Talk:K-12 School Computer Networking/Chapter 25

Introduction
Thanks for your interest in contributing to the book. If you are enrolled in Dr. Terrill's Telecommunications, Distance Learning, and Collaborative Interchange course, please use the guidelines on this page to help you submit your Wikibooks assignment. All other contributors, please feel free to contribute to this on-going project. The developers only ask that you keep with the conventions established throughout this work and use appropriate discretion when editing others' work.

Getting Started
Before the specifics, it's important to go over a little Wikibooks introductory information. This article provides some of that background information. In short, Wikibooks is a site very much like its sister project, Wikipedia, except that Wikibooks is designed to host (you guessed it) books. As this site consists of 100% open-content, you should always remember to site all your sources, link to (rather than post directly) content that you suspect is copyrighted, and take care not to otherwise infringe on people's copyrighted information.

To help you with this effort, Wikibooks has a network of volunteer experts called administrators. A couple of them are Whiteknight and Cormaggio. If you have questions, contacting these admins or Pete is a great way to get them answered in a timely (and usually accurate) fashion.

The next step toward getting started in Wikibooks might be signing up for a free Wikibooks account. This gives you a username and allows people like administrators and Dr. Terrill to track you according to a username you devise rather than your computer's IP address (a long series of numbers attached to every computer).

How to create a free Wikibooks account

	Go to the website: www.wikibooks.org 	Click on “English.” 	Click on “Log in / Create an account” in the top right hand corner. 	Click on “create an account” in the Log In box. 	Follow the directions to create an account. 	Now you have a username and password. 	Every time you visit Wikibooks, MAKE SURE YOU LOG IN.    You'll know that you are logged in if your username appears in the top right corner of the screen where "Log in / Create an account" used to appear.

You might have noticed that there are a few tabs at the top of each Wikibooks page. Explanations of these pages are below.

Types of Pages in the Wikibook
Module

The module pages are the main content pages of the book. To contribute to or edit a module page click the "edit this page" tab at the top of the window, make your changes, and save the page. Make sure you are signed in to Wikibooks whenever you do this.

Discussion

The discussion pages are where we "discuss" the content located on the module pages. To get to the discussion page click on the "discussion" tab at the top of the window. Once you are on the dicussion page, you can contribute to or edit it by clicking on the "edit this page" tab, making changes, and saving it. Again, make sure you are signed in to Wikibooks whenever you do this.

Edit this Page

Clicking "edit this page" allows you to make additions and edits to whatever page you are currently viewing. When you click on it a window of text will appear. Scroll down to find the spot where you want to add or change something, make your change, and click "Save". Make sure you are signed in to Wikibooks whenever you do this. Additionally, you can use the "edit this page" function to figure out how any contributor got a module page to look a certain way. Clicking "edit this page" will display all the Wiki code an author employed to get a page to look a particular way. At the top of each editing window, you'll see a small tool bar that will allow you to format text, create links and perform other tasks.

History

The history page allows you to see which users have made contributions to the page you are reading and what was involved in each contribution. Every time a user makes a change and saves it, it is recorded in the history. You can follow the directions on the history page to compare various versions of the page. The history function allows all pages against undesirable edits or vandalism (which occurs very rarely). Since each version of each page is saved indefinitely, it just takes a click or two to restore any article to a previous edition.

Dr. Terrill's Expectations
Before we get into your articles, it is important for you to know what Dr. Terrill is expecting out of your articles. You can find some information on this topic in our Blackboard site within the Course Introduction document. As always, contact Dr. Terrill or Pete (talk) 02:26, 3 December 2008 (UTC) with any questions.

Posting An Article
Now that you know all about Wikibooks and have your very own account (you're logged in, right?), you can begin thinking about your Wikibooks article. Dr. Terrill has generously allowed each of you to come up with any topic at all dealing with the Chapter 25 topic--Distance Learning. Some of you have already posted your topics on this Chapter's module page. Good work. The next step is turning this topic into a real "page" where you can actually post content.

To do this, just go to Chapter 25's module page and follow the example set by Ted Barco. You'll see that his link begins with two open-brackets (everything that appears after the vertical line will appear, while that preceding the vertical line remains invisible), then the complete title that viewers will see-- Developing Faculty in the Information Age: Insights from Academia -- Ted Barco, and finally two close-brackets.

The final product you'll see on the editing page before you click "Save page" looks like this [[K-12 School Computer Networking/Chapter 25/Developing Faculty in the Information Age: Insights from Academia|Developing Faculty in the Information Age: Insights from Academia -- Ted Barco.

Please note, if you click "edit this page" you'll see and. Using these codes lets me show you how to construct links without actually creating these links.

Helpful Hints
Formatting Conventions

Some of you may not be comfortable writing your articles from scratch here in Wikibooks. Please be advised that, because Wikibooks code is similar to HTML code, formatting conventions you create in Microsoft Word and other word processing programs may not transfer over to Wikibooks successfully.

Open Office

Dr. Terrill told me that Open Office (the open-source equivalent to Microsoft's Word program) allows one to save documents directly to a Wiki-friendly format. I have not personally played with this function yet, but I will as soon as I get to my own machine (where I can download Open Office). After that, I'll be sure to get you more information on this topic. For now, you can download Open Office from openoffice.org.

Other Good Things to Check Out

I have been working with Wikibooks for a couple of years now, and during that time I've helped to develop a few textbooks written by undergrads at Old Dominion University. You can check these books out at the links below:

Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education

Foundations of Education and Instructional Assessment

Featured Books

Besides these books, there are a number of great Wikibooks that you can use for inspiration. Find out all about lots of these at the Featured Books page.