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Contemporary Educational Psychology/Chapter 10: Teacher-made Assessment Strategies/Performance Assessments

Performance Assessments
In performance assessments, students complete a specific task while teachers observe the process or procedure (e.g., data collection in an experiment) as well as the product (e.g., completed report) (Popham, 2005; Stiggens, 2005). The tasks that students complete in performance assessments are not simple (in contrast to selected response items) and might include the following: These examples all involve complex skills, but show that the term performance assessment is used in a variety of ways. For example, the teacher may not observe all of the process (e.g., she sees a draft paper but the final product is written during out-of-school hours); essay tests are therefore often considered examples of performance assessments (Airasian, 2000). In addition, in some performance assessments there may be no clear product (e.g., the performance may be group interaction skills). Two related terms, alternative assessment and authentic assessment, are sometimes used instead of performance assessment, but they have different meanings. Alternative assessment refers to tasks that are not pencil-and-paper and while many performance assessments are not pencil-and paper tasks some are (e.g., writing a term paper, essay tests). Authentic assessment is used to describe tasks that students do that are similar to those in the “real word.” Classroom tasks vary in level of authenticity. For example, for a Japanese language class taught in a high school in Chicago conversing in Japanese in Tokyo is highly authentic – but only possible in a study abroad program or trip to Japan. Conversing in Japanese with native Japanese speakers in Chicago is also highly authentic, and conversing with the teacher in Japanese during class is moderately authentic. Much less authentic is a matching test on English and Japanese words. In a language arts class, writing a letter (to an editor) or a memo to the principal is highly authentic as letters and memos are common work products. However, writing a five-paragraph paper is not as authentic as such papers are not used in the world of work. However, a five paragraph paper is a complex task and would typically be classified as a performance assessment.
 * Playing a musical instrument
 * Athletic skills
 * Artistic creation
 * Conversing in a foreign language
 * Engaging in a debate about political issues
 * Conducting an experiment in science
 * Repairing a machine
 * Writing a term paper
 * Using interaction skills to play together

Advantages and Disadvantages
There are several advantages of performance assessments.
 * 1) The focus is on complex learning outcomes that often cannot be measured by other methods.
 * 2) Performance assessments typically assess process or procedure as well as the product. For example, the teacher can observe if the students are repairing the machine using the appropriate tools and procedures as well as whether the machine functions properly after the repairs.
 * 3) Well-designed performance assessments communicate the instructional goals and meaningful learning clearly to students. For example, if the topic in a 5th grade art class is one-point perspective the performance assessment could be drawing a city scene that illustrates one point perspective. This assessment is meaningful and clearly communicates the learning goal. This performance assessment is a good instructional activity and has good content validity - common with well designed performance assessments.

One major disadvantage with performance assessments is that are typically very time consuming for students and teachers. This means that fewer assessments can be gathered so if they are not carefully devised fewer learning goals will be assessed – which can reduce content validity. State curriculum guidelines can be helpful in determining what should be included in a performance assessment. For example, Eric, a dance teacher in a high school in Tennessee learns that the state standards indicate that dance students at the highest level should be able to do demonstrate consistency and clarity in performing technical skills by:

 * 1) performing complex movement combinations to music in a variety of meters and styles.
 * 2) performing combinations and variations in a broad dynamic range.
 * 3) demonstrating improvement in performing movement combinations through self-evaluation
 * 4) critiquing a live or taped dance production based on given criteria.

Eric devises the following performance task for his 11th grade modern dance class. In groups of 4-6, students will perform a dance at least 5 minutes in length. The dance selected should be multifaceted so that all the dancers can demonstrate technical skills, complex movements, and a dynamic range (Items 1-2). Students will videotape their rehearsals and document how they improved through self evaluation (Item3). Each group will view and critique the final performance of one other group in class (Item 4). Eric would need to scaffold most steps in this performance assessment. The groups probably would need guidance in selecting a dance that allowed all the dancers to demonstrate the appropriate skills; critiquing their own performances constructively; working effectively as a team, and applying criteria to evaluate a dance.

Another disadvantage of performance assessments is they are hard to assess reliably, which can lead to inaccuracy and unfair evaluation. As with any constructed response assessment, scoring rubrics are very important. An example of holistic and analytic scoring rubrics designed to assess a completed product are in Tables 10-5 and Table 10-6. A rubric designed to assess the process of group interactions is in Table 10-7. This rubric was devised for middle grade science but could be used in other subject areas when assessing group process. In some performance assessments several scoring rubrics should be used. In the dance performance example above Eric should have scoring rubrics for the performance skills, the improvement based on self evaluation, the team work, and the critique of the other group. Since devising a good performance assessment is obviously complex, it may help if you:
 * Create performance assessments that require students to use complex cognitive skills. Sometimes teachers devise assessments that are interesting and that the students enjoy but do not require students to use higher level cognitive skills that lead to significant learning. Focusing on high level skills and learning outcomes is particularly important because performance assessments are typically so time consuming.
 * Ensure that the task is clear to the students. Performance assessments typically require multiple steps so students need to have the necessary prerequisite skills and knowledge as well as clear directions. Careful scaffolding is important for successful performance assessments.
 * Specify expectations of the performance clearly by providing students scoring rubrics during the instruction. This not only helps students understand what it expected but it also guarantees that teachers are clear about what they expect. Thinking this through while planning the performance assessment can be difficult for teachers but is crucial as it typically leads to revisions of the actual assessment and directions provided to students.
 * Reduce the importance of unessential skills in completing the task. What skills are essential depends on the purpose of the task. For example, for a science report, is the use of publishing software essential? If the purpose of the assessment is for students to demonstrate the process of the scientific method including writing a report, then the format of the report may not be significant. However, if the purpose includes integrating two subject areas, science and technology, then the use of publishing software is important. Because performance assessments take time it is tempting to include multiple skills without carefully considering if all the skills are essential to the learning goals.

Portfolios
“A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that tells the story of student achievement or growth” (Arter, Spandel, & Culham, 1995, p. 2). Portfolios are a purposeful collection of student work not just folders of all the work a student does. Portfolios are used for a variety of purposes and developing a portfolio system can be confusing and stressful unless the teachers are clear on their purpose.

When the primary purpose is assessment for learning, the emphasis is on student self-reflection and responsibility for learning. Students not only select samples of their work they wish to include, but also reflect and interpret their own work. Portfolios containing this information can be used to aid communication as students can present and explain their work to their teachers and parents. Portfolios focusing on assessment of learning contain students’ work samples that certify accomplishments for a classroom grade, graduation, state requirements etc. Typically, students have less choice in the work contained in such portfolios as some consistency is needed for this type of assessment. For example, the writing portfolios that 4th and 7th graders are required to submit in Kentucky must contain a self reflective statement and an example of three pieces of writing (reflective, personal experience or literary, and transactive). Students do choose which of their pieces of writing in each type to include into the portfolio.

Portfolios can be designed to focus on student progress or current accomplishments. For example, audiotapes of English language learners speaking could be collected over one year to demonstrate growth in learning. Student progress portfolios may also contain multiple versions of a single piece of work. For example, a writing project may contain notes on the original idea, outline, first draft, comments on the first draft by peers or teacher, second draft, and the final finished product. If the focus is on current accomplishments, only recent completed work samples are included. Portfolios can focus on documenting student activities or highlighting important accomplishments. Documentation portfolios are inclusive, containing all the work samples rather than focusing on one special strength, best work, or progress. In contrast, showcase portfolios focus on best work. The best work is typically identified by students as one aim of such portfolios is that students learn how to identify products that demonstrate what they know and can do. Students are not expected to identify their best work in isolation but also use the feedback from their teachers and peers. A final distinction can be made between a finished portfolio -such as used to for a job application - versus a working portfolio that typically includes day-to-day work samples. Working portfolios evolve over time and are not intended to be used for assessment of learning. The focus in a working portfolio is on developing ideas and skills so students should be allowed to make mistakes, freely comment on their own work, and respond to teacher feedback. Finished portfolios are designed for use with a particular audience and the products selected may be drawn from a working portfolio. For example, in a teacher education program, the working portfolio may contain work samples from all the courses taken. A student may develop one finished portfolio to demonstrate she has mastered the required competencies in the teacher education program, and a second finished portfolio for her job application.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Portfolios used well in classrooms have several advantages. They provide a way of documenting and evaluating growth in a much more nuanced way than selected response tests can. Also, portfolios can be integrated easily into instruction, i.e. used for assessment for learning. Portfolios also encourage student self-evaluation and reflection, as well as ownership for learning. Using classroom assessment to promote student motivation is an important component of assessment for learning which is considered in the next section.

But there are some major disadvantages of portfolio use. Good portfolio assessment takes an enormous amount of teacher time and organization. The time is needed to help students understand the purpose and structure of the portfolio, decide which work samples to collect, and to self reflect. Some of this time needs to be conducted in one-to-one conferences. Reviewing and evaluating the portfolios out of class time is also enormously time consuming. Teachers have to weigh if the time spent is worth the benefits of the portfolio use.
 * 1) Evaluating portfolios reliability and eliminating bias can be even more difficult than in a constructed response assessment because the products are more varied. The experience of the state-wide use of portfolios for assessment in writing and mathematics for 4th and 8th graders in Vermont is sobering. Teachers used the same analytic scoring rubric when evaluating the portfolio. In the first two years of implementation samples from schools were collected and scored by an external panel of teachers. In the first year the agreement among raters (i.e., inter-rater reliability) was poor for mathematics and reading; in the second year the agreement among raters improved for mathematics but not for reading. However, even with the improvement in mathematics the reliability was too low to use the portfolios for individual student accountability (Koretz, Stecher, Klein & McCaffrey, 1994). When reliability is low, validity is also compromised because unstable results cannot be interpreted meaningfully.

If teachers do use portfolios in their classroom, the series of steps needed for implementation are outlined in Table 10- 8. If the school or district has an existing portfolio system these steps may have to be modified.

(back to Chapter 10...)


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User:Banerjee

I am a research faculty in mechanical engineering. My goal is to use the content I have created on Wikiversity to create Wikibooks on various topics related to solid mechanics.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Banerjee


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User talk:Kiki723

Thanks for tagging Transwiki: Triage as having come from outside WB. It certainly did; I imported it from WP. I removed the tag since the edit history is complete, which is all the attribution required. Please see WB:RFI for more info.  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 00:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Kiki723


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Template:Using Wikibooks/Page

 Using Wikibooks

title: Template:Using Wikibooks/Page


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Using Wikibooks/About The Book

Who Wrote this Book?
This book, like all books on Wikibooks, has been written by ordinary users, just like you. Any person who visits Wikibooks can edit almost any page at any time. Some of the users are experienced Wikibooks veterans. Some are just passersby, fixing small grammar or spelling errors as they read. You can help to write this book, and you can choose how much you want to help and in what way.

You can fix errors that you see, or you can add entire lessons that you've learned from your own experience here, or you can start and write whole books. If you have questions about using Wikibooks, ask! When you've learned the answers, you can write them down in this book for future users and readers.

Feedback
One of the best tools in the writing process here on Wikibooks is feedback from readers. If you are a new user and have learned from this book, we would be happy to hear about it. Also, if you find certain portions confusing, or even know of certain information that is missing, we would like to hear about that too. One of the best places to provide feedback about this book is at the assistance reading room. When leaving a question or comment, include a link to the book page in question, and discuss what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you think can be improved.

How Is this Book Set up?
This book is arranged by job. Wikibookians tend to assume different roles when they visit Wikibooks. The vast majority of our visitors are readers, who want to learn for free. Some Wikibookians help fix problems, like spelling and grammar or formatting errors. We call this second group "Editors". Other Wikibookians actually create new books and generate new content. These people are called "Writers" or "Authors". Other Wikibookians keep watch over the website, performing cleanup and organizational tasks and taking on responsibilities that other users don't. This last group is known as the Wikibooks "Administrators".

People who come to Wikibooks don't always fall into just one category but can be a combination of some or all of the above groups. Some people perform tasks that are entirely different from all those listed above. Most tasks at Wikibooks can be very similar to the four listed above though, so this book will divide the material into those four groups. Just remember that even though this book breaks up our users into four primary roles, this is just a simplification and not a reality. You should feel free to perform any helpful tasks (and there are a lot to choose from!) at Wikibooks.

The first section provides an introduction to Wikibooks, and an overview of what this project is and how it works. The second section is devoted to quick-start guides for various audiences.

A Note on Form
This book uses a pretty simple organizational format that other books can feel free to copy. The decisions that the authors of this book have made are not the only way or even the best way to do things, however. It's good to follow existing examples when creating your own books, but keep in mind that there is no single "right way" to do things, and different books may have very different needs.

This book is specifically intended to be printable, so it is held to a particular standard that other books on Wikibooks do not need to follow. The internet makes available a number of technologies such as interactivity and multimedia that cannot be translated easily into a printed medium. Even though this book is focused on being printable, other books on Wikibooks are not limited by that restriction and can make use of various technologies to improve their educational benefits.

Beyond being a good example, this book aims to be a good resource for readers who are new to Wikibooks or merely curious about it. If you have feedback about this book, or would like to make changes and improvements, remember that this is a wiki and anybody is free to edit it at any time. This may seem like an unbelievable concept, but throughout the following chapters we are going to talk about how the editing process works and how easy it really is to get involved.

Usando o Wikilivros/Sobre este livro

title: Using Wikibooks/About The Book


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Using Wikibooks/What Is Wikibooks

What exactly is Wikibooks?
Wikibooks is a collaborative book authoring website, where users from all over the world work together to write textbooks and other types of instructional books on many topics. It is a Wikimedia project, operated by the same group of people who run Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation. You can edit this page, and almost all pages like it, at any time. That is the basic principle of Wikibooks: anyone can edit it.

History
The Wikibooks project was started in 2003, and has become one of the largest free e-book websites in the world. There is more information about Wikibooks in the information page Welcome. In the early history of the project there were many high and low points, but more recently things have begun to even out. Wikibooks has a large volume of books on a variety of different subjects, and a vibrant community of volunteers who write and maintain them.

Collaborative Community
Wikibooks is a completely volunteer online collaborative community. Many members of Wikibooks are anonymous in that they have not provided much, if any, information about themselves. Wikibooks does not have a government nor any form of centralized decision-making body. Instead, all decisions are decided by the community via discussion, compromise, and consensus.

All changes are implemented by our hardworking volunteers. Let's reiterate: anybody can edit nearly any page at any time, often anonymously, and there is no central governing body to keep everything running smoothly. How does the project function at all? How do we keep things running smoothly, much less make progress?

The secret is the dedicated volunteer community, a community that we will discuss in more detail later (later in the Introduction, and again later under Contributing To An Existing Wikibook).

What is Wikimedia?
The Wikimedia Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation that oversees the operations of Wikibooks, Wikipedia, and a variety of other projects. Some of these projects are:

 * Wikiversity
 * Wikisource
 * Wikinews
 * Wikiquote
 * Wikivoyage
 * Wikimedia Commons
 * Wikidata

What is Wiki?
The word "Wiki" is derived from the Hawaiian word "WikiWiki", which means "quick" or "fast". A wiki is a program that lets users generate content quickly. On almost every page in a wiki, there will be an edit button. Clicking on the edit button allows any user anywhere in the world to modify the contents of the page, and add new content. Some wiki websites restrict who can edit pages, but Wikibooks does not.

Wikitext
Pages in Wikibooks are written in a special format called "Wikitext". Wikitext is very similar in many respects to HTML, and several pages are written using a combination of Wikitext, HTML, and CSS.

The advantage of Wikitext is that it's very simple and quick to write. A large amount of formatting can be accomplished with a very small amount of effort. Also, the Wikitext helps to keep features on Wikibooks, such as page section titles and other formatting, standardized. The section The Wikibooks Editor will focus on using Wikitext.

Inclusion Criteria
Wikibooks has specific criteria for the inclusion of new materials. The name "Wikibooks" is a bit of a misnomer in the sense that this project does not allow all books to be hosted.

On the contrary, only the small subset of instructional non-fiction books are allowed to be hosted here. Traditionally the term used was "textbook", although blurring of the definition led to the current standing that wikibooks allows "Textbooks, manuals, and other instructional texts". The final interpretation of whether or not a particular book belongs on Wikibooks is left up to the community.

It is worth noting that Wikibooks overlaps considerably with the Wikiversity sister project. Materials that are outside the scope of Wikibooks may very well be suitable at Wikiversity.

Wikibooks also puts a premium on creating material, not just hosting material. While we do allow materials to be donated by authors, we always insist that the material must be editable. Also, historical works that are no longer under copyright should not be posted to Wikibooks, but instead should go to Wikisource.

Usando o Wikilivros/O que é o Wikilivros

title: Using Wikibooks/What Is Wikibooks


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Using Wikibooks/Discussion and Consensus

Who Makes Decisions?
If anybody can edit any page, who decides what goes where? Who keeps things in order? Who prevents this whole website from descending into total chaos?

The simple answer to all these questions is you. You, as an editor can help to keep things in operational order, so that everybody can share and enjoy Wikibooks.

The long answer is that people who edit Wikibooks form a type of community, a social group of people who want the project to grow and improve. It is through collaboration with the community that we develop policies and guidelines that all Wikibookians agree to follow, in order to keep the process running smoothly. With a username, you can join this community too, and help to keep everything in proper working order.

How are Decisions Made?
Wikibooks doesn't operate in a way that is similar to regular governments or groups with set leadership patterns. Simply put, Wikibooks doesn't have any official leaders, although there are always members who do take on informal leadership roles. Often, the best way to lead others into doing something is to do it yourself and set a good example.

Complicated decisions on Wikibooks are made by the community as a whole through a method called "consensus". Consensus is when the community discusses a situation, finds compromise, and comes to a general agreement on a proper course of action. Notice that this isn't the same as majority voting. Wikibooks is not a democracy, and we rarely vote. Even on occasions when we do cast votes, they are informal votes, used as a general way to measure consensus. A 51% majority never wins a discussion; you need to find compromise and get everybody, or almost everybody, to come to an agreement.

Why do we say "almost everybody"? Sometimes, people get angry and can just be unreasonable. If you can't be mature and work towards compromise, other people just won't listen to what you have to say. Other times — and this is something we especially appreciate and encourage — people who are in the minority tend to "stand aside". This means that a person will say "This is not what I want, but I will not stop the community from moving forward". Being respectful in this way never goes unnoticed, and it's precisely the users who take this option when necessary who are the most appreciated. After all, we may not always agree, but by being respectful and courteous, we can always improve and make forward progress.

The Reading Room
The central point for discussion and participation at Wikibooks is the Reading Room, a collection of discussion rooms where people are free to ask questions, and discuss various topics.

History
The Staff lounge was a page nearly as old as the Wikibooks project itself. Created in 2003, it was a single discussion page where all topics were discussed. The single-page structure of the staff lounge was unwieldy, and the page often became very large, a point that was brought up frequently.

The Administrator's Noticeboard was created in October 2006 as a separate discussion and notification area specific to Wikibooks Administrators. Special:Import had recently been enabled, and the Noticeboard was designed to be a centralized location where people could ask for help from admins.

In February 2007, the Staff lounge was broken into various sub-discussion rooms, including General Chat, Project Chat, and Technical Chat. A room specifically for new users and new book projects, the New Books and Users Chat was created in June 2007.

In October 2007, the Staff lounge was renamed the Reading Room. The Administrator's Noticeboard and the Bulletin Board were merged into the new discussion area in an effort to make finding and participating in discussions easier.

Discussion Rooms
There are several discussion rooms in the Reading Room, each with a particular theme. Often the line between them is a little blurry, so there are few hard rules about what kinds of topics can be in which rooms.

 * General: A discussion area for all discussions that relate to Wikibooks, but which do not necessarily fit into any of the other discussion rooms. When in doubt, post your messages/questions/comments to this room. A place where new users can introduce themselves.
 * Bulletin Board: Not a true discussion area, the bulletin board is a place where you can post announcements about important events.
 * Projects: A page to discuss and collaborate on various projects, such as books, organization, cleanup, and maintenance.
 * Proposals: A place to suggest improvements to Wikibooks, to its policies, methods, or any other area.
 * General Assistance:A place where Wikibookians can help each other solve problems encountered while contributing to books or otherwise taking part in the Wikibooks community.
 * Technical Assistance: A place to get assistance on technical issues, such as wikitext, JavaScript, MediaWiki, as they relate to Wikibooks. A good place to request help from people who are proficient wikitext editors or computer programmers.
 * Administrative Assistance: The place to report vandalism, request help from admins, or report problems. Most admins keep this page on their watchlists, and if you ask for help here you will usually get it quickly.

Posting a New Message
All the Reading Room discussion areas have a link at the top that says "Post a Comment". Clicking on this link will open an edit window where you can write a comment or question to post on the page. Make sure you:
 * 1) Give your post an appropriate title
 * 2) Sign your name with ~.


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Using Wikibooks/Finding A Wikibook

Finding Books
There are a number of methods for finding books on Wikibooks. We will discuss some of the methods here on this page.

Search
The Wikibooks interface includes a search tool on the left-hand side of the page. Type in a subject that you want to search for and click. This will display a screen filled with books and book pages that contain that search term.

Another option, if you know the title of the book you want to find or think you know it, is to type in the title of the book and click. The go button will take you to the page if it exists, or else it will take you to the search page.

Some books exist for common topics, such as Algebra, Biology, or Rhetoric. Typing in a common subject name may very well take you to a book on that subject.

Shelves
Wikibooks has experimented with a number of organizational methods in the past, some of which turned out to be very unwieldy or difficult to use for a number of reasons. Instead of using an existing organizational method like a traditional library would use, we use a custom system that's designed to work well with our wiki software.

Wikibooks uses a series of "shelves", organized at the top level into Departments. From that departments page, you can easily navigate to books based on subject, reading level, audience, and other metrics. Every shelf page will contain a list of books on that subject, a list of sub-topics, and possibly a few other lists as well.

Card Catalog Office
Like ordinary libraries, Wikibooks has a card catalog office (CCO) that we use to keep our books organized. The CCO keeps books organized using several methods, including by subject, by completion status, by reading level, and alphabetically by book title. There is a link to the CCO in the "navigation" box (typically located on the left-hand side of the page). Click the link that says "browse" to go to it.

Books on Wikibooks are broken down by subjects. There are ten major subject areas: Computing, Engineering, Humanities, Languages, Mathematics, Miscellaneous, Recreational activities, Science, Social sciences, and Standard curricula. In addition, there is also a department for Wikijunior, and a smaller one for Help books; there is also the Cookbook:. Each major department contains several shelves covering subtopic. Each shelf page displays a brief summary of the subject, a list of books related to the subject, a list of subtopic shelves, a list of featured books, a link to a Wikipedia page on the topic, and other useful information as well. There are many different shelves on Wikibooks, and more are created on a regular basis.

Shelves

The department and shelf pages are an important navigational tool for finding books. They can be accessed from Wikibooks Stacks/Departments. From there, you can navigate through the shelves to find books you are interested in. Books are listed by the subject material, but they are also listed in other ways as well. Here are some ways that a book can be listed in the shelves:

 * 1) By reading level
 * 2) By book status
 * 3) Whether the book has a print version, a PDF version, or both.
 * 4) Books for particular audiences, such as Wikijunior books for children.

Featured Books
Clicking the "Featured Books" link on the left side of the page in the "navigation" box will take you to the list of featured books on Wikibooks. Featured books are not perfect, but they are some of the best that we have to offer, and are good examples of what a new book can aspire to.

If you find a book that you particularly like, and want to see it listed as a featured book, you can nominate it. The Wikibooks community will discuss it, and if they agree in general, the book will be promoted to featured status.

Usando o Wikilivros/Encontrando um wikilivro

title: Using Wikibooks/Finding A Wikibook


text:
Using Wikibooks/Printing A Wikibook

Taking it With You
Many book authors set their books up with a print version, a PDF version or a collection. These are useful tools for saving an entire book to your hard drive, or for printing out a book for use offline. In this chapter, we're going to talk about all these options and how they are used.

Using Print Versions (HTML)
A print version is a combination of all the book's pages, loaded into one webpage and specially formatted for printing. Print versions for large books might take a long time to load in your browser, especially if you are on a slow connection. Some print versions are so big that they've been broken up into several pages to prevent overloading the server or the browser.

Print versions, unlike PDF versions, will automatically update when one of the included pages is updated. This means that a print version will always display the most recent version of all the pages in the book. Print versions are designed to look good when printed, but might not look very good in your browser. To make sure you see what it's supposed to look like, use the "Print preview" option in your browser before printing.

If a book has a print version, there will usually be a notice on the main page of that book about it. If there is no notice, there probably isn't a print version available. If there is no print version and you would like there to be one, you can ask the authors to create it for you, or you can jump in and do it yourself. We will discuss how to make print versions in The Wikibooks Author (Using Wikibooks/Print versions and PDFs).

Using PDF Versions
Some book authors go the extra mile and produce a PDF version of their book. PDF versions can be saved to your hard drive, and can be opened in a PDF reader. Contrary to HTML print versions, a PDF version might not be up to date with the current text of the book on Wikibooks. For the most up to date version, you should check back on Wikibooks to see if there have been any changes.

To create PDF versions, see Using Wikibooks/Print versions and PDFs.

Using Collections
Wikibooks has a special software extension called the collections extension. With the collections extension, you can create groups of pages called "collections". In most cases, the pages in a book are used to create these collections, although there is no rule about this: You can pick and mix pages from multiple books together in a collection, if you want.

On the left-hand side of your screen, there is a box with links in it that says "create a book". The links in this box can be used to create collections of pages, or to load a saved collection. We will discuss how to create and use collections in more detail in The Wikibooks Author.

Once you have created a collection, or loaded a premade one, you can go to Special:Collection to see various options. You can save your collection, you can download it in PDF or ODT format, or you can have it printed by our print-on-demand partner PediaPress. PediaPress will print and bind your collection into a book and mail it to you for a reasonable price. A portion of proceeds from these book sales goes to the WMF. None of our authors get any royalties for these books, that helps to keep the cost down for students who need them cheap!

For more information about Collections, see the relevant chapters in The Wikibooks Author (Using Wikibooks/Print versions and PDFs), or visit Help:Collections.

Usando o Wikilivros/Imprimindo um wikilivro

title: Using Wikibooks/Printing A Wikibook


text:
Using Wikibooks/Using A Wikibook In A Classroom

Wikibooks in Class
Books on Wikibooks are textbooks, and are ultimately designed to provide a free quality alternative to traditional printed textbooks. This is a major benefit to schools and students that cannot afford traditional textbooks.

It should come as no surprise then that some teachers around the world print and use Wikibooks in the classroom.

Books on Wikibooks are generally in a state of construction. Books are never "complete", because they can always be updated, improved, expanded, reformatted. However some of our better books, such as our featured books, are good enough that they should be usable in a classroom.

Finding A Textbook On Wikibooks
Finding a free textbook to use for a class on Wikibooks is similar to the process of finding a book to use from a traditional book publisher. First, suitable titles must be found from the catalogue. Once found, books need to be read and evaluated to see if they are consistent with your class plans. Then, the book needs to be obtained for the students.

Finding books on Wikibooks is easy, and has been the subject of one of our previous chapters. Keeping in mind that many of our books are in active development, the first best place to look for a new book will be at our list of featured books. These are the books that the Wikibooks community thinks are the highest quality. These aren't the only books in a usable condition, of course, just the best of those.

Books in a higher state of maturity tend to have printable versions, PDF versions, or collections. Lists of books with these features will be visible at Category:Books with print version, Category:Books with PDF version, and Category:Books with Public Collections.

Conversely, visiting Wikibooks Stacks/Departments will allow you to navigate to your particular subject. Most shelf pages will contain lists of books in that shelf that are featured, or that have printable versions in one of our standard formats.

Evaluating A Wikibook
Wikibooks has a new software feature called "Flagged Revisions", or "flaggedrevs" for short. The Flaggedrevs extension allows each page on the website to be evaluated in terms of its content, its accuracy, and its coverage. When looking at a book, see if the page has been rated previously, and if it has, see what other reviewers think about it. Obviously the opinions of the teacher will be more important than those of random internet strangers, but reviews can give a good idea about what other people think about the pages, and what features other people think are important.

As you're evaluating the book, feel free to submit a few page reviews of your own, if you are able. We will discuss the reviewer permissions and processes in a later chapter. Also, feel free to post reviews, questions, or comments on the associated talk pages. This way, any problems that you find can be addressed and resolved by other volunteer editors at a later time. Remember, books that aren't perfect for your application yet might very well become perfect for you in the future, if you're willing to write reviews, post suggestions, and maybe make a few edits yourself.

Printing and Distributing a Wikibook
Once you have a book selected for use in your class, you are going to need a way to distribute that book to your students. You could just give them the URL of the book, but that's a naive approach: The book could change on a daily basis, which could make your lesson plans difficult to follow. Plus, your students could be making changes that affect the quality of material that other students see. What you need to do is get a stable version of the book that you and your class can rely on. There are a few methods to do this:

 * 1) Permanent Links: On the left hand side of the screen, you may need to scroll down to see it, is a link that says "Permanent link". Clicking this will take you to the current specific revision of the page. This revision is preserved in the website database and is never changed. If you go to this link, the page will always look exactly the same, even if additional edits or changes are made.
 * 2) PDF Versions: Some books have a pre-made PDF version that is uploaded to the server. These PDF files are not going to change once you download them, but they also won't reflect any additions or improvements that have been made to the book.
 * 3) Collections PDF: From a page collection, the software can automatically create a PDF or ODT file for download based on the most recent versions of the pages in the collection. This means that edits, additions, and improvements that you make will be reflected in the generated PDF file. With a collection loaded, go to Special:Collection and click the "download" button.
 * 4) Collections Print-on-Demand: PDF versions and permanent links are nice if your class has good access to a computer and the internet. However, sometimes it's better to just have a printed book that the students can bring with them into class without needing to bring their computer too. For these cases, Wikibooks has a print-on-demand feature through our publishing partner PediaPress. With a collection loaded, click "Order this book" at Special:Collection to order a copy (or 30) from PediaPress.

Class and Group Projects
Traditionally, books are just static sources of information written in one particular way which may not be very helpful to all students in your class. Instead of teaching from a "Dead" or "Static" book, consider using Wikibooks as an interactive learning resource instead. Several groups and classes have successfully used Wikibooks to host interactive book-writing projects. These class projects are very common on Wikibooks, and our members do everything they can to encourage them. Students from one class can write books for students in future classes, so it's a powerful tool to spread knowledge.

Why use a Wikibooks-based Project?
Wikibooks makes a very attractive platform for class and group projects for a number of reasons:

 * 1) Not completely insulated: On Wikibooks, you're using the "real" internet, and have the possibility to interact with real people on it in constructive ways. We're relatively insulated from the bad parts of the internet because of our strict focus on educational goals. Learning how to work in very diverse groups, with people from other countries and cultures, is a very good thing in addition to your primary learning objectives.
 * 2) Helpful community: At wikibooks, we have a large number of volunteer editors who will be willing to help your project succeed. We can help fix problems, improve formatting, and make helpful suggestions along the way. With a little bit of input and feedback, you can create a higher-quality result than you might be able to otherwise.
 * 3) Integrated monitoring: MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikibooks, has a number of features for keeping track of people and their edits. On Wikibooks, you can view the complete contribution history of each student, and determine when they are making their edits, and what quality each individual edit has. You can see how students are communicating together on talk pages, and you can see how pages dynamically improve as a result of these interactions.
 * 4) Easy to use: The wikitext markup at Wikibooks is relatively small but powerful, and the vast majority of editing that you and your class will want to do will be simple to implement. Wikitext is much easier than standard HTML, but the two are mixable if more power of expression is needed.

Picking a Project
Picking a project for students to do is almost as difficult as doing the project itself. Many teachers underestimate how difficult it can be to write a complete book. It's quite a daunting task! Teachers may also underestimate the amount of time it takes for students to get acclimated on the site. It's important to pick a task that students will be able to complete, so that there is a real sense of accomplishment for them at the end. Here are some suggestions:

 * 1) Improve an existing book: Take a book that's in good condition, and incrementally improve it by adding examples, images, and notes.
 * 2) Adopt a forgotten book: Find a book that's been under-developed and try to breathe new life into it. Evaluate the quality of existing materials, and write your own to fill in the blanks.
 * 3) Create a new book: This is the hardest task to do. Pick a subject on which Wikibooks does not have an existing book and write one. Make sure to plan it out and try to follow some of our best practices. If you need help or input, our team of volunteers is always ready to help.

Running a Project
The way you manage a project can significantly affect its success. Here are a few methods to consider:

 * Every student writes a chapter: In this situation, you will find that groups are not working until the class reaches their subject. Groups at the end of the book will do less work than groups at the beginning.
 * Everybody writes a chapter together: In this way, you can have your whole class working on the most recently discussed material. However, with many hands working on a single page, you run the risk of edit conflicts. Also, some students may fall behind because they can't find enough unique work to do that other students aren't doing first.
 * Everybody writes a feature: Each student writes an individual feature of a page, the whole class works on a single page together. A feature can be an example, or a section, or a table, etc. Every student/group has a specific task to complete, but tasks will be asymmetrical.
 * Students write and review: Students are in charge of writing certain pages or certain features, but are also in charge of reviewing the work of other students. This helps to promote communication and increases overall quality of the produced book. Students spend more time reviewing and less time writing, which can reduce the volume of generated material in the end.

Suggestions
Here are some miscellaneous suggestions:

 * 1) Make sure all groups follow the writing process: Make plans, draft the material, edit, and revise. Editing and revising can continue throughout the entire project, after initial drafting has been completed.
 * 2) Don't hesitate to break process: it's a wiki, after all. If you've drafted, edited, and revised, feel free to draft another section, or help somebody else with editing and revising.
 * 3) Keep track of contributions. Keep track of individual student contributions. Students that edit early and often are more likely to produce higher-quality materials than those that try to dump large volumes of content in a single edit.
 * 4) Use edit summaries. Every edit should have a description. What did you edit? How much did you edit? Did you write new content that needs to be reviewed, or did you review existing content?

Usando o Wikilivros/Usando um wikilivro numa sala de aula


text:
Using Wikibooks/Correcting Errors

Errors
You may be here to read, but you also have the power to help if you want to. Writers aren't perfect, and sometimes when a page is written it will contain small spelling and grammar errors. You can always alert other people about the error if you want to, but it's usually easier to fix it yourself. If you find yourself fixing errors frequently, perhaps you need to progress to the section The Wikibooks Editor to learn how to fix things more efficiently.

Wikis aren't static and unchangeable like ordinary printed books are: They are interactive and dynamic. Anybody can change them at any time, even you. This concept may be very new to many people, so this chapter will serve as a gradual introduction to it.

Fixing Errors
To fix an error that you find, click the "edit this page" tab at the top of your screen, find the error, correct it, and click. It's an easy process, but there are a lot of complicated things that you can do on a page that aren't all self-evident. We'll save discussion about most of the complicated features for The Wikibooks Editor. Here are some tips to getting started:

 * 1) Click the "[edit]" link next to a heading to edit only that section. The "edit this page" tab at the top allows you to edit the whole page at once. If the page is very large, finding a single mistake in the wikitext can be difficult. If you edit only one section, however, there is less to look through and individual words or sentences will be easier to find.
 * 2) Start small! You don't need to post a whole chapter or essay to be a valuable helper here, every single little fix counts. Fix one misspelled word, or one misplaced comma.
 * 3) Click the  to view your changes before you save them, to make sure you are editing the right place.
 * 4) Ignore formatting. There are lots of symbols in wikitext that might be confusing:  . Don't bother with these for now. Focus on the words around these symbols.

Every error that you fix improves the quality of the book, both for yourself, and also for our other readers.

Reviewing Pages
Read a lot of books or pages here on Wikibooks? You might be interested in our facility to review pages. To become a reviewer, post a message (see details about this below) at WB:RFA asking to become an "editor". Then, you will be able to review pages. The next chapter will discuss reviewing pages.

Getting Help
Sometimes a page will have complicated formatting, and you will find yourself in over your head. Don't worry, it happens! If you feel like you do need help from an experienced editor, ask for help at The Reading Room. Don't hesitate to ask for help when you need it - there are many volunteers around who are happy to help, and happy to teach you how to help out more as well.

If you want to raise an issue about a page, and try to start a discussion about a possible way forward, or if you see something that needs to be changed but you don't know how to do it yourself, there are two possible options:
 * 1) Leave a note on the page's discussion page. Create a header that says, in short, what the problem is, and then describe the problem and possible solutions (if any). Other users will see this discussion and will discuss it to find a solution.
 * 2) Post a note about it at the Reading Room. This option should be used for big problems, or problems which affect many pages in a book or even many books. The Reading Rooms should not be used to discuss every small problem from every page, but can be used to alert the community to larger or more wide-spread problems. Also, this can be a useful alternative to (1) when editors of a book disagree about the proper way to fix a problem, and community input on the issue is desired.

Messages and Communication
There are lots of reasons why you might want to get in touch with another Wikibookian: To commend them for their hard work, to ask for help or guidance, to leave helpful suggestions, to discuss ideas about a book or a page, or just to say hello. Getting in touch with other wikibookians is easy, and there are several places to do it:

 * 1) User talk pages. Every user has a user talk page. If a users's screenname is "JoeWikibookian", his user talk page is at "User talk:JoeWikibookian". User talk pages are great places to talk to an individual user.
 * 2) Discussion pages. Every page has a discussion page. At the top of the page, click the "Discussion" tab. This is where you can talk about an individual page.
 * 3) Community Pages. The Reading Rooms are a series of pages where the community can talk about wide-spread issues. If you want to get some general input about a topic, or want to make some kind of announcement, do it there.

Leaving a message or a note on one of these pages is easy. You can click "edit this page", find the appropriate place (usually at the bottom of the page), and then click. Or, you can click the "+" tab at the top, enter a title and a message, and then click. It's up to you how you want to do it, but you should explore both methods.

When you write a message on a talk or discussion page, you should always sign it with --~. This posts your personal signature (so people know who to respond to) and also a timestamp (so people know when the message was left).

Vandalism
Sometimes a vandal will add inappropriate material to a page, or remove all the content from a page. It can be hard work to fix this, so if you find vandalism, report it at Administrative Assistance. Our team of volunteers and administrators will fix the problem for you. If you want to learn how they do this, you may be interested in reading The Wikibooks Editor or The Wikibooks Administrator.

Becoming an Editor or Author
Wikibookians are all volunteers, and they get to choose their roles and their level of involvement. Wikibookians who find themselves fixing errors, or adding new material are taking the first few steps to becoming an editor or an author here. It is important that you find the tasks that you want to work on, and that you do things in a way that you enjoy. If you have decided that you want to be a more active participant here at Wikibooks, there are many possible paths for you to follow.

For more tips on how to become an editor, and make Wikibooks a better place, read the section on ../How To Edit A Wikibook/.

For more tips on how to become an author and create new books and new book content, see ../Contributing To An Existing Wikibook/ and ../Starting A New Wikibook/.

Notice that this is not an exclusive decision, you can easily become an author and an editor, or you could find a role that is neither of the two. The important part is that you find something that you enjoy doing.

title: Using Wikibooks/Correcting Errors


text:
Using Wikibooks/How To Edit A Wikibook

Editing Wikitext
We have an entire book about Wikitext editing which covers all bases, not just those that are used here at Wikibooks. Check out Editing Wikitext for more information about how to edit existing pages and create beautiful new ones. (For a quick overview, see the ../Wiki-Markup/ section later in this book).

Why you should edit...

People decide to edit Wikibooks for many different reasons, so it's tricky to try to understand why.

Some people, while reading, find a grammar error and it annoys them; they see it and they want it to be fixed, instead of waiting for somebody else to do it.

Nevertheless, it's faster and easier to just edit the page and do it yourself.

Some people really want to share the things that they know and help other students to learn for free versus buying textbooks on the web.

Some people edit because they are bored and want a constructive hobby.

Some people edit because their teachers are grading them!

There are even those whose job it is to create Wikis for their companies and this forces them to take a harder look at Wikis and through this they easily spot errors and feel inclined to correct them.

There are many reasons why people might edit, but the reasons don't really matter in the end. The important thing is that you are participating in the Wikibooks project, and that you have taken the first step to joining the Wikibooks community.

How to Edit
Almost all pages have a link at the top that says "edit this page". Click that link and it will take you to a page where you can edit and save the text of the page. We say "almost all" because some pages can be protected against being edited, for a variety of reasons. If a page has been protected, the "edit this page" link will be replaced with a "view source" link. You can view the source code of the text to see how it is written, but you cannot save any changes on protected pages.

When you edit a page, a text box will be displayed with the current text of the page already loaded in it. You can change or add things to the page, and when you are done, you can save it.

Clicking the button will show you a preview of the new page at the top, and will provide you with the edit window at the bottom. No changes will be saved if you preview.

Clicking the button will save your changes, and display them on the page for anybody who reads it.

If you have just made a small edit, click the check box that says "This is a minor edit". This will record the edit as being a minor edit, and not one that other editors need to inspect carefully.

Edit Summaries
The text box called "Summary" gives you an opportunity to explain what you did and why you did it. You do not need to write a summary, but it is considered good practice. If you just make a small edit, such as a spelling or grammar edit, you can write simply "copyedit" or "grammar" or "spelling". This is good enough. If you make a larger or more substantial edit try to write, briefly, what you did and why. That will help to keep other proof-readers on task when they come to check your work for errors.

When other readers and editors look at the page's history, they will only see your edit summary. This means that if a person wants to see how a page has changed, they can either read the edit summaries (if they are provided) or else they have to scan the page line-by-line looking for changes.

Plus, an edit summary is a good way to tell whether a person is a vandal, or if they are simply a new user who may be a little confused about policy. Writing an edit summary such as "I tried to fix something, but I dont know if i did it right", or even "I need help!" is likely to indicate that you are not a vandal, and it will also attract help from users who are watching the recent changes list.

Keeping Track of Edits
There are a variety of ways that you can keep track of edits on Wikibooks. You can keep track of your own edits, edits to a particular page, and edits made by the entire community. We will discuss those things now.

Recent Changes
All the changes made by all Wikibooks editors on all pages are listed on the Recent Changes List. You can reach this list by clicking on the "Recent Changes" link in the "navigation" box on the left side of the screen. Here, you will see the changes made, in reverse chronological order, with the most recent change at the top of the list. Each change will contain the title of the page edited, the name of the user (or the IP address of the person, if they are not logged in), and various other data. Some of the other data that might be included are:

 * M or N:M means the edit was a minor edit. N means the edit is the first one on that page, and that the page is new.
 * (+123): In parenthesis will be the number of characters have been added to or removed from the page. If the number is small, it was likely a small edit. If the number is large, it was a major change.
 * Edit Summary: The edit summary, if the person wrote one before they saved the page. Sometimes, if the person did not write a summary, an automatic one will be generated by the software.

My Watchlist
If you have an account, and if you are logged in, you have access to a personal watchlist. Your watchlist is a list of pages that you want to keep track of. When you view your watchlist, by clicking the "my watchlist" link at the top of the page or by going to Special:Watchlist, you will see a listing of all the recent changes to the pages on your watchlist. These changes will be displayed in the same way as the edits on the recent changes list are displayed.

(If you don't have an account yet, see ../Setting Up A User Account/).

There are a few ways to add a page to your watchlist. When you edit a page, there is a checkbox to "Watch this page". Checking that box adds the page to your watchlist. A second way is to click the "Watch" tab at the top of the page. A more advanced way is to go to the list at Special:Watchlist/raw, and add pages. In the raw watchlist view, you may add one page title per line, and as many pages as you want at once. However, keep in mind that spelling and capitalization count!

The Watchlist has a special feature: it only shows the most recent edit to each page, not every individual edit. That means if there have been 10 edits to a page since you last checked it, your watch list will only show the most recent edit, not all 10 of them.

The Watchlist tab in My Preferences contains a number of options concerning the use of your watchlist. You can set options to automatically watch pages that you edit, or pages that you create. This can be very helpful if you are creating a new book, and want to automatically add pages to your watch list as you create them.

History Pages
Every page has an associated history page. To get to the history page, click the "history" tab at the top. The history tab is to the left of the "edit this page" link.

The history pages allow you to keep track of how a page changes over time. The history page shows the same information that the recent changes list and the watchlist show.

The history page also lets you view old versions of a page. In the history page, click the links to the different versions to see what the page used to look like.

RSS and ATOM Feeds
The recent changes list, both to the whole Wikibooks site and to the history pages are available as RSS and ATOM feeds. Users who have RSS or ATOM aggregators may find this functionality useful.

There currently are no RSS or ATOM feeds for your personal watchlist, however. This is a known issue, and is one of the features most frequently requested from the software developers.

Live Edit Feed
Users who are familiar with IRC may be interested in watching the real-time edit feed at irc://irc.wikimedia.org/#en.wikibooks. This feed shows, in real-time, all the edits and changes that are made, as they happen. This includes all the information that appears in the recent changes list, but is constantly updated.

In addition to the live feed, several members of the wikibooks community operate various patrol bots. These bots monitor the live feed looking for suspicious edits. These bots then report suspicious edits in irc://irc.freenode.net/#vandalism-en-wb. Users who are interested in becoming active vandal fighters tend to enjoy the irc interface.

Watching All Pages in a Book
It is a common request for new authors to want to watch all pages in a given book. For some of our more prolific authors, they want to watch all pages in several books! There are several ways to accomplish this:
 * 1) Add all pages in the book to your watchlist. If you are creating a new book, go to Special:Preferences and check the box "Add pages I create to my watchlist". This will automatically add all the new pages in your book to your watchlist (but will not add pages other people create, automatically). If the book is an existing book, or if other people are working on it too, you might also want to check the box "Add pages I edit to my watchlist". This will automatically add pages that you edit to your watchlist. With all the pages on your watchlist, you can go to Special:Watchlist to see changes to those pages.
 * 2) Go to Special:RecentChangesLinked and type in the name of your book. If you add a forward-slash and the name of your book, you can create a direct link to this list. For example:
 * 3) * Special:RecentChangesLinked/Algebra
 * 4) * Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikibooks:Reading room

Diffs
A "diff" is a special feature that can show you the difference between two versions of a single page. When you view a diff, the changes will be displayed at the top of the page, and the page content will be displayed below.

On the recent changes and watchlist pages, there will be a link next to each edit that says "(diff)". Clicking this link will show you the diff for that edit, showing you what changes have been made to the page. If you see an edit in the recent changes or the watch list that seems suspicious, look at the diff and make sure the edit is a good one.

In the history page, you are given more options. You can use the diff feature to compare any two page versions, not just the most recent edit. In the history page, select the radio buttons for the edits you want to compare and click the button.

If you are editing the pages, and you want to see the diff for your edit before you save it, you can click the. This will display the diff for the page that you can examine before you save.

Copyediting
One of the most valuable types of contributions are random copyedits to pages that contain errors. These edits can be short and quick, enabling editors to perform many such edits over a wide variety of pages in a short period of time.

Copyeditors all have different strategies. One way to go about it is to use Special:Randompage to travel to random pages across the wiki. This will expose the copyeditor to a large variety of different subjects and styles. However, since each book has its own style guidelines (many of which are implicit, not explicit), it is typically better for many copyeditors to use the "Random Book" function (on the left side of the screen, in the "navigation" box). This function will take the reader to the main page of a random book. From there, the copyeditor can traverse all the pages of the book, making sure that style guidelines, templates, and navigational tools are implemented in a common way.

Adding Pages
These notes will explain how to add pages to a wikibook, and how to reference these pages from within the wikibook.

Moving and Renaming Pages
Moving and renaming pages is a surprisingly common task. What is more surprising to many new users is how easy it is to do. Moving a page is as simple as clicking the "Move" tab at the top of the page. This will take you to the move-screen, where you are given the opportunity to specify the new name for the page and a short explanation for why it needs to be moved.

A common mistake is to try and move the page to the complete URL of the page. For instance if you had a page named "example" and you wanted it moved into the book called "My Book", you would move the page to "My Book/example", not "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/My_Book/example".

A typical example of when a page needs to be moved is when a new user creates a new page in the wrong location. All pages should either be the first page of a new book, or they should be sub-pages of an existing book. Also, all book pages should follow the proper naming convention.

For more tips on why and when to rename a page, see ../How To Structure A Wikibook/.

Moving a Page into a Book
Moving a page into an existing book is an easy task. Click the "move" tab, and then enter the bookname, a forward slash, and then the page name, as such:

BOOKNAME/PAGENAME

In the description box, say something simple such as "moving to a book", and then click the button.

Fixing the Naming Convention
Often times a new page will be created at "BOOKNAME PAGENAME", or "BOOKNAME:PAGENAME", or some other similar location that doesn't follow the proper naming convention. Fixing this is easy enough, all that needs to be done is the page renamed to "BOOKNAME/PAGENAME", with a forward slash between the book name and the page name, instead of a colon, space, dash, or other separator.

As a description, if you simply enter the term "nc", which is short for "naming convention", all other wikibooks editors will know what you did and why.

"Tagging"
Throughout the rest of this book we're going to use the word "tagging" a lot. Wikibooks has a number of pre-defined templates that can be used to alert other editors and readers about good and bad things on a page. To use a template, put two curly brackets on either side. That will include the text of the template at this point in the page.

Wikibooks has a number of templates that can be used on books and pages to indicate the quality of the book. To "tag a page" is to add an appropriate template or templates to the page so other people are aware of the same stuff you are. Some tags are good, such as those that mark new or rapidly-growing books. Some are less positive, marking books that need cleanup or expansion. Some are downright bad, like those marking a page for deletion. Here is a list of tags and what they are used for:

../Advanced Techniques/

Usando o Wikilivros/Como editar um wikilivro

title: Using Wikibooks/How To Edit A Wikibook


text:
Using Wikibooks/Wiki-Markup

Wikitext Basics
Wikitext is very simple, and one of the best ways to learn is by seeing and doing. When you see a page with fancy formatting, click "edit this page" to see the code. Some things are self-explanatory. Some things are not.

As we mentioned before, Wikitext can often be used interchangeably with HTML and CSS code. If you are not familiar with HTML and CSS, some of the most advanced formatting will be difficult for you to reproduce on your own. However, do not despair! There are no deadlines, things do not need to be perfect immediately, and you have plenty of time to learn and experiment here.

If you want to experiment with wikitext and editing, you can go to the Sandbox. The sandbox is a page where you can make edits without getting in trouble. If you have something you want to try, do it at the sandbox!

Paragraphs
New paragraphs can be made by creating the new paragraph in the code. E.g.

This code will create 2 paragraphs. This is the first.

This is the second.

will give you:

Formatting: Bold and Italics
Text can be bolded or italicized to place emphasis on a certain word or phrase. To bold text, place three apostrophes ( ''' ) before and after the word or phrase you wish to bold E.g.

This is an incredibly bold statement

will give you

Bolding is usually used for the first appearance of an important term, E.g. in a mathematics book you might have "Integral calculus is...", followed by a definition. Another use of bolding is with entire sentences for emphasis of important information, E.g. in a chemistry book a recipe might be given for black powder, but after that there might be something like "Don't try making this at home!". You can probably think of more uses for bold text, these are just some general examples.

To italicize text, place two apostrophes ( '', not to be confused with a quotation mark, ") before and after the phrase you wish to italicize E.g.

This sentence looks slanty

will give you

Italicized text can be used for adding emphasis to text when making a point, E.g. "You don't really need to do this but...", where people are probably going to read the "really" with a longer sound in their head than when they see the normal "really". Another use is when naming the titles of books and movies, E.g. "In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, ...".

These two types of formatting can be combined by first putting the 3 apostrophes for bold text and then the 2 for italicized text E.g.

A bold Italian might write like this...

creates

This might be used to emphasize important information while providing the same effect as italics in emphasis. It can also be used if you are making an annotated text for a book. You might start you introduction with the wikitext

J. R. R. Tolkien's novel, The Lord of the Rings, was written...

and this would look like

Bulleted and Numbered Lists
To create a bulleted list, simply place an asterisk in front of every addition to the list. For example:

 * Number one
 * Number two
 * Number three

will show up as:

You can also indent particular bullets. To do so, just add another asterisk to the start of a line. For example:

 * Number one
 * Number two
 * Number three

will show up as:

Numbered lists are just as easy. Place a # sign in front of every addition, and they will be automatically numbered. For example:

 * 1) Number one
 * 2) Number two
 * 3) Number three

will show up as:

Numbered lists can also be indented. Add another # to the start of every line, like so:

 * 1) Number one
 * 2) Number two
 * 3) Number two point one
 * 4) Number two point two
 * 5) Number three

This will show up as:

Preformatted Text
Preformatted text is rendered in a fixed-width font like Courier, and respects literal whitespace. This is most useful for writing software code, but also comes in handy in other places where things need to be made to line up in certain ways. Normally, using tables or divs should be used to align data, but sometimes preformatted text does what you want and does it better.

This is preformatted text. Text here will render exactly how it appears. If you do not add inline breaks when you edit this page, the text will run off the edge of the screen. Notice how this text appears in a little box? We can put text where we want it:

A      B            C

Fixed-width fonts are good for lining things up and displaying literal text with respect to whitespace. It's typically considered bad for readability, and can be more difficult to edit because whitespace needs to be monitored.

Page Links
There are about 2 ways to link to other pages in wikibooks. One way is to simply put the URL of the page in the code E.g.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

gives

This is a bad idea when just doing a simple link to another page in wikibooks, because it doesn't look very neat, and is more reserved for external links to other websites for references and extra reading, e.g., a wikibook on nonsense might include http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com in its “External links” section for further reading.

For simple links to other pages in Wikibooks, you take the part of the URL after http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/, in the above example this would be Main_Page, and put a double pair of brackets around it, like this:

Main_Page

this makes

Main_Page is the name of the main page of wikibooks. You might wonder why your link has an underscore in it when all the other links you've seen just have spaces. When making links, the mediawiki software replaces spaces with underscores, because page names in wikibooks, and other Wikimedia projects, don't allow spaces in the page name. So you could have done the same thing with Main Page. Another thing with page names is that they always start with a capitalized first letter, and the software running wikibooks automatically converts the first letter in a link to upper case, so you could have typed main Page and gotten the same thing.

You're probably wondering if page names are case-sensitive now, because the lone 'P' looks out of place amongst all the other lower case characters. Well it is, so main Page and main page would link to two different pages.

Try clicking on main Page and main page to see the difference.

You're probably wondering why, if the two links are supposed to go to different pages, they instead point to the same page. This is because main page points to a page which is a redirect. So when you click on the link, you go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_page, but the page will be replaced with the page from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page , and up the top left of the page there is a little piece of text saying (Redirected from Main page).

This is a very useful feature which makes it much easier to link to pages, because people have already thought of common page names people might try in links to link to certain pages, and have gone and created those pages as redirects, so that we little people don't need to bother ourselves with this case sensitivity stuff.

So that is how you link to a page in wikibooks. You can link to subpages as well, e.g.

Using_Wikibooks/The_Wikibooks_Editor/Cleanup_and_Maintenance

gives

This is pretty ugly, and just as bad as posting a URL to the page. This can be avoided by using a pipe character |. By putting a pipe character at the end of the page name, and then typing in another name after it, still inside the double brackets, you can change the text displayed for the link without changing the link. So instead of a big long link like Using Wikibooks/The Wikibooks Editor/Cleanup and Maintenance, you can do

Cleanup and Maintenance

which gives

It doesn't matter if you want to add spaces in the link to space things out and make it more readable

Cleanup and Maintenance

still makes

It's usually best to link to a whole page, but occasionally you may want to link to a section of a page. To do that, after the name of the page to link to, add a # and the name of the section. So

Moves and Mergers

gives

Linking to a particular section can be a bit risky in the long run, because if the section later gets renamed, the link will just go to the top of the target page. The same goes if you get the name of the section wrong, even slightly; for example, if you used the wrong capitalization in specifying the link target,

Moves and Mergers

would give

Most links are to pages in the same book, most links that aren't to the same book are to other pages on Wikibooks, but occasionally we do link to other sister projects, such as Wikipedia. To link to a page on a sister project, prefix the target page name with the name of the sister project and a colon; most projects have a one- or two-letter abbreviation that can be used. For example, you could link to Wikipedia with tensor calculus or tensor calculus, either of which gives tensor calculus.

title: Using Wikibooks/Wiki-Markup


text:
Using Wikibooks/Contributing To An Existing Wikibook

New or Existing?
You have the urge to write. You have knowledge and information you want to share with the world. The first impulse for most new writers is to simply set up a new book and begin writing. However, this is not the first thing to do. Wikibooks contains thousands of books on a multitude of topics. Browse/search in the Wikibooks holdings to see if there are any existing books on your subject matter that your knowledge could enhance before setting out on the task of writing a new one.

As the saying goes, "there is no need to reinvent the wheel".

If you find an existing book, covering a similar subject or focus and has similar intentions and goals to yours, peruse the content to determine if there is a suitable place for the information you have; if you are able to pinpoint such a place, consider contributing to and expanding that book first. If you are unsure about adding your contribution(s), continue reading this guide and don't be afraid to address any questions or concerns you may have with the Wikibooks' Community! Experience has shown that it is always better to consolidate information by creating one good book, rather than dividing knowledge and writing many, small, unfinished books.

This page is going to focus on how to contribute content to existing books. However, it is important to remember, contributing content isn't the only task that the Wikibooks Author will want to perform. Additionally, later chapters will provide details on how to create new books from scratch.

Book Definitions
Each book needs a definition — a purpose. The book's definition provides the groundwork needed to set goals and direction for the final product; this enables all contributors to work together collaboratively, efficiently, and successfully. A definition should include and cover, either explicitly or implicitly, all of the following information and details:

 * Target Audience:Who the book is written for. Each audience (i.e. the reader or group of readers) has certain background information that you can use to build more advanced lessons on. Sometimes, instead of specifying a particular audience, you will want to specify particular pre-requisites for your readers. If every reader starts off with the same level of knowledge on the main topic(s) the content covers, you don't need to provide as much basic or introductory information within the book. Thus, you are able to focus on writing new and more advanced content.
 * Subject:What topic or topics will you be writing about? It helps to detail as specific of a subject as possible.
 * Scope and Depth:You've determined the subject you are writing about, but how much of it do we want to cover? How deep or advanced do you want the book to go? How detailed do you want the content to cover? The scope of a book defines how much of the subject we want to cover and the depth defines how many details we want to discuss.

An important detail to consider when trying to determine if an existing book is suited to your contribution, is that two individual books, although written about the same subject, may have completely different definitions. If there is an existing book on your subject, but with a different definition, it is often best to start a new book. If there is a book that already exists with the same definition, it is safe to assume it would be most beneficial for you to contribute to the existing book rather than beginning a new one. Our primary goal when contributing to Wikibooks is to enhance and expand on the material being provided to readers and users!

Books and Communities
If the book you have found doesn't have any active contributors, take charge and do what you can to fix it up! Look to see if a local style guide or any formatting policies have been outlined (some authors go to great length to list this information). This ensures that any content you add, will fit nicely with the content already provided and flows seamlessly for readability and understanding. It is typically better to build on and expand existing style guidelines, than it is to re-format an entire book from scratch. At times, major aesthetic changes can come from simply improving some of the existing book templates. However, be wary of making changes to global templates, because changes of this calibur may have a negative impact on other books that use them, as well.

Many books do not have any style guidelines written down. In these cases, feel free to make any changes that you need to, in order to improve upon the existing book. Additionally, keep in mind that if you undertake a project that is too large to complete, you may end up leaving the book in worse condition than when you started.

Remember, in order to improve a book, you may need to be bold and make substantial changes. If you need to move or delete a page, or replace content in order to enhance or update the information within, don't hesitate! The Wikimedia software that powers Wikibooks, makes it easier to revert and/or change edits that don't have the desired outcome. Of course, if there are other editors actively contributing to it, maintain respect and consideration by seeking consensus before making any major changes.

Existing Book Community
A wiki is a collaborative environment and many projects often have existing contributors. These contributors will all have varying work schedules, activity levels, and vested interests in a particular book or project. Making substantial changes to things could upset people whom have spent extensive time, effort, and energy into formatting and content to create the particular work as it was when you found it to begin with.

Books that do not have an existing community are often the easiest to edit or contribute to. You find a page and you make any changes you want. Books with an existing community are quite different, although, they can be just as rewarding and at times, even more so! When multiple people are all working together on one book or project, it is greatly important to communicate and collaborate. Use other authors as a sounding board for new ideas. Improve the contributions of others, and be prepared for them to improve upon your work, as well. You may find that the book has an emergent property; therefore, gaining a higher level of quality than it would have under only one author.

Being the sole author of a book means that the book will show all the strengths and weaknesses that you write into it. The book will contain only your perspective. It will only cover the information that you know, and will lack information or examples that you are not as familiar with. By collaborating with other authors, the book can benefit from each author's strengths, and has a stronger chance of avoiding any individual weaknesses.

Consensus
Consensus can be a difficult process to understand, and is made even more difficult, when you and your fellow authors are trying to pursue it individually. The first thing to understand is, that for the wide majority of issues, there isn't a right or wrong answer and most decisions are more complex than "yes or no" or "my way or the highway". Your idea is not definitively correct and other competing ideas are not definitively incorrect. No single opinion about a work is ever "optimal", by itself. Wikis are founded on the idea of emergence; that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. Your ideas, combined with the ideas of others, are going to be better than any individual's ideas by themselves.

When working together, don't pick one viewpoint or single perception — instead, find a way to incorporate many perspectives. The benefit will be seen among the readers, who will often need a different explanation of the same concept in order to effectively learn or understand. The more ideas and points of view that are included in a given book, the better of a resource the book will be upon completion.

Consensus requires an understanding of this idea of emergence. If you want the book to improve, grow, and succeed, you are all but required to listen to and openly consider competing ideas and be willing to find and agree to compromises. If you don't, you are hurting the book, hurting the book community, and wasting your own time.

Rewriting a Book

There are several books to be found on Wikibooks, that were created but later abandoned by their original author(s). These books are in various states of disrepair and levels of completion, and often need more than just a minor effort or help to become successful. If you believe that you can create a much improved version and have concluded the existing book is irreparable or would take considerably more work, time, and effort to reach its full potential, feel free to create a new book and rewrite it according to your own vision.

Notice that, you should only attempt to completely rewrite a book that is in very poor condition; such as, a stub. You should never try to delete and rewrite a book that has substantial content or active contributors. Additionally, if a book has substantial out-dated content, it is also worth considering creating a new book rather than making substantial edits and/or changes to the existing content. Oftentimes, in these instances, it is better to write a new, up-to-date version. Not only does that enable the existing, outdated version to be used as a historical reference, but not all of the information contained within the work may have changed. It is also worth considering, and making the effort to, refer to the pre-existing book — either explicitly, in-reference, or even both — in order to provide a greater context to the readers and learners it targets.

Merging Books
When two or more, half-completed books, contain complimentary information that can be consolidated to form a single book that is in better condition, the best option available is to merge them. Merging is beneficial in many ways and enhances access to information for everyone. This may come from multiple existing books on Wikibooks, or you may find after starting to write your own, that certain stub or half-books would be significantly improved through being merged into yours.

To nominate book mergers, use the, , and templates. The purpose of these templates is to alert other contributors about a possible merge. There are instances when others may disagree with a merger for any number of reasons, leading to the need to seek consensus before continuing. The merge templates should stay on the books for at least one week (preferrably longer), to ensure that contributors have plenty of time to see the template(s), and to adequately participate in the ensuing discussion.

If consensus determines that performing a merge is appropriate and the best course of action, follow the steps below:
 * 1) Create a redirect from the original page(s) to the new page(s)
 * 2) Combine the book content
 * 3) Ask an Administrator to help merge the history pages (if needed)


text:
User:HermesBot~enwikibooks

''' This is a bot account owned by Wikihermit, however it does not edit the English Wikibooks. If it's malfunctioning or running, please block it. '''

 (English Wikipedia - Meta - Commons - Toolserver )

title: User:HermesBot~enwikibooks


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Using Wikibooks/Attracting Readers

Advertising
A book is useless if nobody reads it. That isn't entirely true, there is some educational value in the editing process. However, books are meant to be read and can be the most beneficial to the largest audience if there are active readers. Since you've put in so much effort to write your new book, you want to make sure that these readers can find it. Also, you want to make sure that other editors and authors can find it, to help the book improve. Books on Wikibooks are never "complete", and they can always be improved. Often times the best way to improve a book is just to get a fresh perspective on it.

In short, you need to bring more people to your book. There are several ways to advertise your book so that people will be able to find it. Some of these advertisement methods are on Wikibooks, and can be used to attract existing Wikibookians to your book. Some ways require additional creativity, but can reach a larger audience.

Categorization Templates
Having a book listed in the organizational structure here at Wikibooks is very easy. When you first create a new book, add the tag to the top. This will give you some helpful information, and it will also cause the book to appear automatically in the list of new books. This list is displayed in many places around Wikibooks, and your book will be immediately visible to many users.

Add your book to an appropriate shelf category. To do this, use the tag. To determine which shelf to put your book on, browse the list at Wikibooks Stacks/Departments, or ask for help at the New Books Reading Room. If you categorize your book like this, people who are browsing Wikibooks will be more likely to find it.

Featured Books
Want maximum exposure? The best way to get your book promoted on Wikibooks is to get it featured. Featured status isn't just something you can ask for, or something you can just do in an afternoon. It takes a lot of work, and requires your book to achieve a certain level of quality. It's impossible to say exactly what the requirements are for a book to become featured, because community standards are continually being raised. As a featured book, your book will be featured on the main page, and listed at Featured Books.

Blogosphere
Have a blog? Write about your book. If not, there are several active Wikibookians who do maintain Wikibooks-related blogs, or Wikimedia-related blogs who would be happy to advertise your book. Blogging about a book is a great way to attract attention to it, especially attention from non-Wikibookians.

Forums and Chatrooms
The internet is filled with existing communities who discuss particular topics. If you have something to write about, there is probably a community of people online who are already talking about it actively. Search the internet for websites and communities that focus on the same subject as your book, and use them as a sounding board for ideas, reviewers, and potential editors. Remember that Wikibooks is open and free, and anybody can be invited to come lend their expertise. Wikibooks also make a great place for a community to store its knowledge and documentation, writings that would not have a dedicated home otherwise.

Schools and Universities
If you're writing about an academic sort of subject, and if your book has reached a high level of quality, it might be useful as a classroom resource. Wikibooks are great in these situations because they are free and can be used to supplement traditional texts in the classroom.

title: Using Wikibooks/Attracting Readers


text:
User:HermesBot~enwikibooks/signpost

Subscriptions

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title: User:HermesBot~enwikibooks/signpost


text:
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This service is provided by the “HermesBot” bot (robot, an automated Wiki program), which is operated by user “Wikihermit”. The Signpost deliveries will appear as messages from “HermesBot”.

This only delivers to the english wikibooks, even if you subscribe a non-English user talk page.

Do NOT sign your posts on this page. Simply link to your user talk page.

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To get the Signpost on your user talk page, just add a link to your talk page. For example, “ ” (where “ ” is the account name).

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