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vU3ADemoFinal

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An introduction to the vU3A wiki
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To move forward or back through the slide show, use the arrow keys or the on your keyboard. The space bar also serves to advance to the next slide.
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Page 1: vU3ADemoFinal

To move forward or back through the slide show, use the arrow keys or the on your keyboard.

The space bar also serves to advance to the next slide.

Page 2: vU3ADemoFinal

If you are watching this as a paid-up member of the vU3A, what follows is designed to help you navigate the wiki website at

vu3a.pbworks.com

If you are not yet a member, it will provide a taster and maybe encourage you to register. To do so, you will need to visit www.vu3a.org and click on the membership link that you find there.

But... ...

Page 3: vU3ADemoFinal

The Virtual U3A (University of the Third Age) is hosted by pbworks.com, one of many VLEs (Virtual Learning Environment) to be found on the Internet.

We begin this tour with the concept of the ‘page’ .... .... ....

Page 4: vU3ADemoFinal

The ‘building blocks’ of vu3a.pbworks.com, home to the Virtual U3A, are known as ‘pages’ and here you are looking at the home page, called the FrontPage. We shall be looking in close-up at different parts of this page in the coming slides. But before that, we’ll show you a couple more examples of what pages look like.

Page 5: vU3ADemoFinal

This is the page for the Coffee Shop, the place for informal gatherings and social chit-chat.

Page 6: vU3ADemoFinal

And this is the welcome page of a Camera Club where members interested in digital photography meet up.

Page 7: vU3ADemoFinal

Now, we’ll come back to a typical page and have a look at the two highlighted areas in more detail. These two areas are common to all pages. Familiarity with these areas of the pages will help you to find your way successfully around the whole site.

Page 8: vU3ADemoFinal

In the top left-hand corner of every typical page you will see something like this.

Just three things for you to take note of right now:

1.The vU3A logo. Clicking on this will always return you to the FrontPage .

2.Two tabs, labelled ‘View and Edit’ (more about this later).

3.The title of the page you are currently visiting.

Page 9: vU3ADemoFinal

On the far right of every typical page look out for something called the SideBar.

The SideBar is the starting point from which you can reach the various pages within the vU3A wiki.

Each of the underlined items is a link. Clicking on the link will take you to that page.

For now, notice the link labelled Groups which is perhaps the most important of them all. More about this coming next......

Page 10: vU3ADemoFinal

A word about GROUPS:

GROUPS lie at the heart of vU3A activities, much as they do with terrestrial U3As *. Groups are set up to cater for shared interests and are usually led or mentored by a Group Leader or Convenor.

* If you are relatively new to the idea of a U3A you could visit www.u3a.org.uk to learn about this very successful movement.

Or members could look for this link in the SideBar and read up on the history.

But for now we are going see where a click on the word Groups in the SideBar takes us.

Page 11: vU3ADemoFinal

Clicking on Groups in the SideBar has brought us to a new page entitled Groups.

On this page we see a directory of ‘live’ Groups (a list that can change over time). The Groups are shown within approximate categories, as can be seen.

Each Group listed represents a link to a separate page where that Group has its ‘home’, so a click on History or Bridge will take us to that page.

Page 12: vU3ADemoFinal

Often, the Home Page of a Group will simply contain some welcoming words or an introduction of some kind. Links will be provided to take you further into the activities of the Group.

For example, the Group known as The 15th of the Month Club invites members to make a monthly diary entry on or around the 15th of every month.

The home page for this Group explains how things work and then provides a link to the current month (and links to the archived pages of previous months).

Page 13: vU3ADemoFinal

It is worth noting that you will always have a way of navigating your way back to earlier pages. The following two tips should be of help:

1. On each and every page, near the extreme top left-hand corner, you will see the vU3A icon (illustrated, right). Clicking on this will return you to the FrontPage, the starting point for everything else.

2. If you simply want to step back, a page at a time, through previously visited pages, then you need to click on your browser’s Back button.

If you are using Internet Explorer, the button appears in the top left-hand corner of your screen and looks like this:

And if you are using Mozilla Firefox, it looks like this:

Page 14: vU3ADemoFinal

So far, you have learned something of the structure of the vU3A wiki website:

Next we shall look at the all-important topic of how you can join in and contribute to wiki pages

Page 15: vU3ADemoFinal

Perhaps it’s time to make it a little clearer what a WIKI is. The definitions are many but perhaps these three, culled from the Internet, will give the flavour......

A wiki is an open, collaborative community website.

A wiki allows the easy creation and editing of interlinked pages.

A wiki is a website that allows multiple users to create, modify and organize web page content in a collaborative manner.

What makes a wiki of considerable interest to an organisation like the Virtual U3A is the emphasis on the collaborative approach and the fact that multiple users can easily be accommodated. So, as promised, we shall show you how easy it is to join in and make your own contributions.

Page 16: vU3ADemoFinal

You need to know that there are TWO main ways in which you can add your voice to a wiki page. We shall call these CONTRIBUTIONS and COMMENTS.

CONTRIBUTIONS

COMMENTS

Each wiki page has two sections. CONTRIBUTIONS are placed in the upper half and COMMENTS in the lower half and there is one big difference between the two, as we shall see.

Contributions can be edited. That is to say, just like word processing, the text of a contribution can be changed, added to or deleted – by you, the author, or by anyone else working on that page. Hence the opportunity for collaborative working.

Comments, on the other hand, cannot be edited (though they can be deleted by authorised users). Once made, they cannot be changed.

Page 17: vU3ADemoFinal

Let’s imagine a brand new page entitled The Armchair Critic with you about to type an entry into the Contribution section (highlighted).

This is where your contribution will appear

Notice the View and Edit

tabs

Your first move will be to click on that Edit tab.......

Page 18: vU3ADemoFinal

Clicking on that Edit tab brings up a toolbox of word processing features that can be seen highlighted in the illustration below.

As soon as you begin typing in the space below them, these features will become available to you for editing purposes, for example...

Page 19: vU3ADemoFinal

When you have completed your entry to your satisfaction, you will need to save your work. Look for the SAVE button at the foot of the Contributions section (illustrated left) and click on it. (Notice that you also have the choice of cancelling what you have just done, if you prefer.)

The act of saving will return you automatically to the View mode of the page – as if you had clicked on the View tab.

And that’s it! Contributing to the page means:

• a click on Edit• some typing• and a click on Save

Next, we’ll look at making Comments......

Page 20: vU3ADemoFinal

Down at the foot of every page you will find the Comments section labelled Add a comment. Type something in the box beneath these words and click on the Add comment button. The result will be something like this:

Your name, as author of the Comment will be shown, along with the time and date of posting the Comment.The Add a comment space becomes available for the next person.

What is the essential difference between Contributions and Comments?

Page 21: vU3ADemoFinal

CONTRIBUTIONS

COMMENTS

The distinction between the upper section (where page entries are made) and the lower section (where comments on the page entries are left) is bound to vary from group to group.

Remember that contributions to the page content can be edited, both by the originator and by other users of the page.

Comments, on the other hand, cannot be edited and, as a rule, cannot be deleted either (except by those with special access).

Page 22: vU3ADemoFinal

What this means in practical terms, is that the upper section is well-suited to collaborative activity where joint authorship of a piece of work is the order of the day. The lower section often serves as a place to leave queries or suggestions or quite simply as a vehicle for chat.

Overall, wiki pages can be seen as a flexible system that can be exploited in a number of ways to suit the requirements of a particular group.

There are no hard and fast rules for newcomers to a group.

A lot will depend on the ‘character’ of the group that they wish to join and on any agreed method of working by the group members.

CONTRIBUTIONS

COMMENTS

Page 23: vU3ADemoFinal

This has been a brief tour of the Virtual U3A’s home on the pbworks wiki at vu3a.pbworks.com where you have seen how to access the variety of groups and other activities within. You have also seen how the site is structured and how to make contributions.

If you would like to know more about the wiki concept , visit http://pbworks.com

We wish you an enjoyable time as a member or potential member of the vU3A.

March 2010


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