Group Meeting Thursday 2nd May

I was a little was disappointed  to begin with today that not all our group members were able to make todays meeting.  Now that we are well on our way with the task, regular communication is the key to moving forward and their thought and input are valuable. In saying that, arranging times that suit everybody is near on impossible. I really appreciate however that they had the politeness to send their apologies to the group for their absence, and was also able to send through the teacher resources that they had begun gathering. They would easily be able to reflect on what had been discussed by viewing the Facebook discussion at a time convient to them, so this really wasn't a problem.

In todays meeting we discussed at length the issues some of us were experiencing with the wiki and different browsers we were using.
I had become very frustrated when I uploaded content to the home and introductory page. The layout would initially appear fine on my screen then when it came to saving it the layout changed. Text kept moving about all over the place! I thought it might be because I was copying and pasting content that I had drafted in a word template but still after re-typing it all out it still moved about.

Screenshots: Jody and I trying to resolve viewing in different browsers.

We were not really able to resolve this technical problem completely Jodie had suggested that now she was more confident with how to create a wiki and that she was easily able to re-create the wiki to see if this would fix the formatting issues. It was worth trying...

I didn't realise that trying to upload the wiki content successfully.. that is without pictures moving and font resizing, would be so difficult!  I had just assumed that it would be the same as creating a website in which I was very comfortable with now.This was so frustrating...

I decided that I needed to learn more about Wiki's. Up until now, I had been questioning Jody when I couldn't find or work out how to tackle something on the Wiki as she was a little more familiar with its layout. Now it's time I step out on my own two feet... I needed to learn more about this! I decided to experiment by creating my own Wiki so that I could play around with it, without the fear of messing up my groups work.

I didn't have a clue where to start. I didn't even know what technology Jodie had used to create our site. I went and explored the Technology Toolbox for some guidance. 

The first thing that was of interest to me, a simple clear definition of a wiki.

"A wiki is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often created collaboratively by multiple users." (Wikipedia, 2012).

From here I spent time browsing through some of the useful links supplied under teaching ideas and resources. There are heaps of great resources that can be found here. I just wish I had more time to explore them all. The technology Toolbox provides an overwhelming amount of resources and links to other sites for this unit and I would recommend that you initially begin your research here. You will often find most of your questions or information that you are looking and it is easy and less time consuming to navigate around then endlessly browsing the Internet, which can become a bad habit.

TeachersFirst: Wiki Walk-Through was one of the links I took a look at. It provides a step by step walk through of all the basic information you would want to know when first starting out with a wiki. I found this information very useful as it gives clear and simple explanations in which you can follow.  The site also mentions Wikispaces and PBworks as both being free wiki tools.

Google Sites was another that the Technology Toolbox offers links to. It provides all the information required, a brief overview of Google Sites, template examples, direct link to getting started which is convenient and some useful YouTube videos that I always find the most helpful to watch.

Above, YouTube video: Google. (2008, Feb 27). Google Sites Tour Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X_KnC2EIS5w

It appears Google Sites was the chosen technology Jody had been using to create our group wiki. Now I know the technology it might help with assisting me trying to work out a few of the difficulties I had been experiencing by watching a few tutorials and reading up on the sites tools and features.

While I was on the Technology Toolbox I also took this opportunity to look at the two alterative free technologies suggested. I was curious as to why Jody chose Google sites to use.  

I went straight to Wikispaces and quickly set up a account, I did not want to be doing lots of research on this as our Wiki had already been created using Google Sites and way well on it's way. This was just for my own benefit to see what other tools there were available and whether they were any easy to use? NO is the answer! I managed to create an account and set up a new project on Wikispaces, but this is all I could work out. I found the whole site very confusing! I think this is a tool I would have to do some reading up about and learn how to use it before jumping straight in a the deep end. It wasn't going to be something I could just figure out by exploring. Maybe if I took some time to watch the YouTube tutorials and examples it would become more clear.

Now I was probably just wasting time, avoiding doing what it was I was actually meant to be doing at this moment in time.  At the end of the day this was just another free web-based technology. The video overview appeared pointless as it did not appear any different from the others tools. I therefore did not bother to look any further into this site after watching the video overview. I think there is more important things I could be directing my time to with the project. I also found that I could not read the pages tabs at the top of the sites homepage to explore the site further, the text was too small making it impossible to see.

I could now understand why Jody had chosen Google Sites. This seemed the most straight forward and sensible option as it appears the easiest to learn . We do not require something that is going to be too complex to use. Everyone was going to be required to contribute to this and we did not know what each others technological knowledge and capabilities were like.

At the end of todays collboration a few of my group member's expressed that they felt they needed or wanted to contribute more to the task. We had decided as a group that our presentation should be something that is left to last after our wikis content was well on it's way. This had been Darlene's assigned part of the project. I could understand why she would be feeling like at present she was not contributing enough to the task. This was ok as there was certainly lots that could be done. I made a few suggestion on other task alternatives  and these were discussed amongst the group. I think everyone went away feeling a lot happier that they had enough to do up until our next arranged meeting together.