Changing a wiki - a learning process!

Received this information today from Theresa. She is so comfortable working in PBwiki and has really cemented our group.

I think our event is ready to go - just fix the blue and black questions and I think they are ready.
I checked all the links and access. They seem to working ok. I set up a thread in USQ Forum - explaining how to access - where to go and what the events will involve. I have distributed our contact details should anyone have a problem and sent some cheat sheets on how to access.

Yesterday, I finalized my portion of the event and worked on questions which would be appropriate for each of DeBono's Six Thinking Hats. That took me a long time to work on because I don't think I'm very good at writing the kind of probing questions which would promote discussion and analysis. That is what was the problem with the blogging earlier this winter - I didn't provide clear enough instructions and precise guidelines for blogging. I realize from the literature I've read and writing my first paper, that there must be

• clear guidelines,
• students need to see the purpose of participating
• there should be some weighting to the activity
• students need a timeline for participation
• students need an audience
• students need prompt, supportive and constructive feedback
• that writing is paramount to collaboration and interaction

But that's not what I was going to reflect upon here. When I was working on the wiki, I was changing things around, re-working the presentation and the questions, moving the hats around and all of a sudden, the HOME button didn't work! I was really worried that I had messed the wiki up and I didn't want to have Teresa fix it as she's put so many hours into it. Slowly but surely I experimented, used page history, checked the source code, uploaded an image and inserted it into a page, and got the links to work again! What is so amazing to me is that had I not started my courses at USQ, I wouldn't have the confidence to do these things! I learned how to add a page, links, edit settings as well as edit my pages. It took hours to accomplish all this but I feel really good about having completed the task for tomorrow's event.

The next thing I learned was to understand the purpose of DeBono's Six Thinking Hats. I had worked with them in Sheila's event but I've studied them further now and along with other literature I've read about fostering critical thinking, I feel overwhelmed with emotion. This course is a struggle for me and I'm probably not participating as much as is required, but I've learned so much.