Using Your Wiki Page

You've registered on the wiki and have your own user page. Right now you probably see the page as simply being a requirement for a course, but it can mean much more than that during your academic career. It can be the place where you track your growth and change as you move from course to course and year to year, containing notes on what you learn, links to online versions of the papers you write, and descriptions of professional experiences you have (e.g., during practicum and/or in conducting research). At some time in the future you may be considering graduate school, and a detailed overview of your learning experiences could be a powerful addition to your application. Here are some things to know if you decide to use the power of the wiki to capture your college experience.

• You control who can have access to your page. By default anyone is able to view your page, open it for editing, and make comments on it. You may not want that. Down at the bottom of your page when it's on the screen is a link to Edit ACLs. If you click on this link, you get access to the control settings for your page. Change the settings to whatever levels of control you wish to have. For example, only you should be able to edit your user page, so type your wiki name into the Write box, removing the plus sign (+) that's there now.
• You should consider using formatting in your page. The wiki page FormattingRules describes all the formatting codes available to you when you edit your page. They allow much more manipulation than the limited editing menu that appears on the top when you open your page for editing. You can even include links to graphic files, as I did in my page, ProfBayer, by putting in my picture.
• Through the wiki you have access to a personal calendar that only you can see. Log in to the wiki and open the page ScheDule. While it appears to be just another page on the wiki, open to everyone to see, when you access it you are viewing only your personal schedule page. Anything you put on it is only available to you. Give it a try.
• Your wiki page could be an excellent addition to a portfolio of your work while at the college. We recommend that students majoring in psychology who intend to apply to graduate school keep a portfolio. The portfolio web site can be found at http://moodle.canisiuspsychology.net∞. Let Dr. Bayer know if you are interested in having your own portfolio.
• You can expand your presence on the wiki at any time by adding a new page. You might want to do this if your page is getting too crowded and you want to develop a new topic that will take some space. Here's an example situation: you are working on a research project with a faculty member and you want a new page to contain your notes and links to documents. Name your new pages in a way that identifies them as belonging to you. Continuing with the example, Mary Jones wants to make a new page where she will place her notes from a research project on animal motivation. She would name it something like MaryJonesMotivationResearch. If she wanted to keep the page private, so that only she could read and edit it, she would change the ACLs accordingly by placing her wiki name (MaryJones) in the Write and Read boxes. (See the first indent above about editing ACLs.) To add a new page, type its name (e.g., MaryJonesMotivationResearch) in the small window on NewPage, click on the button to begin the page by opening the editing window for it, and put some beginning information in the editing window that opens. End by clicking on the Store button at the bottom. Now that your page is active on the wiki, you may want to control who can access and change it. By default the page can be read and modified by any registered user. To make it modifiable only by you, click on the EditACLs link down at the bottom of the page. Remove the + in the center box and type in your wikiname in its place. Store and now only you can change the page.
• Those enrolled in practicum can use their user page to report on their experiences. Simply make a practicum section using a heading and enter your daily experiences, perhaps in a diary format.