After my somewhat unsuccessful and thoroughly confusing excursion into the world of the wiki, I set aside time this weekend to go "play" in the sandbox. It was here that I remembered I don't play well with others . . .
As stated earlier, I have an idea for a wiki--being stated now, I don't think I have the patience for it. Maybe I just read the directions wrong (it's been known to happen), or maybe I have worked too far ahead so the items I am looking for aren't even created yet, or maybe I'm just a bit of an idiot this weekend; the possibilities are endless. Sadly, my patience isn't.
So on to my learning experience: I used Firefox, I made small edits, but alas, the fun eluded me. The instructions on this are hard to follow, and the multi-colored fonts confused me. I can't figure out how to link the page I am creating to some area called Our Sandbox Pages. And here I thought I could read, but I cannot locate any such heading, anywhere, and as usual, after a while, not being able to figure crap out even when the directions are right there (I even printed them as suggested), I lose interest and patience fast. If it is going to take me 2 days to set something up with the added pleasure of having my blood pressure go north and my temper go south (and people who know me know that is an ugly thing), then, thanks, but no thanks, I'll skip it. I'd rather deal with the plague than sit here and be befuddled for precious minutes of the day, especially when soon there will be essays to grade again. Thank you NinjaMickey for the picture, which I thought would work perfectly with this entry.
And I thought I had a quick temper and limited patience before my excursion into the world of the web. Yes, you can thank the internet for a great many things, but one of those things has to be our increased demand for results instantaneously. If I have to futz around with this for too long, I'm not doing it. Ever. And I don't promise there will ever be a link to my page on the mysterious and elusive Our Sandbox Pages, so I will put one here, which even before reading that I had to, I was going to just to spite the other, ha ha, simply because the directions had their chance, and they blew it. Also the [toc] shows up on my page as just that [toc] or [table of contents] however I type it. Why not just type Table of Contents and be done with it? Again, just following the directions given. . .Update! I think I figured that out; we shall see. . .
Also, the voki thing. I thought it would be cute, but embedding / uploading / whatever doesn't seem to work. I get a string of code, much like [toc], that does nothing but make my page a mile wide and hack me off. Their help page / forum? Useless. And it is things like this that bring me back to the point I made in my last entry. I could have students doing this, and they would take all class period to design the voki (which would be fine if that were the lesson, but why would it be?), and then all or half of them wouldn't be able to get it on the page. My god what a colossal waste of instructional time.
Sigh. And somewhere, under sites we like, we're supposed to post a site we like (duh), but that is for Spring 09 people, and I believe I'm a Fall 09er. So if I post my site, (and I have one, believe me), will it be stuck on that old page? Will Fall 09 get our own page? Will the furtive Our Sandbox Pages ever show its face? I cannot answer these questions, but I am slogging on to Thing 10, rethinking whether there is a wiki in my future. I guess there could be if I had the proper medication.
Wow! Well, I'm sorry you had such a difficult time with this "thing". I will say that this seems to be the most confusing of all the "things" but most eventually figure it out.
ReplyDeleteThat's what we get for being perfectionists and moving ahead. I, too, felt a little frustrated when trying to get my sandbox wiki together. Even with the printed directions, I missed some things, couldn't find some things, and did some things that I didn't need to do. And I still keep going back to the wiki to change things when something new pops in my head or when one of my peers points out something new to me. I still haven't added a [toc], and apparently, I'd have to cut everything out of my wiki page and type [[toc]] at the top of the page and then re-paste everything back onto my wiki page to get this toc feature to work. Forget about it; I'm not doing it. Anyway, why do we need a toc when all of the c's are on one page?
ReplyDeleteBut then, I read NinjaMickey's blog about how she didn't find the sandbox to be quite so annoying. I started to re-examine my experience and realized that I had moved on to things 10 and 11 while waiting on my approval into the mighty box. So, while waiting for sandbox admission, I played or rather fought through Flickr's bazillion (wow..bazillion is really a word?) photos, created a slide show with 18 or 19 slides, developed my list of credits for said 18 or 19 slides, blogged, and commented on others' blogs. So when I was finally allowed to play in the sand, I really wasn't in the mood. And as so many of us know, when we're not in the mood, the fun is gone.