What's+a+Wikispace?

What is a "wikispace" and why should we use one?
A wikispace is one flavor of a "hosted" wiki. Wikispaces is a commercial company that provides a place for people and and organizations to create wikis. Though there is a free plan that features ads on each page, Wikispaces is known for its strong K-12 focus and has granted permission for this site to be ad-free at no cost. [|Wikispaces has committed to providing over 300,000 ad-free wikispaces to K-12 teachers over the next 2 years].

A wiki is a unique type of website because of how it supports collaborative knowledge building. These features include:
 * an "edit" button so that members of the site can made additions or edits. The Wikispace page editor is similar to a word processor environment to allow for easy editing. In addition to basic text formatting, pictures, videos, and other gadgets can be embedded into pages.
 * a discussion forum to support conversations around each page.
 * a history button that allows any two versions of the page to be compared, and where a page can be "reverted" back to an earlier version when necessary.

How can I create and use a wikispace on my own?
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