User:Bduke/Workshop

This page is used for temporary sandbox activity and keeping stuff I am working on. Other sub-pages and sandboxes are:-

• User:Bduke/Welcome for subst'ing a welcome to others.
• User:Bduke/Admin stuff for admin-related stuff.

• User:Bduke/Scouting bibliography for transclusion into Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/Resources.

• English Historical Review, No. 404, Jul., 1987

• Baden-Powell and the Scout Movement before 1920: Citizen Training or Soldiers of the Future?Baden-Powell and the Scout Movement before 1920: Citizen Training or Soldiers of the Future? (pp. 934-942), John Springhall, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/572003
• Scouts, Guides and VADs: A Note in Reply to Allen WarrenScouts, Guides and VADs: A Note in Reply to Allen Warren (pp. 943-947), Anne Summers, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/572004
• Baden-Powell: A Final Comment (pp. 948-950), Allen Warren, Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/572005

• Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century, Nelson R. Block, (Author, Editor), Tammy M. Proctor (Editor), Cambridge Scholars Publishing (July 1, 2009), ISBN-10: 1443804509, ISBN-13: 978-1443804509

• {{Template:FreeContentMeta|The English language Scoutwiki|Scoutwiki|Image:Scout logo2.svg}}

http://www.new energytimes.com/Conversations/Fleischmann.htm New Energy Times

• UK regions
• NUTS regions or NUTS:UK or Regions of England
• Talk:Scouting in England with all regions tagged for merge, all now completed.
• User:Bduke/Sandbox - Not now in use. All these are now done.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Scouting/Country and region articles for possible transclusion into some of these article talk pages.

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Watch Computational chemistry

This is a "what if" idea. Jmol can show molecular images which can be rotated and modified by the user using a mouse. It is great way to display images of molecules in web pages. Could it be done in Wikipedia pages?

<script src="../../jmol/Jmol.js"></script> <!-- REQUIRED -->

Note relative path to Jmol.js.

<form>

<center>

<table><tr><td>

<script>

jmolInitialize("../../jmol"); // REQUIRED

jmolSetAppletColor("skyblue");

jmolApplet(250, "load data/ethane_e.pdb");

jmolBr();

</script>

</td><td>

</td><td>

<script>

jmolSetAppletColor("palegreen");

jmolApplet(250, "load data/ethane_s.pdb");

jmolBr();

</script>

</td></tr></table>

</center>

</form>

Note "data/ethane_e.pdb" is a path from the server pages base to the file "ethane_e.pdb", which contains the molecular coordinates in a particular format (the PDB - Protein Data Base format).

This shows two images side by side in a table. Probably only one at a time would be needed and possibly not in a table is what is required. Thus what is really needed may just be something like this:-

<script>

jmolInitialize("../../jmol"); // REQUIRED

jmolSetAppletColor("palegreen");

jmolApplet(250, "load data/ethane_s.pdb");

jmolBr();

</script>

Something has been done to put Jmol into MediaWiki, but it is not that recent. I'll try to follow it up in a couple of weeks after a Conference in Sydney next week. See MediaWiki article and the link there to Folding@Home article. This link shows that the Jmol developer, Miguel, is interested in it and more recently. There is also this --Bduke 23:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

(copied here from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) to study later.)

This is not really of relevence to Wikipedia, but it is to Wikiversity and it involves MediaWiki. I'm asking here as more people may read it. On standard web pages for education use, I regularly use forms for input of data and CGI scripts to analyse the data. In this way for example one can get the reader to answer simple quiz questions, get feedback on whether they are understanding the material, and run simple programs with the results presented back as a web page (actually we run very complex programs as well in this way, but that is another matter). These interactive uses are in my opinion crucial for web based education materials. I would like to use them on Wikiversity. Is it possible in MediaWiki? If so, where can I find the details? --Bduke 07:29, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It can be achieved through <input> tags, however the use is uncommon and therefore I'm not sure about the exact mechanism behind. Maybe some developers could help. --Deryck C. 12:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

See MediaWiki extensions. There may be an existing extension that does what you want, or you might write or request a new one. You might also investigate other wiki software, such as TWiki which inherently provides more interactivity, database, access control, and groupware features than MediaWiki does. For Web-based education, as opposed to Web-based documenting and reference (MediaWiki's strength), you may be better off with a structured wiki such as TWiki. To avoid duplicating efforts, see if there are any existing wikis that implement the kind of features and philosophy you want already. See: wikiindex:Category:Education, wikiindex:Category:Universities. --Teratornis 22:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks. There are some usefull pointers here, but using a different wiki software is not on, as I want to add some materials to Wikiversity, which uses MediaWiki like Wikipedia. If MediaWiki's strengths are really only for documenting and reference, then work needs to be done by the technical folk to make it more appropriate also for education as that is what Wikiversity is all about. If that is not done, I suspect Wikiversity will fail. The software has to support all projects of the WM Foundation. Please keep the comments coming. Thanks. --Bduke 23:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

You could probably do a simple quiz by having each of the separate choices hyperlinking to a page that says if you got the answer right or not like this:

Question: 1 + 1 =

a) 1

b) 2

c) 3

And instead of linking to the pages 'Correct' and 'Wrong', you could link to a subpage of the quiz page that says if you got the answer right or not, explains the question and then links you to the next question. To avoid people cheating and looking in the status bar for where the link leads, you could link the choices to a redirect to the answer page. Tra (Talk) 23:28, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

See help:inputbox at Meta. You can do some quite nifty things with inputboxes. An example of their use on Wikipedia is at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/nominate. Creating quizzes would probably be possible with a combination of inputboxes and parser funcions. It's a pity that radio buttons can't be used. Graham87 02:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

And it looks like there is a MediaWiki extension for this Quizzes. Graham87 02:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

When I wrote that documenting and reference are MediaWiki's strengths, I did not mean MediaWiki is restricted to these tasks, rather that the default distribution is optimized for them. MediaWiki is highly extensible, as a look at MediaWiki extensions makes clear. Other wiki software may provide other kinds of features "out of the box" which would require installing, or perhaps writing, extensions to MediaWiki. To see what extensions are already installed on Wikiversity, check its special page: Special:Version; it looks like you can request more extensions here: Wikiversity:Request custodian action.

Your prediction of failure for Wikiversity will almost certainly come true, because every artifact eventually breaks or becomes obsolete, just as people die, nations collapse, species go extinct, and the Universe eventually experiences Heat death. However, if I were betting money on the question of whether Wikiversity will "fail" within, say, a year, I would first consider the Wikimedia Foundation's track record of stunning success. The Foundation's products do not solve every conceivable problem, but they are popular with many people, so they must be doing enough things right to at least make their continued existence and use highly likely. At the moment, at least, Special:Statistics and Special:Recentchanges pages suggest Wikiversity is pretty active.

My point was really that Wikiversity is about education in a way that Wikipedia is not. Too many people in the modern university think that putting lecture notes on the web replaces the lecture. The expert advice is that web education has to be highly interactive and the current software does not strike me as being that suitable, but then I may need to study it much more. So far, I see Wikiversity as just adding lecture note type material. It will be a success when universities actually use it. --Bduke 12:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I searched the site for "quiz" and found this: Test and Quiz. Maybe that helps. --Teratornis 04:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

// importScript("Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/delsort.js"); // // DelsortConfig = { // debugLevel : 0, // watchDelsortedLists : 1, // watchDelsortedAfd : 1, // shortcuts : ['Authors','Australia','Lists'] // }