Wikigogy is C L O S E D Wikigogy saw little action. So I closed it. It had been an interesting two years with some spurts of generous content writing from a handful of people. However, most months had seen no activity except spam bot fighting. Wikigogy -- Closed as of August, 2008 -- was a networking Web site for teachers of English as a second or foreign language. Site may be removed soon. For now to fight spam efficiently Wikigogy will periodically be reverted to its August, 2008 state. Comments about the site closure are welcome on the Main page. --Roger 14:47, 24 August 2008 (CDT)

From Wikigogy

Contents 1 Length 2 Search is configured in PHP or MySQL 3 Country 4 Underscore (_) 5 Suggestion 5.1 Simple is good 5.2 Language level 5.3 School level 5.4 4 skill 5.5 Star

[edit] Length

The Search feature disregards words of 3 or less characters.

• So Keywords must be 4 or more characters long.
• Numbers can behave differently, if PHP or MySQL (not sure which it is) is configured to treat them differently than letters. Currently numbers are treated the same as letters.

[edit] Search is configured in PHP or MySQL

The Search feature behavior, what it will and wont find, can be configured and adjusted in PHP or MySQL settings (not sure which). We may want to. --Roger 05:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Country

If a list of countries that a page is useful to grows long enough it could start to be a problematically long line to include as a line of keywords on a page. Let's cross that bridge when we get there though. I feel it could be interesting and helpful for folks to be able to label materials as relevant to or successful within certain countries. This could be interesting and may be pedagogically relevant information in terms of cultural preferences of students. Example:

• China Japan Vietnam

Categories could be used for this purpose instead of Keywords to some extent. However, Keywords might be a cleaner way to do it as the list gets longer and longer.

If you add a country to a page's keywords, please also put a note why on the page's Talk page under a Country Notes header.

[edit] Underscore (_)

Underscore (_) is NOT part of each Keyword. It is the only punctuation that is noticed by our Search feature (I think) and I had experimented beginning every keyword with an underscore on another server but I don't like the way it behaves on this server. So let's NOT beginn every keyword with underscore here to differentiate keywords from normal words. Normal words are good enough and less trouble prone. To use underscore effectively in that manner would require noodling with the PHP or MySQL configuration. --Roger 8 April 2006

Underscore can be useful to,

• create a keyword of two or more words (like_this)
• as a spacer like in the Language Level keywords (ll_1, ll_2, ... ll_9)

[edit] Suggestion

Please add suggestions or comments about Keywords here. Missing an important Keyword? Suggest it here.

[edit] Simple is good

Um, I don't have any suggestion for this - but... the keyword system is quite complex. For example, "primary_school" vs "elementary" or "elementary_school". Maybe as my token suggestion for this :) - a template that games and activities use when creating. This template has every possible keyword and people delete the unnecessary.

Copy and paste full keyword set snippet as a starting point is a good idea: see the top of keyword page. I just did that a couple days ago. :-) Roger 05:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language level

Also numbers for English level are highly confusing (at least for me) - maybe a code? low_elem, mid_elem, high_elem.

Wow, this keywording thing is hard! I also differ on the language levels, mine being - beginner, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced, upper-advanced. I got this from book levels (of Headway). Occasionally, I think of someone as low beginner or mid-beginner (but not so much upper-beginner as this is low pre-intermediate). I think about the low ones starting at the front of the book. The mid ones (which are rare) could start in the middle of the book but are too behind to start the next level. Again, just different protocols. -- B 04:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Just remembered - beginner, elementary, pre-int, int, upper-int, advanced, upper-adv. Beginner being right back at ABC, and "Hello. How are you?". Elementary starting to gather nouns, simple present, and first look at past simple. Beginner may not last long for some, but I see it as a very different teaching style to elementary. I now have elementary students, when I started (6 months ago) I had beginner students. Cheers B 04:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Just thoughts. Cheers, -- B 03:48, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Think of it like this:

ll_1 ll_2 ll_3 = low-beginning, mid-beginning, high-beginning

ll_4 ll_5 ll_6 = low-intermediate, mid-intermediate, high-intermediate

ll_7 ll_8 ll_9 = low-advanced, mid-advanced, high-advanced

Numbers are used because they are easier to type. Ease of typing is critical because folks will type these into the search box to find corresponding lessons. Four characters is the minimum length a word can be and still be searchable by the software. What we have is a little clutzy but the best I can think of with the software we have. I think it will work. :-) Roger 05:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] School level

Sorry, being a fuss-pot :( US and UK terms for schooling levels differ greatly. I'm mostly talking about pre-school Vs Kindergarten. When we are talking about 2-3 to 4-5 year olds - I'm not sure such a fine-grained keywording system is required. What about just one of these words that includes both types - maybe "kinder"? -- B 03:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

preschool as ~2-5 year olds, kinder as ~5-6 year olds, are based on the US system I am familiar with. Others familiar with systems from other countries, please chime in. We can massage these categories as needed or possible have only one category for (~0-6 year olds). Your input is needed, here. :-) Roger 05:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 4 skill

BTW - been meaning to ask... what's a "4 skill" activity? Is it all (i.e. read, write, listen, speak)? -- B 03:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Specifically all those mixed together in one lesson as a pedagogical method. See top of Category:4 skill page. :-) Roger 05:12, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Star

Not sure I agree with a star ranking system. This would require a proper voting style system rather than a wiki page and puts presure on contributers (and doesn't encourage contribution). Maybe just siggestions from others for improvement without a star system is better. This assumes more the position that all contributions are welcome and good in nature. -- B 04:39, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Quality rating needs to be done tactfully but I think we do need to have it, particularly down the road a bit. If it does end up being too divisive or discouraging we can drop it. I don't think it will, particularly if we make a point of encouraging each other. We need to make a point of that with or without a quality scale for pages, too. Let's not focus on the star rating system for a while. I think it will come into its own later when teachers will use Wikigogy to find our stuff -- once me write it -- and will want to find the good stuff first. I think star scale will be a very helpful feature down the road a bit but need not be important at this time. :-) Roger 05:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)