Using The New Time To Get Online Wiki

As the internet becomes increasingly interactive, one emerging tool for online collaboration is the wiki - a website that allows visitors to add, remove, edit, and change content. This content can easily be linked to other content either on the wiki or elsewhere on the web. Perhaps the best known wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia with nearly two million entries written by web users around the world.

Wikis are especially useful for teaching materials because they allow excellent feedback (and contributions) to the material by users. Using a wiki also ensures the continued relevancy of teaching materials by allowing infinite adaptation to the subject’s evolution.

Currently anyone with an internet connection can browse the Time To Get Online Wiki and join discussions, while only Kabissa training partners can log in and edit pages. Browsing the Time To Get Online wiki is very similar to the internet and is done primarily using links. However, there are some special links and features of the site worth mentioning.

• On the left hand side of the screen is an expandable navigation menu which serves as a Table of Contents for the materials. This menu is always available so you may find it to be the best way to navigate around the materials. Below this menu is a search box which can be used to find words or phrases anywhere in the materials. Note: When searching be sure to click the “Search” button because the “Go” button has a separate function.

• At the top of the screen are several tabs. The page you are currently viewing is the “article”, clicking on “discussion” will take you to a page where users can freely discuss the current article. Every article has its own discussion page, so this is a great place to pose questions or suggestions for revisions before editing the actual article. If you notice a page’s “discussion” tab is red and after clicking it you see “This topic does not exist yet”, you may click the “create this page” tab to begin the discussion (note that discussion pages are edited in the same way as articles, see more in “Editing the Time To Get Online Wiki”).

• The main portion of the screen is devoted to the Time To Get Online materials. This area is like a page of the printed version and contains text, example images, and links to other resources. As you scroll down the page you will notice a left and right arrow at the bottom. Clicking these arrows takes you forward or back a section in the material, much like turning a page would in the printed version.

Browsing the wiki is only the first step in utilizing this interactive resource. As mentioned above, discussion pages allow users to communicate about the materials in a way not possible in printed versions. Similarly, registered users can edit the entire Time To Get Online manual in order to correct errors, clarify information, or even add new chapters about internet topics not yet explained! At this stage, only Kabissa training partners are registered to log in and edit pages, although we hope to open this up in the near future.

While editing the wiki does take some getting used to, after a bit practice you will be able to efficiently contribute to the materials. A brief introduction to editing basics is included here, while more will be online soon.

To begin editing the article you are on, click the “edit this page” tab near the top of the screen. The page that appears allows you to edit the article you were just viewing. Notice that instead of the nicely formatted article you instead see a text window with the plain text of the article and some various symbols you didn’t see before. These symbols (e.g. ===, **, ~, {{}} ) are a form of code used by the wiki software to format the pages. While it is not necessary to memorize any wiki code (more on the alternative in a moment), it is helpful to notice what code is where, and to be careful not to erase any characters of code by accident. The example below shows how some sample wiki code (on the left) will look once the page is saved (on the right).

An alternative to memorizing code is provided in the toolbar (shown below) just above the text window. Here you will find buttons to accomplish most of the wiki’s formatting options. For example, suppose you want to make several words of a sentence italic. Highlight the words and then click the second button from the left marked “I”. Notice that your text is now surrounded by forward slashes like this: //your text// Hovering your mouse over each button will show a short description of what the button does. For further experimentation, a “Playground” is available (see the link just above the toolbar) where you can get used to wiki formatting without fear of altering the current article. For more information about formatting in a wiki, you can also click “Formatting Syntax” in the same area.

After you have made the changes you want to the article, you can click the “Save” button to immediately finish, or the “Preview” button to see what the formatted article will look like. If you like the changes you made and are finished editing, click the “Save” button and you will be taken back to the original article viewing page, your changes saved and now visible to all wiki users!

A final note: One button near the right hand side of the toolbar worth mentioning is the “Insert Signature” button. Clicking on this will insert your name, e-mail address, and the current date and time. This is especially useful on discussion pages so you can keep track of the people involved and more easily respond to specific questions or comments.