[Building Sakai] Rwiki

[John Norman]

I just checked 3akai. Linking in TinyMCE works as you would expect: as  
you type you can highlight a word and click on a 'link' button. At  
present there are 2 such buttons, the standard button that expects you  
to give the URL to any arbitrary page and define the behaviour of the  
link (e.g. open a new window) when clicked on. But there is a second  
'link' button created as part of the Sakai extensions to TinyMCE for  
the demo. This offers a list of existing pages in the site. I imagine  
it would be possible to extend this functionality to include 'create a  
blank page as a placeholder'.

Right-click on a highlighted word invokes a drop-down menu with the  
standard linking in the options. Again I imagine it would be easy to  
add the Sakai linking option to the drop down.

That would allow the 'flow' Sean calls for and which is indeed a major  
feature of working in a wiki. You would be typing along, highlight a  
word, right click and select 'create blank page as a placeholder' and  
continue typing.

So there is work to be done, but I don't believe it would be major  
work if we keep the buttons separate. A later enhancement might be to  
incorporate the Sakai button options in the standard linking dialogue  
box, but I imagine that might have maintenance implications as TinyMCE  
evolves. But it is worth checking out.

John

On 18 Jul 2009, at 06:01, Sean Keesler wrote:

> Just to be clear, the interruption in the flow occurs in traditional  
> authoring tools when I am typing along and realize that I want to  
> create another page about [this idea].
>
> What do I do now? I stop and open another window...author a little  
> nothing of a page so I can link to it...save it somewhere (where  
> should I put it? lesse...) and back to my original document and put  
> in the hyperlink to my stub.
>
> Now...what was I writing about? Where did my flow go?
>
> Sean
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 9:39 PM, Charlie Macchia <cmacchia at brainovision.com 
> > wrote:
> On 7/17/09 6:51 PM, "Sean Keesler" <sean at keesler.org> wrote:
>
> One of the real powers of wiki's for teaching is the ability to stub  
> out ideas and create links to non-existent pages. The result is an  
> invitation to extend and flesh out the rough ideas. Wiki syntax  
> isn't particularly important...but the idea that you can easily  
> state an area you, you peers, or your students need to come back to  
> and address later without interrupting the flow of ideas IS. A  
> traditional google doc approach doesn't really capture that  
> important functionality (unless I don't use it right ;).
>
> I can't help but but notice that many of the TWSIA uses of wikis  
> involved student "exploration" and "constructionist" uses that  
> probably exploited the ability of a wiki to facilitate organic  
> growth and exploration of interesting areas of student learning.
>
> Sean
>
>
> … as a musician ( http://homepage.mac.com/charliemacchia/iMovieTheater10.html 
>  ) I think I understand the process of constructionist efficiency,  
> though I’ve never called it that before; a bad tool can get in the  
> way, or worse, side-track – most dangerously - without the  
> ‘constructors’ even being aware that they’re being sandbagged: this  
> is why so many folks with MIDI studios write terrible music, their  
> brains get creative, then something happens which halts the process  
> and involves the tool, and now due to the tool, they have to spend  
> most of their energies problem solving rather than creating – this  
> makes every creative idea far more a case of heavy lifting than it  
> should be ( hint, there’s a reason the best song writers can sing  
> and play and instrument at the same time ).
>
> So, I appreciate your comment about the efficiency of the tool, by  
> way of creating stubs – you can guide and invite, while avoiding  
> getting trapped – nice.
>
> In short, it’s not the specific syntax of the tool that matters, in  
> that specific instance, it’s the ability to create this feature –  
> along with the collaborative abilities the tool should have to offer.
>
> Wish I knew more about this …
>
> Wish I knew more about how to code it …
>
> Guess that’s the way all this stuff starts out though – I love  
> TinyMCE’s interface however, and I’d love to see a wiki-like tool  
> that leverages it, and maintains, diffs, history, permissions etc.
>
> Has anybody done a pseudo-wiki with TinyMCE?
>
> Charlie
>
> _______________________________________________
> sakai-dev mailing list
> sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/sakai-dev
>
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to sakai-dev-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org 
>  with a subject of "unsubscribe"

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/pipermail/sakai-dev/attachments/20090718/3d844cff/attachment.html