Jonathan7007's dashboard

Thanks for that thought, which could help with a different kind of work product.

My need, as I understood it (I might be myopic on the potential for really different solutions...) is like the old-style teacher-writes-the-homework-on-the-board that EVERYONE will do. Like, "Read pages 42-56 in the textbook"

It's on the wiki because the few parents with web access like to see what their fifth grader is REALLY supposed to do. Kids who forget can see it again. There are few students with enough web access at home to turn in their homework "on" the wiki. But I might allow the students with access to type some homework to turn it in on a web page. Interesting. The bummer with my guys is their sloooooooow typing. It would drive them nuts.

I will try a template that has some boilerplate to speed entry. I am going to be interested to see how this links in to their Homework Directory. You see, now the kids (or I) have to type into a really long "Homework Page". It is easy to go back to the assignment from yesterday or a month ago.

Jonathan

What problems are created by using a single free e-mail account that every fifth grader enters when they sign in to contribute content? (They are not moderators, just contributors.) I seem to get the notifications of edits just as expected, although those come to different accounts (that's the subject of a different question...) none of which is the free account that they type into the log-in. (This is a public v1 education pbwiki.) I realize that at this stage I depend on the students to say honestly who they are.

I would like to find the time to create a set of pb Identity entries for everyone. There is never enough time to tackle that... or at least I haven't had a serious problem yet with this single e-mail entry method.

Jonathan

How about having the kids make a mind-map-style illustration of the site? They could do this with a wonderful tool called Kidspiration3 (www.inspiration.com) or as a drawing. It would give them an appreciation of some of the complexity and nit would easily fit into many state standards. Kidspiration is cheap. Check to see if others in your district use it because the price to a school goes WAY down when the district has bought x copies.

Rachel,
Thank you. Further thoughts: I said I was leery about template solution because I have to train everyone (all students cycle through this "job") but perhaps there is no other solution, so tell me if I have the tasks listed and ordered correctly below:
1. I create (one time) a new "Homework Listing" page as a directory for finding assignments old and new
2. at the end of each day, a student navigates to the Homework Listing page
3. Click Create New Page
4. Find the link at the bottom of the page to call existing templates
2. Call the right template
3. Type the homework (same in all scenarios,, of course, unless there is a pick list I can create for the recurring items, like the almost everyday reading assignment... that's an idea...)
4. Link to a "Homework Listing" page through the link button creating a link name that includes the date. (How will these sort themselves on the Listing page, BTW? In time order? I bet it's just text... Can I arrange to have today's date in the link string? Reliably by the hand of a ten-year-old...?)

I may have too high a target or just am too scared (lazy?) to do the necessary training. Is it a worthwhile goal to have them do this? These are not pbwiki issues, of course. I am trying to stimulate teacher discussion and shared experiences having fifth graders learn pbwiki methods. I feel that many don't have the time to go to the educator wiki although I will raise the issue there too.

Should I learn some HTML to have necessary control over page display in pbWiki?

I'm struggling with page display as a teacher with a v1 site for my class. I am beginning to experiment with tables to keep content organized and in view with different user screen resolution situations. It seems, for example to be a way to use pictures without in-line display limitations. For instance, I am trying to just get used to the way the Front page elements interact with the Sidebar screen area, because that real estate is the most-seen. It's what the newspaper folks call "above the fold".

I'm no HTML expert. I AM willing to learn some HTML if I can be sure it will "apply" to the v1 or v2 code. I see knowing some HTML as allowing me further adjustment the P&C interface is not allowing.

Will time spent learning HTML pay off with finer control or with there be lots of "gotchas"?

I don't know when I will switch to v2... probably not with this school year's class.

Jonathan

Today one of my 5th grade pullout groups was meeting in the lab. We are using a several-day-old free v1.x wiki that is private. The lock hit us in a new way: (sorry for the long message!)
1. I made a new page called "Vocabulary" and saved.
2. I navigated to and clicked on the sidebar tab of the Side Bar.
3. Clicked edit and typed the text "Vocabulary", then added "Johnny Tremain" right below the page title.
4. Opened the "Insert Link" dialog on that new sidebar page. Linked to the WikiPage named "Johnny Tremain" just made. Asked that the text of the link be "Johnny Tremain"
5. I must have saved the resulting page. Went back out to the Front Page, checked the link - it worked.
-I did this work on one of the lab computers

-Reviewed with everyone how the Side Bar worked while they sat at their computers; I assume that some of the students went to the linked "Johnny Tremain" page as I described it. Then I gathered them around one student CPU to demonstrate collaboration by taking turns editing. All others closed their wikis.
BUT-- when the student at this demonstration CPU navigated to the Vocab page for "Johnny Tremain" we were stopped by the lock message saying that one of the students had a lock and it would be available in five minutes. She said she had not been editing, and of course this may not be true, but I looked as I asked and the page was not being edited. We waited 30 seconds and it was still locked. I asked her to log off and quit her browser. She did so but the lock was not released. The message did change to tell us "4 minutes to wait." I gave up as we'd reached the end of our session.

Are there still conditions that will cause this beyond simple editing collisions? Is there sometimes a lag of several minutes before status update? Does refresh the page clear the status quickly if I think the editing "session" is now over? (This can just be an errant click on the Edit button by a student.)

I still think that having a big wiki with lots of places to edit for projects will help, but we'll have to teach the kids to self-manage some of this. Just takes longer to get to a productive state. In my community there are (relatively) more sessions in these groups all at one time as most of the kids don't have access at home.

I know I will appreciate anything pbWiki can do to help us learn teaching tactics for more productivity with the wiki in the lab setting for elementary.

Now I just wish my guys were faster typists!

Jonathan

Is this v1.x or the new v2? Are you using a free wiki or one of the premium configurations? What age is using the wiki? (which pertains to the issue of hacking...)

Moja, Susan,
This is new to me, too, and I wish it didn't act so powerfully as a showstopper. From my experience taking the class (5th) to the computer lab to work on the wiki, I know I have to create separate areas of the site for people to work on during that session. So I'll teach them to go past the pages that act as directories and do their editing on the distributed, individual areas. If two students are going to work together, it has to be arranged so that one finishes and the other is alerted to open the page for their part of the work. the editing locks really slow down the class, because some of the kids will sit and wait doing nothing while the red-lettered message is up.

So site design should help. pbWiki, we need to make it easier for educators to share. The messages with ideas are scattered throughout the Satisfaction site now. (Perhaps tag searches will help find them...)

OneNote2007 (ON2007) is an inexpensive Microsoft app that allows simultaneous editing on a page. That page can be saved as a web page for all to see after the simultaneous session. ON is less than $50 to educators. I use it as an individual so have never tried the simultaneous editing. This software is a great for teachers in general, by the way. Check it out.

Jonathan

You can use cut and paste page by page.

I would like to have an official pbWiki answer but here's my guess: No, because you have chosen not to use a "local" digital content manager like FrontPage or the new Expression, (there are others) for your web site management. Having offloaded the task to pbWiki, moving all the content at once -- or in an easy, orderly process -- is impossible.

I thought about this, too, and decided to go with the easier solution: a wiki provider. My previous WordPress blog would have been easier, but it was more centrally managed, albeit through my hosting company.

Jonathan
Teacher