Introduction Goals for Today Beyond Today Getting Started Class Pages Useful Links

Introduction

 

Welcome to your main page.  From here, you can access everything you need to help you in class.

 

Goals for Today

 

At the end of the afternoon, you will have

• examined the potential for integrating a wiki into your instruction by
  • viewing samples of student wikis and personal pages of mine
  • learning some editing tricks for using a wiki
  • making one or more wiki pages of your own
• learned simple techniques to generate exercises that students can use online or from the school server, in particular
  • Spellmaster
  • Hot Potatoes

 

Beyond Today

 

I can help you to do any of the following:

• obtain your own wiki at pbworks instead of piggy-backing on mine
• set up accounts for your students to begin safe, online collaboration
• obtain a website of your own where you might prefer to upload exercises
• obtain a domain name of your own (all of your names are currently available in one form or another)
• place exercises on the school server that students can access at MHS, but not outside school

 

Getting Started

 

"The best place to begin is at the beginning."

--Glinda the Good

Image from Wikipedia under Fair Use guidelines

(NOTE: Make sure that anything you upload is yours or counts as fair use under educational purposes.)

 

Q: What can I do with a wiki?

A: I have used a wiki at various points for three things:

• a daily assignment page (it is possible to include a calendar or make documents, PowerPoints, tables direct accessible from the wiki)
• a student collaboration site
• to store exercises I have created for student access (see below)

 

Q: How do I do stuff in a wiki?

A: Time to go play in your sandbox.  Just click on your personalized sandbox to begin.  Select "Edit" when it opens up and go to work.  When you have finished, come back to this page to experiment further.

AbneySandbox 

 

Q: How did I add a Table of Contents to this page?

A: When in edit mode, click on "Insert Plugin" (top right).

• You will find the Table of Contents option under "Page Information."
• Three levels of depth is about right.
• Click "OK."
• Anything you make a Heading (in the "Format" window) will appear in the TOC.  Anything typed in Normal will not.
• When you save a page, you will have a TOC.

 

Q: How do I create a new page?

A: While in edit mode, highlight a premade class heading in the next section.

• Click on the globe with the chain links (top row) in the edit headings.
• It is best to make the page names one blob word.  In the old wiki style that meant you would capitalize anything relevant and write it as one big word, which is what I have done here.
• Since you may not be the only teacher using this resource, be sure to make any page names distinctive.
• When you have finished with the name, click "OK."
• Repeat for all the other pages.
• When you save this page, you will find that the class names are now hyperlinked.  Click on them to begin.
• Be sure to place them in your personal folder.  (I've made it for you.)

 

Class Pages

 

AbneyLatin1

AbneyLatin2

AbneyLatin3

AbneyLatinAP

AbneyChinese

 

Useful Links

 

To complete today's activities, you need something to put onto your pages.  Please use these links.  I can verify that they are harmless to your computer and that no one misuses any information.

 

Spellmaster (The Spellmaster site is currently being modified.  Let's hope this means there's a new version coming out with improved features.)  In the meantime, I have uploaded the files to this site.

 

1. To the right you will find a tab "Navigator."

• Search on this tab until you find the folder called "game_files."
• Create a folder on your Desktop or My Documents with the same name.
• Open my game_files folder.
• Right click on all the files.
• Left click on "Save target as."
• Save each file to your own game_files folder.

2.  Spellmaster allows you to create several types of games by only changing one file, the "words" file.

• Click on each of the e files in the games_folder to see what kinds of games you can play with Spellmaster.
• All you have to do to create new games is open and edit "words."
• The trick is that you must then rename each folder (if you kept uploading "game_files," you would continually erase the previous set of activities).
• Although what students will use is the e file, both it and its master file must be uploaded along with the words list for the activity to function.

 

HotPotatoesDownload

(I'd recommend saving to your "Desktop," then running the installation as directed.)

 

To learn a little today what Hot Potatoes can do for you, you will need to download some files from this worksite to your own computer.

1.   To the right you will find a tab "Navigator."

• Search on this tab until you find the folder called "HotPotatoes."
• Create a folder on your Desktop or in My Documents that has the same name.
• Open my HotPotatoes folder.
• Right click on all the files.
• Left click on "Save target as."
• Save each file to your own HotPotatoes folder.

2.   We are going to do some "reverse engineering."

• Each Hot Potatoes exercise needs three things:
  • a configuration file (extension: cfg) to tell the exercise how to appear and how it should react to a user (this is created within the main file, but stored separately).
  • the main file with a funky extension that contains the data you want to turn into an exercise.
  • the HTM file generated when you save the main file as a "6" file (this is the file you will ultimately use for the exercise).
• Today you will learn to make simple matching exercises by taking apart what I have already made.   Go to your HotPotatoes folder.
  • Click the e exercise file titled "matching-2eier-dropdown" to see one version of a matching exercise.  Play around with it.
  • Click the e exercise file titled "matching-2eier" to see a more sophisticated drag-and-drop exercise.  Play with the activity.
  • Both were generated from the same main file, which is a green matching file titled "matching-2eier" in your HotPotatoes folder.  Now click on it.
    • I just clicked on the two different "6's" to create two types of finished products (each e file must have a different name) from the main file.
  • All you have to do to make your own exercise is replace my data with yours and resave with a new name by clicking on the diskette icon with the ? on it.
    • To change the appearance of the exercise, the directions, or other features, click on "Options," then "Configure Output."
    • It is a good idea to save each configuration file with a different name.
  • When you have entered your data and set your appearance as you wish, click on one or the other of the "6" icons.
    • Follow the directions and say that you do want to view the exercise in your browser.  This is where you proofread your work.