I've used wikispaces for the past two school years with varied success. I had no trouble setting it up using wikispaces.com, and it has been a great way to create "unit pages" for the different things I cover in both my economics and sociology classes. Two years ago I used the discussion boards a lot, but wikispaces didn't offer threaded discussions, nor any ability for me to group my "members" (students) so it was a nightmare for both collaboration and grading. The Web 2.0 tools course has helped me see that there are wiki-building tools that may remedy these issues for me and I'm going to explore them.
My wikis can be viewd at http://thorntonecon.wikispaces.com/ and at http://thorntonsoc.wikispaces.com/
When you looks at the NETS-S standards for students, wikis help to meet all the requirements, especially the way they can be utilized for collaborative research. When it comes to demonstrating research and information fluency, I can't think of a better educational tool than a wiki. And I have to admit that I feel the same way when it come to standard #2, communication and collaboration.
So much of the collaboration that happens in traditional classrooms is impeded by the bell schedule and the inability for students to meet and work outside of the classroom. Wikis eliminate these obstacles.
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