Project 4
Web 2.0: Wikis
Due 21:00 Fri, 11/16

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.-W.H.Auden

Project Help

Post your P4 questions/answers to the 110 Blog.
Please address email to both your Instructor and GTFs for quickest response time.

Project Requirements

  1. What is a Wiki? From Karen Montgomery's PBwiki: "A wiki is a collaborative website that is considered part of the second generation of Internet-based services that allows users to instantly create and share web pages."

    Wikis are a hosted website where you can:

    * add, edit and share web pages quickly
    * collaborate
    * create picture galleries
    * manage a project or team
    * plan an event
    * store documents and files

    View this Wikis in Plain English video from Common Craft (3 minutes 52 seconds):



  2. "How to Quickly Wiki with PBwiki."

    Take the Video Tour at PBWiki.com.

    Test out the Demo Wiki at PBWiki.com

    Read How to Quickly Wiki with PBWiki.

  3. Find Out Which 110 Virtual Learning Team (VLT) is Yours: Blackboard Groups.

    Each 110 student has been assigned to a Blackboard Group: VLT1, VLT2, .., VLT19. The groups initially consist of 3-5 students assigned to the group at random by Blackboard. Each group has a set of communication tools (starting with email) that are accessible only by the group's members.

    To determine your group membership and find out who the other members are, open Communication > Group Pages.

    The point of a virtual learning team is that you never have to actually meet with your team: You can use use communication tools, BB and a wiki as groupware to facilitate project collaboration.

    The history mechanism, standard to all wikis, allows you to recover from mistakes by reverting to an earlier version of a wiki page. This same feature supports the use of wikis in education since it is readily clear who is doing what by viewing the wiki's history of development.

  4. Create a Private Wiki for your VLT.

    Using email in BB, telephone conversations, or an actual meeting, your VLT must complete the following tasks:


    Notes

    • Complete this step before you go to your next 110 lab, as you will be working on your VLT wiki in lab.

    • Your wiki-wide password is the password your administrator created when s/he signed up: cis-110. Whoever has the password will be a co-administrator of the wiki, with the ability to add pages, delete pages, and more; but, they will not be able to delete the wiki. Only the wiki creator can do that.

    • As a class, we are all sharing the same password but we are each working exclusively on our own VLT wiki. Although we are welcome and, in fact, encouraged to view each other's wikis, we must each limit all editing & modification activity to our own VLT.

  5. Have your VLT Wiki Added to the 110 Wiki-Roll in Blackboard.

    After the administrator has created your VLT Wiki, s/he must send her or his GTF an email request to add the wiki to the 110 Wiki-Roll: Please put Wiki-roll in the subject line. In the body, state the name of your team (e.g., VLT7) and the URL for the VLT wiki.

  6. Collaborating on the Front Page of your VLT Wiki: XHTML.

    XHTML elements dealing with structure (headings, paragraphs, linebreaks, lists, tables, ...) generally work well on wiki pages. XHTML attributes dealing with style (bgcolor, etc.) may not work in wiki pages, as they have been pre-empted by the use of CSS to control styles. In general, inline styles work well in a wiki.

    Your VLT Front Page must contain the following XHTML elements. Since this is a collaborative project each team member is responsible for adding his/her own ID-style photo and blog links. Since only a single Google Gadget is required, only one team member needs to add that to the Wiki, but all team members should know how to add a Google Gadget to a web page.

    i) Your passport-style ID photos for each VLT member, in a single row of an XHTML table, with your names in the second row as captions.

    See Pic FAQ at PBwiki.

    110 Information Privacy. The Wiki is private, but anyone not wishing to put a personal photograph on the web is welcome to use Google's generic.jpg instead, as usual.

    ii) A bulleted list with the following list items:


    iii) An embedded Google Gadget.

    Read about Plugins at PBWiki
    What are gadgets powered by Google?
    Add a Google Gadget to a webpage
    Directory of Google Gadgets

    iv) When you edit your Wiki's Front Page, remember to hit Save when you are done, as other people on your team may be trying to edit the same page. While you are editing the page, it will be locked to others.

    Wiki Page Editing Policy: if the page has been locked and idle for 10 minutes, you may "steal" the lock.

    v) If you run into problems you can't solve as a team, check the Project 4 Discussion post at the 110 Blog. The other students in class at this point are a great resource.

  7. Update /110/index-110.html.

    i) Modify the P4 link in the leftNav div so that it connects to your VLT wiki.
    ii) Add a VLT link as a new, last element in the list of link in the leftNav div. The VLT link connects to your VLT wiki.

  8. Project 4 Grading Rubric. This document describes how your lab instructor (GTF) will grade your project. You should assess your project using this rubric before turning in your project.

  9. How to Submit your Project for Grading.
Information Safety and Security at PBwiki: The differences between Public and Private:

A private wiki:

  1. Can only be seen by those who have been invited by the owner (administrator) with one of three things: a password, a "magic URL", or an invitation through the PBwiki identity system - for more on this, please watch our video about sharing your wiki.
  2. Anyone without access to a private wiki will only see the logon page and nothing else if they go to the wiki's URL.
  3. We don't put any advertising on private wikis.

A public wiki:

  1. Can be seen by anyone surfing to its address.
  2. All pages are visible, except in certain premium wikis with page-hiding capabilities. Even though everyone can see the wiki, only those who have been given access can edit the pages.
  3. We place small ads on public wikis.
  4. Never post information on a public wiki that others might consider private. Good examples would be real names, street address, phone numbers or account passwords. Don't type your email address or anyone else's email address into a public wiki unless you are certain it's safe to do this. (There are a couple of ways to hide email addresses from spammers.)

To change the Public/Private settings, go to your "Settings" page, then click on "Public/Private".

Only the owner (administrator) of a wiki has control over the master password (wiki-wide password). That control is identified with his or her unique email address.

Information on the internet doesn't always disappear after you remove it from your wiki. Google and other search engines often provide their users with old copies of website called "cached" copies. If you unintentionally put private information on your public PBwiki site and you know that Google has a cached copy of it, you have a good chance of getting it removed. Go to http://services.google.com/urlconsole/controller and follow the instructions.