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haas:fall2015:common:journal_initialization_tutorial

Set-Up Your Class Journal

As with any great journey, both mementos and records need to be created to prove witness to the experience. Following will be instructions for setting up your class journal for the semester.

Step 0. Log into the wiki

In order to create and edit your wiki, you will need to be logged into the Lab46 wiki.

Step 1. Get to your journal space

Option 1. Type in the address directly

Assuming a username of jsmith1234 and a semester of spring2011, your journal will exist at:

Option 2. Click your way there

Your journal url is listed on the Lab46 Students Page… so if you:

  1. go to the Lab46 homepage: http://lab46.corning-cc.edu/
  2. Click on Student Pages.
  3. Find your name (should be in the top table).
  4. Click your “Class Journal” link

… you'll be taken there.

Step 2. Create your journal page

This is real easy. Once logged in and you arrive at that page, it'll say “This topic does not exist yet”.

If you click the “Create this page” button in the top left of your browser window, you'll be taken into the wiki editor, and can enter content.

All you need to do here is enter SOMETHING. Hit the spacebar once, or type some nonsense text. DO NOT MAKE AN ACTUAL JOURNAL ENTRY AT THIS TIME, AS ANYTHING ENTER WILL BE OVERWRITTEN BY THE JOURNAL INITIALIZATION

Once there is something there, click the “Save” button just below the wiki editing area.

You don't actually want to enter journal content at this point. This step merely initializes your journal, and in doing so, eliminates whatever information might be there. After you have successfully initialized your journal, THEN you can start adding content.

Step 3. View your journal

After saving, you'll likely be taken to a somewhat blank page, containing either the nonsense text you typed, or merely blank and now missing the “This topic does not exist yet” text.

Wait a few seconds.

Refresh your browser window.

You should see something that wasn't there before. This is your journal, ready to receive content.

YOU CAN NOW ADD CONTENT TO YOUR JOURNAL

Step 4. Editing your journal

The journal consists of several components:

  • start page: This is the index of the journal, that contains the title. If you click “Edit Page” you can change things (note: You'll likely not want to change anything other than the journal title and create/remove the optional subtitle).
  • intro page: This will contain your intro, which you can fill out to obtain the INTRO achievement, and also provides you with a space to introduce yourself to any journal readers.
  • week1 page: This will contain your entry for week #1 of the course.

Off to the right of both the intro and the week entry page should be a smaller edit button that you can click and be taken to an editing screen allowing you to edit JUST that section of your journal.

Each week, a new week page will materialize, allowing you to commence filling out the entry for that particular week.

Do NOT skip ahead. ONLY do entries for the current week or update past weeks (future week entries WILL be overwritten when that week arrives).

Step 5. Happy Journaling

That's it! Be sure to keep up with your journal entries each week, and you should be good to go in this regard.

Troubleshooting the Journal

New content doesn't show up

There may exist the scenario where you may make some changes to your journal, but those changes are not reflected when the page is loaded.

Certainly annoying, this can be solved by purging the cache on that page.

All you need to do is append the following to your journal's URL in the address bar of your browser: ?purge=true

… and hit enter on the address bar; your journal should load, and the new changes should now be present.

haas/fall2015/common/journal_initialization_tutorial.txt · Last modified: 2011/01/17 19:28 by 127.0.0.1