IAE Sandbox for Mary Jane





Introduction
For users of this Sandbox page, here is a "getting started" suggestion. Begin by spending some time reading the first part of this actual IAE-Pedia page. Note the way the page is laid out, the Table of Contents, the Headings, and so on. The overall page is similar in design to the other IAE-Pedia pages. After this reading/browsing effort, then log in and click on the edit button at the top of the page. You can then see what the page looks like in the editor. You can set a modern word processor so that What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG). The editor you are learning to use here is not WYSIWYG. You will need to learn some seemingly arcane codes in the editor.

The Information Age Education Wiki uses the software MediaWiki that was originally designed for the Wikipedia. Knowledge and skills in editing and writing in the IAE-Pedia readily transfers to editing and writing in the Wikipedia, and vice versa.

When the IAE-Pedia was originally created, the pages were open to editing by anyone who wanted to log in. The log in process was quite simple and where was no checking of credentials. A small number of people took advantage of this situation by messing up the documents and/or by adding spam. Since IAE lacks the needed volunteers and/or paid staff to regularly monitor such activities and fix the damage, it was decided to restrict log in just to a select group of people who were personally approved by the IAE-Pedia owner, David Moursund.

The IAE-Pedia contains a general-purpose "Sandbox" page where a person who is eligible to log in can practice editing and writing. The page you are now reading is designed to help people who have been given permission to log into the IAE-Pedia some information that is specific to the IAE-Pedia and to serve as a Sandbox for practice.

Fear Not!
In this Sandbox you can learn by imitation, experimentation, and "doing" environment. You cannot harm the overall IAE-Pedia. Of course, you can change (perhaps mess up) the contents of this specific page. However, even then there is nothing to fear. The WikiMdeia system automatically keeps backups so that the Administrators of the system (Ken Loge and Dave Moursund) can restore this page to its original content.

You already know how to use a word processor. When editing and writing in an IAE-Pedia article, you are using a limited purpose word processor. The word processor includes a limited spelling checker. When in edit mode, if it detects a word that is not in its spelling dictionary, it will underline the word in red. Here is an example of a mispeling. Control click on the word and you get the hints and options that you get from a traditional word processor.

IAE in a Nutshell
The goal of IAE is to help improve informal and formal education at all levels throughout the world. The IAE-Pedia is one component of IAE. In brief summary, here is a bulleted list of current components:


 * Three free IAE books published during 2011. A number of older books are also available for free download.


 * Free IAE Newsletter published twice a month. 783 subscribers as of 11/13/2011.


 * IAE Blog. 173 entries and a total of about 81,000 hits as of 11/13/2011.


 * Free IAE Wiki. 270 documents (Web pages) and over 1.25 million page hits as of 11/13/2011. See a listing of the pages ordered by popularity.


 * Other Free IAE documents. A "miscellaneous" collection of good stuff.


 * A major (and free) IAE initiative on math tutoring.

Getting Started in Edit Mode
To illustrate the headings of sections and subsections, this section is divided into subsections. The first level of headings are enclosed in == (double equal signs at each end). The second level of headings (sub headings) is enclosed in === (triple equal signs at each end).

All of the discussion given below about editing assumes that you are editing the entire document by clicking on the edit button in the top menu of the document page view. However, it is also possible to just edit a specific section. Notice the word edit at the right to the right of each section heading. Clicking on it puts you into edit mode for just that individual section. That is quicker and saves a lot of scrolling if you have a long document.

Editing Tools
When you first enter edit mode, you will find a set of editing tools at the top of the page. Through imitation, trial and error, and/or reading detailed information about MdeiaWiki, you will eventually become familiar with the editing features that you find useful. (You can also seek out books and Websites devoted to the details of the editor. See, for example, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing.

Page Header and Table of Contents
If you are creating your own page from scratch, you will want to do a copy and paste of the lines of code that create the Header and the Table of Contents.

Examples of Useful Editing Tools
Notice that the editing tools include provisions for making a bulleted list and a numbered list. Highlighting a word or phrase and clicking on the B or I editing tool gives you bold or italic text. You can see a bulleted list in the previous section. That section also illustrates how to insert clickable words or phrases that link to Websites.

Save Page or Cancel Edits
Next, look at the bottom of this page. The main options I use are Save page and Cancel. The first option saves the page you have been editing and takes you out of the editor and back to page view mode. The second option does not save the edited page. All of your edits since the previous Save page' are lost, and you are back to page view mode. If your editing involves only a modes amount of changes, checking the box This is a minor edit will save computer storage space in the archived copy.

Where You Are Going
Here is an example of a numbered list that gives some indication of steps from being a novice to becoming relatively competent.


 * 1) You are already familiar with using a search engine to find Websites of interest to you, and you know how to use a browser to read a Website.
 * 2) Most likely you have used the Wikipedia, so you are familiar with a Website produced using MediaWiki.
 * 3) The next step is to go into edit mode and learn to traverse the page. Notice there are two scroll bars. The inner on scrolls the textual page you are editing. The outer one scrolls the overall page that begins with the editing tools and ends with the Save and Cancel options. The inner (text) page is not moved by use of the outer scroll bar.
 * 4) The next step is to gain experience in using the text editor to make a few small edits such as correct an error in spelling or grammar, insert a sentence, or delete a sentence, and save (or cancel) the edited page.
 * 5) A possible next step is creating a new age from scratch. Notice in the left side menu these is a search box.  If you enter a Web page name that does not yet exist, and hit the Go button, you will be taken to an page that allows you to create a brand new page.
 * 6) You can learn to create tables . My experience is that this is a royal pain in the neck. A good way to get started is to find a table in the IAE-Pedia that has the general appearance you are looking for. Go into edit mode for that page and copy the table. Get out of edit mode (cancel) and go into edit mode for the page you are creating or editing. Paste the table code in. Then by careful imitation use that template  to create your own table. For example, remove the contents of the original table ad put your own content in. Change the number of rows and columns to meet your needs.
 * 7) Learn to enter enter images into the system, size them to fit your needs, and place them where you want them in a document. This involves learning to use the Upload file  feature of the toolbox located near the end of the left side menu. A list of all of the images that have been uploaded so far is available at http://iae-pedia.org/Special:ListFiles. Wikipedia has a huge number of uploaded images that one can use in the IAE-Pedia.
 * 8) Learn other features of the WikiMedia system, such as the Special pages. (See the next section.)

End of an IAE-Pedia Document
The typical IAE-Pedia document has three pieces at the end: References, Author(s), and Categories. All three are illustrated below. Categories are special "search term" descriptors for a document. The Special pages button in the Tool box  takes you to a large list of Special Pages. One section it titles Lists of pages. In that section, you can find Categories. That is a list of all of the categories that I have created. Try to make do with these categories rather than create additional categories.

Author or Authors
This page was initially created by David Moursund.