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The Wiki GatewayHUM 300 The Arts in SocietyMedaille College - Spring 2010 |
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This course has both breadth and depth. The breadth comes from your listening in class and exploring the course wiki. The depth comes from your contributions to the wiki. You will contribute your research, writing, and analysis of the artistic culture of a country with emphasis on the current pop culture and its roots in the local traditions of that culture.
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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. 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."
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There are many wiki systems I could have chosen to install on my server. This one, TikiWiki, (screenshot lower right) has a lot of features and has several sections, as you can see from the links in the left column in the screenshot: MyTiki, Wiki, Image Galleries, Forums, etc. 
We will use mostly the Wiki and the threaded discussion Forums, which we all share. You will upload images to the Image Galleries and audio and video files to the File Galleries. In addition, each of you, as registered users, has a My Tiki section that cannot be accessed by other users.
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 your country profile.
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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 website helpful.
The best way to learn how to use a wiki is to log on and explore. Note the Sandbox (click open the yellow Wiki folder), where you can practice editing and you can try out the features without fear of messing up anything important.
user name and password
I have registered you by your first name or obvious nickname: Steve, Jake. For the three Amandas and two Toms, I used the initial letter of your middle or last name: AmandaJ, AmandaL, AmandaM, TomS, and TomW. 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 initials, lower case, followed by 300. Thus Tina King is registered with the user name Tina and her password is tk300. AmandaJ is aj300. Tom Scrivani is ts300. Note the upper and lower cases.
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.
Until 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 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 homework and "term paper", which amounts to the same thing.
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.
So that the two dozen country profiles are more comparable to each other, each will have several sections in common with all the others. Within that loose structure, you will still have plenty of opportunity to express yourself. Have fun!
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