Peanut Butter wiki

Just came across this Peanut Butter Wiki tool–a password protected wiki–which could be useful in some courses where resources sharing is desired but spam isn’t. I’ve used wikis in the past in this way (inside the WebCT shell), but encountered havoc when the instructor wondered why one of the pages was full of porn links. Of course, this gets cleaned up pretty quickly here at UBC, thanks to the wonderful wiki support we get here, but Peanut Butter wiki could achieve the same goals–getting students to share and contribute resources–in the same way, without that opportunity for temporary chaos.

It can be set up in about 1 minute, and then the one password could be distributed to the whole class. I also like how it can be set up to be private or public.

You can play with the test wiki that I’ve set up Dentistry wiki here.
Use ‘dentistry’ (all lower case, no apostrophes) as the password.

To set your own up, you just need to do the following:

1. Go to http://pbwiki.com/
2. Fill in the 2 blanks and wait for password to be emailed to you (30 seconds).
3. Go to your page and plug in the password. Since it is a bit cryptic, I would recommend changing it right away, using the instructions provided.
4. Click around and learn by doing, or, if you prefer not to fumble, visit the WikiStyles page that is provided.
5. Share the link and password with your students.

If you’re curious to know more about wikis, I’d suggest this great little article that Brian Lamb wrote for the E-strategy newsletter.