Great resource
Hi Hamish,
What a wonderful new resource. I'm part of the team that works on MathGloss, so I recognised the purpose and structure of this resource right away. I'm so glad that you have taken the initiative to get this going.
One of the areas of WikiEducator that I've been working on is categorisation (see our project pages at Workgroup:Categories. (Some basics about categories is available at Help:Category.) Although the content infobox template has suggested a few categories (in red at the bottom of the page) I don't think these are very useful.
Rather, I think the best approach is to categorise all of the litgloss pages into their own category, maybe something like Category:English language techniques glossary (although a shorter name, but one that adequately describes the purpose of the glossary, would be better). The result will be a category page that lists all of the existing litgloss pages.
Then we can categorise the new litgloss category to be a subcategory of Category:Glossary and Category:English. (Or maybe a better parent category would be Category:English literature, which could then be made a subcategory in Category:English.) I'd also suggest categorising into Category:OERNZ Secondary school and maybe Albany high school should have have its own category to which you could add this resource.
I recategorised mathgloss recently -- see Category: Math glossary. I added the following code to Template:MathGloss (the project's navigator):
<includeonly>[[Category:Math glossary|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]</includeonly>
<noinclude>[[Category:Math glossary|τ]]</noinclude>
The section after the pipe is a sort key that specifies the order of the category listing. The first listing is transcluded into the math gloss pages (causing each page to be sorted according to its subpage name). The second listing categorises the template page into the category under the Greek letter tau.
So, I'm suggesting that something similar be implemented for litgloss. What do you think? I'm happy to do the categorisation, but wanted to discuss the approach first before jumping in and doing it. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Regards, Alison
Hi Alison,
Thanks for the information on categories, It sounds like an excellent idea. I had a go at tweaking the markup for the language techniques glossary, I was glad the transclusion meant I didn't have to add the category manually to each page! It seems to be working OK for the alphabetical listing pages but the first entry that has been added under "Alliteration" doesn't come up on the category listing page for "language techniques glossary." If you could tell me how to fix that or just jump in and make the changes yourself I'd be stoked. :)
Cheers, Hamish
Hamish,
Glad you liked the idea of a category (especially how easy it is to make using transclusion from the navigator).
I forgot to say that you can sort the main page to the top of the listing by using a 'space' sort key. I see you figured that out. Looks great.
I'm completely mystified as to why Alliteration is not showing up. I did a test by adding the navigator to a B page (Back light) and that one works fine. My understanding is that transclusions are done on a scheduled basis (I think I read it somewhere on wikipedia), so it could be that the Alliteration page just hasn't been *run* yet. I've also had a situation where certain code interferes with the operation of the page (see this discussion thread, so something like that could be happening. Let's keep an eye on it. If it doesn't just turn up all on its own, we'll have to be more clever (or just observant) in our search to find the trail of clues.
It's getting late here in New Jersey, USA. I'll check back tomorrow.
Alison
We've waited long enough...Alliteration has definitely gone astray. I added Acronym, by copying the code from Alliteration, with a few revisions (you'll have to fix it up). Acronym is listed and still no Alliteration.
So I posted to the WikiEducator Google list asking for the tech members to take a look. They've passed the problem on to the Tech Group. Rob Kruhlak said that he'd "seen similar strange behaviour that had persisted for over a month."
Hopefully someday Alliteration will turn up.
Alison
Thanks Alison. That's awesome. Hopefully someone will be able to tell us why it's not coming up correctly. Either that or, like you say, perhaps it will just magically show up on it's own! I expect that having most of the rest of the entries categorised will be a big help.
Hamish,
Not sure how it happened, but I noticed that the Alliteration page is now displayed in the category. Don't know how it got fixed, but I did post a note of thanks to our Tech Group. Our work is done here, and all we did was wait :).
Good luck with the glossary.
Alison
Ace! I love it when things fix themselves. Thanks for the help with this Alison.
Mark Osborne tells me we can now embed sound and video files too. Time to get some example shots for the film techniques added, awesome! Hoping to get some students here contributing to the litgloss next term too.
I think it fixed itself. Agree, it's wonderful that we can easily add video.
Great idea to get your students involved. I'm thinking along the same lines. I teach an intro stats class. They will be doing a pretty open-ended class project at the end of the year (starting in about a month). A few weeks ago, I showed them the film A vision of students today, by Michael Wesch and his spring 2007 students. In our discussion afterwards, I suggested that a good way to combat the irrelevancy of education today is for students to help generate the content, So, one option for a final project is to leave a legacy, that is, create something to help others learn statistics (a lab, an applet, video explanations...).
We now have the option to use the Rich Editor for editing purposes. I think many digital natives would find this pretty intuitive and might not even need much training. But there is training available, WikiEducator Rich Text Editor Tutorials, if needed.
Alison
