User:Mackiwg/Sandbox/E-tivity boiler plate

Boiler plate

E-learning activity summary

Summary:

Start here

Stimulus resources

Purpose

Tasks

Learning outcome actions

Example

Challenge summary

Summary:	Learn and demonstrate basic wiki skills on your user page in WikiEducator
	3 hours
	Not linked to assignment but prerequisite digital skills required for authoring in the wiki

Purpose

The purpose of this learn-by-doing challenge is to:

1. Use your personal sandbox page for practising wiki edits.
2. Learn basic wiki skills for formatting text including links and images which you will need for collaborative authoring of OER learning resources in the wiki.
3. Familiarise yourself with the operations of the VisualEditor but also build a basic understanding of wikitext markup.
4. Demonstrate your skills by publishing a personal user page incorporating the text formatting features, links and image(s).

Start here

Web resources

Introduction

A wiki page has two modes:

1. The published mode - the view which a visitor to the wiki site will see; and
2. The editing mode - which you will use when editing text on the wiki.

To activate the edit mode, you will need to log in to the wiki and click on the Edit link that appears near the top of the page. There are two ways you can edit a wiki page:

1. Using the VisualEditor - accessed via the "Edit" link near the top of the page (on the right). Editing a page using the VisualEditor is easy and intuitive, but you will not be able to take full advantage of all the features of the Mediawiki software.
2. Using wikitext - accessed via the "Edit source" link (next to the "Edit" link). We recommend that you familiarise yourself with what wikitext looks like and how it works, but you don't need to learn all the markup now. However, for uploading images on WikiEducator which are not available on the Wikimedia Commons, you will need to use wikitext.

VisualEditor resources

• Wikipedia's VisualEditor user guide (WikiEducator uses the Mediawiki wiki platform - the same software which hosts Wikipedia.)

Wikitext resources

• Explaining wikitext
• Wikipedia's Cheat sheet (also available as a PDF for printing)
• Basic wikitext for uploading an image
• Tutorials for using wikitext

Tasks

1. Log in / Create account. Go to the WikiEducator signup page (If you already have an account on WikiEducator, click on the log in link in the top right corner). When creating your account we recommend that:
   • you provide an email address which you should confirm (check your inbox and spam folder for the confirmation email.)
   • you provide your real name in the corresponding field which is used to attribute your contributions in the wiki.
2. 

   Screenshot of top right area of WikiEducator page showing "Sandbox" link third from left
   Create your personal sandbox page. First be sure you are logged in to WikiEducator:
   • Click the "Sandbox" link at the very top of the page. (See image at right for help with locating the link.)
   • On the page that displays, type something in the large empty box, for example "Welcome to my Sandbox".
   • Click the "Save page" button at the bottom left of the page (below the box). Your page is now available via the "Sandbox" link at the top.
3. Publish your first edits. On your sandbox page:
   • Click on the "Edit" link (near the top of your screen) which will open the VisualEditor.
   • Type some text and apply bold and italics, for example, "Hello world! This is bold and this is italics."
   • To save your work:
     • Click on the green "Save page" button (on the far right of the toolbar).
     • In the dialogue window, type an edit summary, for example, "Practice edit" and click on the green "Save page" button (on the bottom right).
4. Practice layout features using the VisualEditor. On your sandbox page:
   • Create text with different heading levels (from the "Paragraph" pull-down menu).
   • Add Bullet lists and numbered lists.
   • Increase the indent to create sub-bullets and nest bullets within a numbered list.
5. Practice inserting links. On your sandbox page:
   • Create an external link
     • Highlight the word(s) you want to link.
     • Click on the link icon.
     • Type the full destination url, for example: http://www.oeru.org, into the dialog box (overwriting the text in the box).
   • Create an internal link to another page in WikiEducator.
     • Use the same process as for the external link, but type the name of the WikiEducator page in the box and then select it from the list of available pages.
6. Practice inserting an image from the Commons. See Wikipedia instructions for details. On your sandbox page:
   • Insert an image from the Wikimedia Commons.
   • Add a caption.
   • Use the advanced settings to practice changing the position, size and borders for your image.
7. Familiarise yourself with how wikitext works. The purpose of this task is to see how wiki markup is used to publish wiki pages - you are not required to remember all the wiki markup. It is helpful to download and print a copy of the Cheatsheet for reference. On your sandbox page:
   • Click on the "Edit source" link (next to the "Edit" link).
   • Study the text to identify the wikitext formatting. (You may find it useful to open the published view in a separate tab for easy comparison.) A major advantage of a wiki is that if you see a feature you like, it is a simple process to cut and paste the wiki markup for reuse on your own pages.
   • Try out using some wikitext to do simple formatting tasks.
8. Upload a personal image. For this task you will need a personal photograph for your user page. Note that this must be openly licensed (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA). If you don't own the copyright of the image, have a friend, colleague or family member take a photo and request them to license this openly. Publishing an image on the wiki is a two step process. First you must upload a copy of the image on the server (assuming the image does not already exist on WikiEducator). Second, you must embed the image on the page where you would like it to appear.
   • Click on the Upload file link under Tools on the left hand side of the screen which will launch an upload wizard.
   • Work sequentially through the screens completing the relevant metadata and licensing information.
     • Note that the name of your file will prefill using the filename of the image. We suggest naming the image file using a phrase which reflects the actual image.
   • Once you have uploaded the image, return to your sandbox page, and using the VisualEditor, click insert media and type in the exact words you used to name the uploaded file. (Note that if you copy and paste the name from the image's page, be sure to include the extension, e.g., ".jpg".)
   • Click on your image from among the images displayed.

Learning outcome actions

1. Prepare and publish your user page in WikiEducator. Introduce yourself to the community and share your interests. (Visit the pages of past User Page Expo recipients for ideas.) Your user page must contain the following elements demonstrating your wiki skills:
   • Bold and italics text
   • A numbered or bullet list (with indented sub-bullets)
   • Headings and subheadings
   • Web links
   • Personal photograph properly attributed with licensing information.
2. Publish a short blog post of about 150 words which links to your user page in WikiEducator where you reflect on your experience of this learning challenge. What advice can you provide for others taking the wiki skills challenge? Remember to apply the "ds4oer" tag to your post (called a label in blogger). This is needed for harvesting your post in the course feed.