< RIT

Purpose

Learn some MediaWiki and Internet Relay Chat skills,

Discover something about your classmates and document some appropriate portion of it in the wiki,

Learn some seminar expectations and establish some laboratory work practices. (Read this discussion of laboratory principles and practices.)

Propose solutions to any problems discovered and improvements to this laboratory exercise, documenting them in the wiki.

Introduction

A wiki is a collaboration tool. Just about everything you see on a wiki page you can edit.

Don't be put off in fear of offending the authors. They want you to read, think, and add your valuable thoughts to the collective effort. Click on the 'Edit' link above the page title now.

Notice the sentences just below the text entry box. The wiki is a free and open source of information. Abandon some of those closed-source inhibitions, and make yourself welcome in a free and open source project by following this simple policy:

1. Do no harm.

   (… To readers and the project; worry less about the particular content version.)

2. Respect other's work.

   (Think here of their abstract contribution, less the particular, potentially insufficient presentation of it.)

3. Contribute first what you know.

   (Readers are more interested in what you know than what you wish or believe, depending of course, on the topic of the page. Your opinions are welcome on many pages, and generally welcome, especially with constructive suggestions, on the discussion or talk page.)

4. Be helpful.

Don't be afraid of messing things up. All edits are kept and accessible through the 'History' link above the page title. Take a look at it now.

There you see built-in tools to review, compare, & undo page edits.

Over time, independent agenda of authors may lead to wiki page clutter and incongruence of content. So, after studying the project and page intent, boldly edit, restructure, and reformat the content to better serve the project. Actively involved authors will have set watches on pages so they will be alerted of page changes. You can adopt this practice by setting preference settings for email and your wiki watchlist. See Special:Preferences.

Problem questions

Wikis are used for collaborative documentation. What advantages and limitations do they have?

IRC is used for collaborative textual communication. What advantages and limitations does it have?

Collectively, report your investigation in a standard laboratory report format at this page. Organize your reporting as the page history will be used to evaluate your work. (See this discussion of laboratory principles and practices.)

Answer the #Problems section questions on your User:Learner/Assignment pages.

Report & Problems Due

Thursday noon 17 September 2009

References

• mediawikiwiki:MediaWiki
• RIT/Laboratory_principles_and_practices#Wikis
• http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Communication_channels
• http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Contacts
• Special:RecentChanges
• IRC and wiki introduction exercise

Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

1. Open the XO IRC Activity.
2. On your laptop or classroom workstation, open http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=fedora-olpc&prompt=1.
3. Choose a nickname for yourself and sign in.
4. Check that the channel irc://irc.freenode.net#fedora-olpc is not occupied.
5. Join that channel on your XO.
6. Keep the channel open so that you may copy a log of the laboratory session, or enable a log of the session for yourself.

Create a TOS user account

1. Navigate to http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/Main_Page.
2. Create a personal account. This will be your Seminar Learner home page.
3. Enter nothing on your own User:Learner page during the laboratory session today.

Indirectly build your User: page

1. Examine mediawikiwiki:Help:Editing.
2. Using IRC only (no voice or sign language communication in the classroom during this session), request that a classmate edit your User: page with appropriate information. Include at minimum the following: (See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/User:Wwdillingham for a template.)
   1. Full first and last name,
   2. RIT major field of study,
   3. Expected year of graduation,
   4. IRC nickname,
   5. preferred email address (you may obscure it from web crawling robots if you wish).
3. You'll get more credit for additional useful information entered within the designated time.

Discuss class project possibilities

1. Using IRC , discuss potential class projects,
2. Create temporary, new channels, e.g., #rit-xs, or #rit-project around project group interests.
   • Announce these channels in the #fedora-olpc channel so others may participate.
   • Use established channels in preference to private channels, switching to and announcing temporary channels only when needed.

Problems

(Answers to problem questions in this section are due at the laboratory report due date and time. They are to be individually completed on a User:Learner/Assignment page.)

1. Read RIT/Laboratory principles and practices and propose on the discussion page any updates or tools to add.
2. Show evidence that you did not edit your User: page during the laboratory session.
3. Show evidence of chatting on IRC with the XO.
4. Try other IRC clients and describe why you prefer one or another.
5. Identify the IRC client bugs recorded at the following sites:
   1. http://dev.laptop.org
   2. http://bugs.sugarlabs.org
6. If you have any significant comments or observations to add to any of these bug reports or a new bug to report, do so and link your comments to your report.
   • See these references for bug reporting, triage guide,
   • Note: Duplicate reports will have negative consequences, while identifying duplicates and triaging have positive consequences.
7. What does this wiki markup do, __NOTOC__?
8. How does one dynamically encode the current page title in wiki markup?