Looking into Wikis

I've been looking into different wiki hosts to determine which is the best to host a school wiki project. I've looked at wetpaint, wikia, pbwiki and a few others. I'm pursuing wikia right now. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

things to consider.

Privacy- being able to have only your students edit the wiki.

Citing sources- there needs to be a way for students to cite their sources.

Student tracking- teachers need to be able to track student progress to avoid a small group of student doing all the work while the rest add a word here and there. Also a comprehensive way to grade students based on there contributions.

My initial thought is to have the student maintain a wikipage for themselves posting everything twice. Once in the general wiki space with initials and number (acting as a source link) example: (ER12) and this be a link to their personal pages where they are required to post each entry they make (not including comments and questions to teachers and other students)



Example

Chinese innovation

Four great invention of ancient china were paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing. (ER21)

The (ER21) will hyperlink to...

Ed Rice's Contributions page.

21. (this number will hyper link to the actual entry in the general wiki)
Four great invention of ancient china were paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
Anyi, He. "Chinese Inventions." China.Org.Cn. 07 Dec. 2007. 15 Jan. 2008 http://www.china.org.cn/english/culture/234465.htm.

this way a teacher can pull up a student page and see what contributions have made and it's an easy place to grade from.
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