Infomation may be found here regarding Wikispaces accounts used by Hoover City Schools teachers. Tutorials, guides, handouts and more will be posted as well as infomational and notes from the 2008 Secondary Technology Conference.
Introduction to Wikispaces: Getting Started
- Logging on to Hoover Wikispaces and into teacher account
- Clicking on username/navigation between teacher account and Hoover account
- What is a Wiki
- Three types of Wikis: Public, Protected, Private. Why teacher wikis are protected
- My Account
- Changing Account settings
- Username/Password
- Help/Tutorials
- Signing Out- Please remember to sign out
Allow few minutes for adjustments and editing.
Managing Teacher Wikis (Note: teachers may have several wikis)
- Manage Space Link
- List Pages- Lists all pages in wiki
- List and Upload files- Wiki Library, upload files as .pdf files (Office 2007: File/Save As PDF
- Usage Statistics- Change the date, download CSV to see breakdown of dates- better than a counter!
- Name description and license- Name your wiki (changes name in tab), Creative Commons (What it is)
- Look and feel-
- Original or Bubble
- Colors- Suggestions- Leave link as blue and text as black or really dark color. Light background and dark font is best. (Reddish backgrounds tend to clash with blue hyperlinks)
- Logo- upload a picture to be in the top left hand corner (Note- Microsoft Picture Manager will allow users to resize pictures easily to 150 x150. Use a copywrite free image, not a stockphoto or one downloaded without permission off of the web. Microsoft Clipart does not upload easily as a logo picture.)
Allow time for editing Look/Feel of page. Also, show how to find Microsoft Picture Manager on computer and how to edit/resize picture to 150 x150.
How to Edit Teacher Wiki
- Edit Page
- Toolbar- Review all of toolbar buttons: B, I, U, A (This will be new to teachers. They will want to know about making font bigger here and allignment options), Normal Drop down, number list, bulleted list, how to hyperlink to an external page, Insert Images and files (refer back to List and Upload files), skip widget, embed table/format table, Save.
- Benefits of the Google Toolbar and Spellcheck!!!
- Wikispaces automatically saves your page as you work. You may see "Recover from Previous Draft" or "Disregard Previous Draft".
- Ways to create a new page
- New Page Link on Nav Bar
- Type in Page and highlight Hyperlink Button, create new page in wiki
- Some users have the "List of Wiki Pages"
- Benefits of "List of Wiki Pages"/Benefits of managing navigation bar without "List of Wiki Pages" Widget (Good transition to widgets)
Widgets
- A widget is a program that runs in a wiki or web-page
- Wikispaces Widgets
- Widget Warnings- Comments/Ads, monitoring widgets, choosing appropriate widgets
- Show at least one widget and show how to embed file
- Widget Suggestions-
- Do not select AutoPlay
- Turn off Comments
- Turn off Ads
Hands on time- Allow for teachers to create a Voki or Animoto and embed. Also allow for teachers to practice adding pages and editing pages.
Other really helpful wiki tools
Google account (embed SpreadSheets, GoogleVideo (private), GoogleCalendar, GoogleDocs, GoogleToolbar, Picassa Web, etc. Also, TeacherTube is good, an dotSub is Great! You can show videos with subtitles in any language with dotSub.
VoiceThread, Del.icio.us, Diigo, etc will be addressed in other sessions.
Create a folder in H:/, user drive, named "Wiki". All files for wiki may be saved there and save the user time searching for files.
Do
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Don't
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· Use common sense. If you question whether or not something is appropriate, ask your tech coach BEFORE you put it on your wiki.
· Make the space relevant to your curriculum.
· Update your space weekly or more often.
· Have fun with it, but be sure you can explain "WHY" when it comes to the content on your page...because someone may ask. Remember, parents look at these DAILY!
· Check to make sure each of your students has a signed media release form
· Respect the identity and privacy of students. Use student's first names only, but never with a picture.
· Do choose easy to read colors for your page. Light background with black font is preferred. It is recommended to stay with the default hyperlink color. Changing it may make readers miss important links on your page.
· Display pictures taken by your students and yourself of events and student work. Consider using a program such as Animoto, Picasa, Flickr or SlideShare to show a creative presentation showing your photographs.
· Create a Voki or Gcast account and put a podcast on your page. It can be you or your students.
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· Make the space about you. Remember, it's an extension of your classroom. One feature page is fine.
· Put too much personal information on your site.
· Allow students to create their own space on the Hoover domain. If they want their own wiki, direct them to wikispaces.com because it is free and easy.
· Publish photos of students who have a restricted media release form on-file with the school.
· Put student pictures AND names together, even if they tell you it is okay.
· Don't choose clashing colors that are hard to read when selecting your page background and font.
· Stay away from animated .gifs and .jpegs. They distract from the content on your page and often make web pages look less professional.
· Allow a student to put a Flickr (or other photo show) widget on your site from THEIR account (with their pictures...see the danger?). If you connect to SlideShare or some other photo site, make sure YOU control the account and REVIEW ALL OF IT.
· Put music on your space that is inappropriate in any way.
• Use widgets that include ads or allow for comments. Such widget require monitoring, and may lead visitors to inappropriate places on the web.
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Advanced Wiki Editing- Changing Wiki Theme (CSS)
To change the navigation bar you must go to "manage space"/"look and feel"/"change or make a new theme". Then you need to create new theme starting with the one that most closely resembles the one you like. When you edit your new theme you will see a CSS style sheet that you have to edit. CSS looks tricky but it is fairly simple to learn. I just changed the order for the leftcolumn. A code snip from my page is below: <!-- LEFT COLUMN -->
<div id="leftcolumn"> <!-- Logo -->
<div style="text-align: center;"><$WikiLogoOrSpaceName$></div>
<br />
<WikiUserCanView>
<!-- main menu -->
<div class="rbMenu" style="width: 140px;">
<div class="rbT">
<div></div>
</div>
<div class="rbC">
<div class="menu">
<$WikiSearch$>
<br />
<$WikiCustomNav$>
<WikiIsEditor>
<div style="text-align: center"><a href="/page/edit/space.menu" class="smgrey">edit navigation</a></div>
</WikiIsEditor>
</div>
</div>
<div class="rbB">
<div></div>
</div>
</div>
</WikiUserCanView> <!-- new page/recent changes/manage space -->
<br />
<div class="rbMenu" style="width: 140px;">
<div class="rbT">
<div></div>
</div>
<div class="rbC">
<div class="menu">
<$WikiPageMenuEntries$>
<br />
<$WikiActions$>
</div>
</div>
<div class="rbB">
<div></div>
</div>
</div> </div> <!-- /leftcolumn -->
Suzan's Del.icio.us
