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=Welcome to the ESH488 Wiki! =

====**A Wiki is a place for collaboration. You might have used a wiki in another unit - you might never have seen a wiki before (although I'd be really surprised if you have never been to Wikipedia - which is probably the world's most famous wiki).** ====

====**Teachers the world over are using wikis for a variety of purposes - see if you can find a wiki, and then see if you can link at least one to this Wiki (try creating a link to a wiki on the Resources page - see below for information on getting around the wiki).** ====

The ads are annoying, I'm afraid, but are there to stay. It'd be best to learn to ignore them.
**Critical literacy is an important component of education in the 21st century. Some of the goals of ESH488 are to encourage you to: ** 2. Identify strengths and weaknesses in your literacy skills and develop concrete plans to address the weaknesses and build on your strengths. 3. Articulate your understanding of a range of literacy-related theories and perspectives and the implications of these for classroom practice. 4. Within a collaborative online environment design literacy curriculum materials suitable for the primary (Grades 3-6) classroom context. 5. Present information using appropriate conventions of academic communication and APA referencing. **
 * 1. Critically analyse current debates about literacy and literacy pedagogy in Australian schools.

There are a few things to note with this Wiki.

 * You cannot edit a page if you do not click on the "EDIT" button on the top of this page (look for the tab that says EDIT - it's next to the tab that says 'notify me').


 * If there is a button on the top right hand side that says PROTECTED that means you haven't signed in. You will need to sign in to get access to the edit button.

Editing the wiki
When you click on the EDIT THIS PAGE button an editing bar will open. It is very similar to the editing tools in many word processing programs (such as Word). You can make text ** bold **, or // italicised //, or __underlined__. You can click on the T button (which has what looks like an artist's palette behind it) and another dialogue box will open. It looks like this:



In this dialogue box you can change the font, the size, the colour, and do a range of other things. To change the colour you click on the black box and another dialogue box will open ... it's a matter of playing around with it to see what it can do.

Also, on the editing bar you can make headings, add numbered points, dot points, add a line, make links, add images ... etc etc. It is important that you save your work regularly. If you have trouble, see the HELP menu on the top right hand side.

The other tabs on each wiki page
Each page of the Wiki has a space for discussions, a history page and a 'notify me' tab. The history tab is very important. If you accidently delete the whole page, all you need to do is go to the history tab and you can retreive the work you thought you'd lost. Please check this out before getting in to a panic.

I hope you enjoy using this wiki and see its relevance to the primary classroom.

Other pages
You can see that there's a table of contents on the right hand side. Feel free to add resources, material, files, images, thoughts to your tutorial group's page.

You can create a new page by clicking on New Page which is on the top left right side of this page. Make sure you call it something that others will recognise.

Other Wikis
It might be a good idea to have a look at other wikis to see how they work. Here are just a few:

Web 2.0 Guru English Literacy Educational Wikis A grade 2 (US) wiki Earthbridges Wiki - this is not a literacy-related Wiki, but shows how wikis can be used collaboratively (and with a global perspective). It is also really nicely organised and might give you ideas about how you could structure this Wiki, or one your create yourself.