studentnotebook » Wikispaces-TW 2

I'm trying to think about ways in which using Wikispaces as the online environment will require changes my workflow, or even stop me from doing some things. So far, the only serious drawbacks appear to be missing forward and back buttons, and some limitations in formatting, compared to the infinitely flexible TW. One other issue that occurred to me is whether I will be able to make modifications to the layout or structure of the local TW files my students are using once the initial copy is distributed. But the answer is of course "yes", because all of that stuff is just tiddlers, in TW. Any tiddler on my local, instructor's TW uploads (or will upload, in due time), and then downloads to students. The only problem is that it won't necessarily appear right online. This is true even of plugins, I should think. (Yes, Saq?). This leads me to wonder whether there is any way to hide systemTiddlers and other entries that are relevant only in the local-copy context?

Well, I don't know about hiding, but I could redirect each such page, such that people trying to access such pages by mistake would be sent to a page with a generic message. But there doesn't seem to be an "excludeLists" function in Wikispaces

July 15: I've uploaded the NavigationPlugin, renamed it x_NavigationPlugin so that it appears last in the alphabetical list of pages, and then redirected it to Local TW Pages, which contains a blurb to the effect that this page contains code for the offline notebooks, not course content. That seems a pretty effective way of allowing me to modify the structure of offline student notebooks after they've downloaded them, without interfering too much with the online Wikispaces version. What do you think, Saq?

Actually, you've just emailed me to say that you have an alternative. My concern will be how we modify the student notebooks after they've been downloaded. Are we sure that we can get them right the first time, and never have to make changes again? students could always download a new version, and then import their notes, but that starts to get tricky... I'll be interested to hear your solution.