Tips

Tips
A few tips and tricks that may help in making wiki pages for your learners.

1. Pictures Google images is a good source for extra illustrations. Try typing the English word plus clipart (minotaur clipart).

2. Text If you are copying and pasting from a Word document or webpage into a wiki page, copy your text into WordPad (TextEdit) first to remove formatting which may cause problems.

3. Audacity If you make a mistake in recording, you can keep the recording going, just stop talking for a few seconds, then begin again. You will see the 'dead air' in your recording after and be able to edit out the error.

If you do stop or pause a recording, and want to restart, it is often better to start a new file rather than restart a recording. Just open a new Audacity window and start again.

4. Wikispaces a) make your own b) use it with pupils c) make a private wiki d) invite others to your wiki e) going further

a) make your own You can make a wiki like dummyefl.wikispaces.com in a few clicks. Go to www.wikispaces.com, sign up, and create a wiki

b) use it with pupils Put a desktop shortcut on your class computers. You can edit the same page to produce different activities for each lesson. Simply add the new activity to the top of the page, like a blog, and get students to start at the top each time.

If you delete activites to make room for new ones, you can look up old pages using the History tab, which is also handy if you make a mistake when you are editing.



c) make a private wiki You can ask for a private, ad-free space if it is for K18 (primary/secondary education). Only registered users can view it.

d) here's how to sign up others:

1.Go to gmail and create dummy accounts (dummyefl1@gmail.com). You can make ten at a time. 2.Choose a simple name then number, and the same password for everyone. Your students don't need to handle these accounts at all unless you want to. 3.On your wiki, go to Manage wiki, and Invite people. 4.Go to your dummy accounts and accept the invitation 5. Sign your new users up to wikispaces. You can use the same name and password as the gmail. 6.Confirm the wiki registration through the gmail account.

e) going further This workshop has only covered basic wiki functions. If you want to work with other teachers on a wiki, you should check out - the note and tag functions, which allow you to make comments about a page edit - the discussion tab (beside the Edit this Page tab) which allows you to leave messages - the Recent changes link (top left, above the page menu), which allows you to see what others have been doing on the wiki.