In 2009, I was completely new to wikis, class  webpages, and SMART classrooms in general. Long before I knew anything about managing a course website, a friend recommended PB Works (formerly PB WIki) for my class, so I went with it then. This is a great resource for student-led collaboration on projects. I wouldn't use it again for presenting class information, but I would definitely use it for student projects.

Link to the free PB Works Classroom Edition: http://pbworks.com/pbworks-classroom-editionhttp://pbworks.com/pbworks-classroom-edition

Here's the page I created for several of my writing classes at Southwestern Illinois College.

(http://rhetorswic.pbworks.com/w/page/8592209/FrontPage)

Homepage
You can see a main section that takes up about 3/4 of the page, and a sidebar on the right. Since this is meant as a wiki workspace, you can see all the usually hidden dashboard all the time. All users are administrators with full access to edit, add to, and delete content.


Here's the front page for my MW English 101 class:

On this homepage, I kept an archive of all previous classes. Since you can create unlimited pages on one web address, I just kept adding class pages to the archive list on the front page.

Here is the course page for a weekly English 101 course. You can see each class day had it's own link and page--with an agenda, activity, writing prompt, etc. Also, in the right column, I created a personal page for each student. They drafted, revised, and peer reviewed directly on their own wiki page.

And here is a student's wiki page. He was working on a revision of the Wikipedia page on Art Therapy. He had copied/pasted the wikipedia text, and was editing it here. You can see we were working on the Paramedic Method.

Pros:

• Individual student wiki pages. Drafting, revising, editing, and peer reviewing was a breeze
• Privacy. Page can be locked and all students made password carrying members.
• Log in. Students' work was easy to keep track of because everything was tracked under their log in name. You can also view each student's work collectively by viewing their account--makes final grades easy to double-check.
• Comments. Students actually took quizzes on this site by filling in a comment box on a quiz page. They couldn't see any other comments until they had submitted their own. Also, students could comment on each others' pages in addition to making changes directly on each others' text--which they sometimes felt more comfortable doing.
• Unlimited pages.
• Ability to upload files to a media library, and link to them from any page.
• Page never hung up, stalled, or crashed, even with 25 students commenting at once.
• Dashboard. Easy to navigate and intuit.

Cons:

• Overall design. It's a little busy with all the menus showing all the time.
• No blog feature. I had to either create a new page for each class's content, or keep one long running page.
• No individual privacy setting. You can't post grades on this site because they will be visible to everyone.

Overall:

• I would recommend this as a project site, but not a course management system. For a research paper or group project, PB Works would encourage collaboration and invention.