Workshop schedule

Learning4Content - The "WikiEducator Gives Back" Online Workshop
(July 21, - August 4, 2010)

Another free WikiEducator Online Workshop under the Learning4Content project

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Day 1: Wednesday, Week 1

Objectives: Be bold, try an edit!

Today we will: Make an edit on your user page and introduce ourselves the wiki way Introduce Rich Text Editing (WYSIWYG) and compare this with standard wiki text; Learn about the published mode and editing mode in a wiki;

Instructions

You know what they say: You can't learn to swim without getting into the water.

The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Wayne Mackintosh.

Video Introduction for Day 1 On our first day we'll get our feet wet and make an edit in WikiEducator. Experiential learning is much more fun (when compared to doing the theory first and practising later). In this workshop we will be using a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor, which is also called Rich Text Editing (RTE). If you are new to wikis, view this short video called Wikis in plain English hosted on YouTube. Login to WikiEducator. If you don't have an account, you should create one now. Work through Tutorial 3 on the basics of rich text editing Go to your User page, click on the edit link. Type something in the edit window and save your text. (If you're lost for words -- try "Hallo world!") Please introduce yourself to the group by posting to our wiki forum. Don't be noticed by your absence! If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Remember the WikiEducator motto: Just try it. Our community will support you!

Day 2: Thursday, Week 1

Objectives: If all else fails, read the instructions

Today, we will: Provide an overview of what wikis are, and show some examples of their different uses. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using wikis to develop content in the wiki, and introduce the main features of WikiEducator.

The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Wayne Mackintosh.

Video Introduction for Day 2 Today we continue our journey of discovery into the amazing world of wikis. As a WikiNeighbours we extend a warm welcome to all workshop participants in joining our wiki neighbourhood. Our teaching approach is designed to give new participants the space and time familiarise themselves in their new community neighbourhood through a process of self discovery. Please meet your fellow participants in the wiki introduction forum. If you haven't had chance yet -- do introduce yourself. Don't be noticed by your absence! If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Work through the Instructions for Day 2 below.

Instructions for Day 2

Today we'll learn a little more about what wiki's are and how they work. You will also have an opportunity join our wiki discussion on the quality of open authoring approaches.

1. If you haven't had a chance yet, watch the short video called Wikis in plain English hosted on YouTube -- a great resource which explains the features of a wiki.
2. Read through WikiEducator's tutorial on What is a wiki?
3. Post your thoughts, ideas and feedback on the quality of open authoring approaches here.
4. If you didn't get a chance yesterday, please introduce yourself to the group by posting to our wiki forum. Don't be noticed by your absence!
5. If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Remember the WikiEducator motto: Just try it. Our community will support you!

Day 3: Friday, Week 1

Objectives: Personalizing your preferences and new user survey

Today we will: Point out the benefits and added features you get with registering a user account on WikiEducator Create an account on WikiEducator. Provide step-by-step instructions on how to personalize your user account preferences. Learn about WikiEducator and the OER Foundation.

The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Wayne Mackintosh.

Video Introduction for Day 3 Today you will learn how to configure WikiEducator according to your personal preferences Consider the benefits packaged with your user account in WikiEducator Today's activities continue our orientation work in familiarising yourself with the WikiEducator environment through a process of guided self-discovery. If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Work through the Instructions for Day 3 below.

Instructions for Day 3

Day 3 is a relaxed and easy session. There are no online discussion activities for today - so you will have time to catch up on the posts for Day 1 and Day 2 if you've fallen a little behind. If you get stuck or have any questions -- feel free to post these in the wiki discussion forum.

1. Work through the instructions on how to personalize your own Wikieducator preferences, especially item No. 10 on setting your email notification preferences.
2. You can specify your default preference for enabling the Rich Editor
3. Visit the following Wikieducator portal pages:
   • OERNZ -- our national Kiwi OER collaboration.
   • Download and a copy of the latest issues of OERNZ News and find out what we've been doing.
   • OER Foundation
4. Help WikiEducator keep track of the demographics of our community by completing this short online survey. I'll post a copy of our survey stats in a few days for those who are interested.

Day 4: Monday, Week 2

Objectives: Day 4 - Achieving your first WikiEducator certification!

Today we will: Create a personal practice page in the wiki Learn how to Bold and Italicise text, add Headings and Subheadings; Learn how to add bullets and numbered lists. Achieve your first certification under our WikiMaster typology

Now we're going to start having fun and you could achieve your first WikiEducator certification! If you’re a little behind, don’t worry….just take it one step at a time as it's easy enough to catch up on the first 3 day's work. We know that you are busy with other competing demands -- but WE are here to help!

The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Wayne Mackintosh.

Video Introduction for Day 4 Now that you are familiar with your new wiki neighbourhood, we will learning about basic text formatting in the wiki. Three points to think about: Let's have a little fun during the course -- Who will achieve the accolade for the most edits during this workshop? A dedicated practice area will ensure that you can try things out without worrying about inadvertently changing any pages. In this way you can build confidence before working collaboratively with other authors in the wiki. The best way to learn is to develop something in the wiki related to your real-life working environment. If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Work through the Instructions for Day 4 below.

Editing on WikiEducator

Have you managed to complete your first edit on your User page? It’s the page that has your User Name – it’s always on the top right of your screen, with a little icon which appears after you have logged in. For some folks, WikiEducator may be 1st website where you have published on the Internet -- celebrate your achievement!

Instructions for Day 4

Today we are moving onto the basics of wiki editing, that is formatting text (bold, italics, lists etc). We are also interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas for the content resource you are planning to develop under your learning contract. This will be our discussion activity for today.

1. Create a sandbox and practice your skills: Read through the activity to create your Sandbox. You can also view the screen cast movie which will show you how to do this. If you get stuck -- let us know by posting your question in the discussion forum. We are here to help.
2. Work through the Tutorial using your sandbox to practice text formatting.
3. Go to your User page start filling out your page. Be sure to include bold, italics, headings and lists on your page so you can qualify for your first WikiEducator community certification :-).
   

Identify a wiki project to practice your skills and give the gift of knowledge

Reflection OERNZ aims to nurture and support a thriving community of Kiwi educators collaborating on the development OER teaching materials which we are free to reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix without restriction. Imagine having a repository of free digital teaching materials available for all levels and learning outcomes of the New Zealand curriculum. Imagine that these resources were available in open formats which you are free to adapt for your own context and integrate into your local learning management system. Imagine a community of educators sharing their experiences and best practices in the use of these free teaching materials. This is what OERNZ is doing and we need your help. How long would it take to build a national repository of OER in support of the New Zealand curriculum if every Kiwi teacher could gift the time to develop one OER for the subject or area they teach? The purpose of this insert is to help generate ideas for you to give the gift of knowledge for our national OER repository. View the two videos inserts (on the right) prepared by Albany Senior High School introducing some of their OERNZ projects. Perhaps you would like to collaborate on one of these projects, or their work may inspire your own creativity to start a project of your own. You may want to start a free OER portal page for your school -- its very easy to set up and a great way to facilitate collaboration among fellow teachers at your school. Consult these ideas for reusable and portable teaching materials. Consider submitting an expression of interest for a bounty/honorarium to develop an OER resource for sharing among teachers in New Zealand. Perhaps you have existing teaching materials or lesson plans you have created that you would like to donate and share with the OERNZ project. You can use the online file conversion facility to convert existing documents into wiki text format. Other ideas? Tell us about the content resource you will like to develop to practice your new wiki skills. We are here to help you and provide advice and support in making OER future happen for New Zealand.

Mark Osborne, Deputy Principal at Albany Senior High School highlights a few of their WikiEducator projects. The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Mark Osborne, ASHS. Student from Albany Senior High School, Auckland talks about his work in WikiEducator. The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Mark Osborne, ASHS.

Day 5: Tuesday, Week 2

Objectives: Day 5 - New pages and links

Today we will: Provide an overview of the structure of a wiki; Create internal and external links; Demonstrate how to create a new page; Explain the difference between red and blue internal page links in the published view; Create and edit descriptive labels for your links.

The Blip.tv service shut down in August, 2015, so this copy of the video is no longer available. Wayne Mackintosh.

Video Introduction for Day 5 Today we focus on creating links, the next step in working towards your 2nd wiki certification. Tip: Remember to distinguish between: External links to other websites and Internal links to other pages in WikiEducator. (Note, that this is also the way we create new pages in the wiki. A new page (red link in the published view) is an internal link to a page which doesn't not exist yet <smile>. Not to worry -- you'll see how this works! If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Work through the Instructions for Day 4 below.

Instructions for Day 4

1. Work through Tutorial 5 on New pages and Links
2. Be sure to check out the requirements for community certification under our WikiMaster typology. You're on track to achieving the status of Wikibuddy in our community!

Day 6: Wednesday, Week 2

Objectives: Images and your 2nd wiki certification!

Today we will: Alert users to copyright requirements and show you how to find appropriately license free content images; Demonstrate three methods for adding images to your pages; provide an overview of more detailed image formatting options (including placement, frames, thumbs, captions, size etc); practice uploading images into our sandbox and User pages;

After completing the tutorial on images, you will have all the skills you need to develop an impressive user page as well as achieving the certification of a Level 2 WikiApprentice! You should also spend a little time refining the text and layout on your user page. Be sure to include the layout features you have learned so far. That is bold, italics, headings, lists, internal and external links with descriptive names. (Tutorials 2, 4 & 5).

Let's see who will develop the best User page over today and tomorrow. Perhaps one of the participants in this group will become a future recipient of the WikiEducator User Page Expo.

Instructions

1. Work through Tutorial 6 on images.
2. Practice manipulating the placement, size and using captions for your images in your sandbox.
3. Work on improving your User page -- don't forget to include a photograph of yourself using your new skills on inserting images!

Day 7: Thursday, Week 2

Objectives: Day 8 - Collaborative Editing

Today we will: Introduce the practice of Wiki ethics, explore the Recent changes page and see how we can monitor all edits in WikiEducator, take a look at the diff & history links, and learn how to Revert a page to previous versions.

Many educators are concerned about the openness of wiki editing. However, a wiki is a powerful technology designed for mass collaboration. Every edit is recorded, as well as any images uploaded to the site which means we can restore or revert any changes made to a page.

A side note for anyone who may have fallen a little behind, don't give up, the finishing line is in sight! Besides, today is a little more relaxed so use this time to catch up on images. To be fair, images are perhaps the most complicated aspect in the wiki because it involves uploading files to the WikiEducator server. Once you have mastered images you are well on your way to achieving success!

Instructions

1. Today, you should work through Tutorial 7 on collaborative editing where you will learn a few neat tricks on how to monitor activity in the wiki;
2. You will also learn how to revert an edit which you should practise on your user page.

We're looking forward to our next assignment next assignment where we will use one of our communication tools in the wiki. Please do your best to update your user page today as we will ask participants from this group to provide feedback and suggestions on our respective user pages in the wiki using these communication tools.

Day 8, Friday, Week 2

Objectives: Day 8 - Communication and Interaction

Today we will: Learn how we use the Discussion or Talk pages in the wiki, and explore some useful features like the Watchlist, and the My Contributions link.

Is there an easy way to monitor changes to pages you edit? How do we keep track of individual contributions made in the wiki? Today we will learn and experiment with a few powerful features in the wiki.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Work through Tutorial 8 on Communication and Interaction Tools (see link below)
2. Test the feature of adding a discussion item which relates to a content page in the wiki. See the discussion activity linked to the talk page of our course schedule (this page). You can also access the corresponding talk page by clicking on the "Discussion" tab you see at the top the page in your browser.
3. Leave a personal message on the User page of at least three different participants who have started working on their user pages. To do this -- you need to go to the respective User Page by clicking on a blue coloured link under the surname of our participant list. Then click on the "Discussion" tab of the User page concerned (top of the page). Comment on something positive you have seen on User Page, particularly if you have some ideas for improvement. If you're do receive a message from one of the participants -- send a reply to by clicking on their User Name which is displayed in the automatic signature below the message.

Have fun -- this is a great way to communicate with your fellow WikiEducators!

Day 9, Monday, Week 3

Objectives: Day 9 - Working offline and uploading teaching materials

Today we will: Consider options for preparing teaching materials offline Learn how to upload and convert documents saved using your word processor.

In cases where you do not have a reliable or fast Internet connection you may decide to work offline. You may also have a number of lesson plans and teaching materials which you want to convert into wiki format for sharing with other teachers. Today we will test two alternatives for converting and uploading existing documents on WikiEducator.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Converting an existing document
   • Under the toolbox on the left hand side of your screen, click on the link called OOConvertor
   • Follow the instructions on screen to upload a file from your machine, eg .doc or .odt. (Note: that you should save Microsoft .docx files in the older .doc format.)
   • Select the appropriate license (for example CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) to confirm the permissions for teachers to reuse, adapt, modify and share teaching materials.
   • This web service will convert the file into wiki format and create a new page as a subpage of your Username. You will also receive an email notification when the document is converted. You will now be able to copy this text to any page in the wiki.
   • Note that you will need to upload images separately.
   • It is good practice to use styles for specifying different heading levels in the source document.
2. Working offline
   • It is possible to work offline and save your work in Mediawiki text format. To do this you will need a copy of the OpenOffice word processor (Free and Open Source Software.)
   • Work through the tutorial demonstrating how to edit using Open Office.