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other pages this page what is a wiki?
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A wiki is a content management system, in this case, a web site that uses templates and style sheets. It lets users make and edit pages via forms that feed the templates, as opposed to writing and editing HTML code. Our wiki is similar to BBVista, but it is collaborative. Our wiki is very similar to the Wikipedia, but it is private, for us only. The students will contribute more of the content than the teacher will. On the other end of the control spectrum, working in a wiki is similar to having your own web site, but again, it is collaborative. You will share the space, so most of the design decisions have already been made -- by me, so we can concentrate on learning about the arts in these diverse cultures.
The Wikipedia's entry on wiki adds: "A wiki is not
a carefully crafted site for casual visitors. Instead, it seeks to
involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration
that constantly changes the Web site landscape." You're the visitor.
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There are many
wiki systems I could have chosen to install on my server. This one,
TikiWiki, (screenshot on the right)
has a lot of features and has several sections, as you can see from the
links in the left column in the screenshot: Home, Wiki, Image
Galleries, and Forums. 
You
will use the Wiki to
post your assignments and to have on the screen during
your oral presentations. You will upload images and audio and
video files to the Image Galleries.
You will post your reflections on the presentations at the Forum.
What makes a wiki different is that the pages can be edited by anyone, just as with the world's most famous wiki, the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. All wikis have a versioning system to keep track of all the edits and let you compare two versions of the same page and roll back to previous versions. That's the system that keeps the Wikipedia from vandalism and nonsense: the good drives out the bad. As counter-intuitive as that may seem, the Wikipedia is a dynamic living embodiment of that truth.
For our wiki, "anyone" is a registered user, a student in the HUM 300 course. For almost all your schooling, you did your own work and kept it separate from other students' work. On this wiki, anyone can edit any page. However, you will be responsible for the creation and upkeep of the pages about your country, that is, the assignments for the course.
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If you have never used a wiki before or even made web pages before, you will have to go up a short learning curve. Even if you have used a wiki before, you will find this Smarties website helpful.
The best way to learn how to use a wiki is to log on and explore. To make links and embed images, you use a special wiki code.
Link to another page in our wiki: within double
parentheses, the name of the page, then a pipe stem, then the text you
want to be hot.
((Profile 1 ARG|check out my profile of Argentina))
Links to another web page not on our wiki: within
square brackets, the URL, then a pipe stem, then the text you want to
be hot. For example, if I want the word "Argentina" to be linked to the
Wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina|Argentina]
Embed an image. After uploading the image, not the
image ID number, for example #120. Then in the text where you want the
image to appear: within curley braces, img space id equals sign and
then the image ID number within double-quotation marks.
{img id="4"}
Embed a YouTube video. The trick is getting the movie= number correct. You will learn where to find it on the YouTube URL. It is most often between watch?v= and &. Ex: watch?v=G1TuB5P4Ypw&
{YOUTUBE(movie=G1TuB5P4Ypw,width=>425,height=>350,quality=>high, allowFullScreen=y)}{YOUTUBE}
user name and password
I have registered you by your first name or obvious nickname: Angel, Monica. This is the same name I used on the table for completed assignments on the reports page.
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Your password is your user name followed by 300. Thus Monica is registered with the user name Monica and her password is Monica300.
The email address I used is the one I got from MedailleOne.
After you log on, you are welcome to change your username, password, or email to something you prefer.
Browser: use Firefox or Chrome.
If you use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, you may not be able to
properly post the assignments for this course. Also, both Firefox and
Chrome have extensions for translating foreign languages, which will be
especially helpful for some of you.
Even when you are comfortable and confident with the wiki, I recommend that you not use it to write the words you are going to post there. The wiki has a time-out feature, so you must save or preview within 25 minutes or you will be automatically logged off. This is a security feature to prevent the wiki being misused by outsiders. For you, it means that you should write with a text editor like Notepad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac) that is already on your computer or download NoteTab Light (the free version). Save your writing and then copy and paste into the wiki, where you can do your formatting.
Using Word or similar word processing program may cause frustration and extra clicking when you copy and paste into the wiki. You will lose any formatting. For best results:
Don't use a
word processor.
Don't compose online.
Use a text editor.
You don't to make any new wiki pages for this course, but you may make a new one if you would like to. For example, if the page for your presentation is too long, you could break it into two.
When you make a new wiki page, it needs to have a unique name so that your content will not be confused with another student's. The best way for us to insure unique page names is to remember to put the name of your country in the name of every page.
You can have as many pages
as you want, as long as you remember the most important rule:
page name = country name ...
You have two responsibilities on this wiki. One is to be the steward of the pages concerning your country and its arts. The second is to read what all the other students have written about and linked to concerning their countries and arts.
This wiki is the textbook for HUM 300 as well as the place where you will post your written work.
These country profiles are the heart of our wiki. In past years, this would have been the term paper for the course, and you would have worked on it alone (at least in theory), often at the last minute, and handed it in at the end of the course. Only the teacher would have seen it, and you may or may have received it back with comments, which you may or may not have read.
On this wiki, you will be sharing your research and your writing as it develops. The "term paper" will spread over many wiki pages, and you will be able to edit them at any time as well as read everyone else's. We will look at these pages during class, and you will make your presentations by clicking on links you have made on your pages.
You need to use images in your assignments, that is, on your wiki pages.
In theory, it would be best if you credited where you
got each image, just as you would any other source. I also recognize
that if I require full documentation for every image, you will not use
as many. If any. Of course, there's no question of plagiarism. You
aren't pretending that you shot those pictures. I'm not asking you to
make your own photographs, in which case using someone else's would be
cheating. I'm asking you to look closely, very closely, at images from
other cultures to make up for not being able to go there yourself. It
also makes sense to illustrate your writing with some of those images.
Your words may refer to the images, but perhaps not. They may be just
interesting images. I want you to use them.
Note that for videos, this is not a problem, especially if all you do is make a link to it from your wiki page. Even if you embed the video into your wiki page, it probably has identifying information in it, to say nothing of the YouTube logo in one corner. And again, you aren't trying to pass it off as your own video.
The deciding factor for me is the fact that the wiki is private. Only people with passwords are going to be able to see the images. Images on this wiki are like in the old days when you would cut images out of a magazine and use Elmer's glue to paste them to a posterboard for show and tell. This is college, so we call show-and-tell a presentation. Please use lots of images.
Harvesting images. To save an image showing in your browser, right-click on it, select "Save Image As ..", give it a filename that makes sense to you, and save it to a special folder on your desktop.
Look at the files in that folder to determine their
size. If the width is greater than 250 pixels, you need to scale down the image. If it has
parts you don't want or need, you may want to crop the image.
Editing images. Any number of web sites will do basic cropping and scaling. If you already use a site or image editing software, by all means continue to do so.
If not, I recommend Pixlr Express for croping and re-sizing images so that they will fit better on your wiki pages. Go to the web site and choose "Open image from computer". Browse to the special folder on your desktop. Select the image you want to edit.
The Basic menu will let you quickly crop and resize. If you want to do anything more complex than Pixlr Express can handle, go to its big brother, Pixlr's Editor.
Again, choose "Open image from computer". Browse to the special folder on your desktop. Select the image you want to edit.
When the image displays, note at the bottom left corner
both its
size in pixels and the percentage of that size at which it is currently
displaying. On the wiki, it will display at its full size. You want the
width in pixels to be 250, though once you get more experienced, use
your judgement about what's the most effective size for each image.
Don't worry about the height. As long as you keep the same aspect ratio
(width:height), the height will take care of itself.
To crop, select
the crop tool. In the screen-shot on the left of the Pixlr Tools bar,
it's the third down on the left, under the lasso and next to the magic
wand. After you select it, put your cursor on the image and drag the
cursor diagonally. After you let up, double-click anywhere on the
selected rectangle. If it's not exactly what you want, select Undo from
the Edit menu
(or press Ctrl-Z) and try again.
To scale, pull down the Image menu and select Image size... In the box that pops up, type in the width you want. If the Constrain proportions box is checked, the height will take care of itself.
Save the image by pulling down the file menu, etc. This is another chance to re-name the file so that it makes sense to you. If you need to choose a format, .jpg or .png are your best bets.
On the wiki, use the File Galleries feature. There is already a gallery named for your country. Within that, you may make unlimited sub-galleries to keep the images organized.
In the File Gallery, each image has a unique ID. Use it whenever you need to select an image to display on a page.
{IMG(fileId="324" align="center")}{IMG}
Use this exactly. Caps and spaces all count. You would,
of course, use the fileID for your image. For alignment, you can use
right or left instead of center to get a different effect.
For some of the finer points of positioning and borders, you can just copy and paste what others have done.
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