Teflpedia:Teachers' room/2009-2011

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Technical warning

The management would like to apologise for any erratic behaviour or turbulence which may be experienced during the present flight. We are confident that normal service will be restored in short order. In the meantime we encourage all our passengers to partake of the complementary tea, biscuits and gin which will be served by our charming hostesses shortly.--Admin 16:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Shortly is an unusual name for a woman. Genghis Khant 04:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

RW invasion

We are presently playing host to some friends of mine from another which which is experiencing technical problems. Some strange things may appear until the end of August. Users are welcome to ignore them or join in as they see fit.--Bob M 06:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

This wiki needs goat. There's only one mention of the lovely beast on the whole site. Totnesmartin 09:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

No, it needs Long-Eared Jerboa. Theemperor 16:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

That would be an abuse of Bob's hospitality. Begone with your corrupt Jerboan ways! Totnesmartin 16:25, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Limits

Ok, we already have WIGO ASK and a couple of non-education-related pictures up. What are the limits? userboxen? WIGOs? I assume this page stands in for the saloon bar. Totnesmartin 11:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally I think we should minimise impact as much as possible - keep it clean, maybe add a general category of 'RationalWiki' to mark anything we add so that Bob can go through once we get back up and running and clean everything up? THe more we add, the more cleaning up will be required at the end. IMHO. Worm 11:17, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

If we keep all the RW/lulzy stuff to specific pages then yes, it'll be easier for Bob to tidy up after, and also won't confuse anyone coming here for its intended purpose - so, no snark/parody in education-related articles, everyone. Likewise, I don't know what age group reads this site, but let's keep it clean anyway. Totnesmartin 11:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Concur - I think the RatWiki category is a splendid idea. And also we should follow Martin's good example and pay the rent when we can. SuperJosh 11:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

How bout we just delete all the crap we put on the wiki after RW is back? It would save Bob the trouble of cleaning up after us. Web 22:10, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

He'd still have to delete the actual pages. We can, though get rid of stuff like this thread because it's on an established page. Totnesmartin 22:15, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Exam results

Don't know where else to post it and seeing as here's the general talkering point...

I got my exam results today and I've got into the university of my first choice. Needless to say I'm ecstatic! Lots of irresponsible drinking tonight! SuperJosh 11:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

So what's new? :) Conga at your liaisons on the uni mate! Totnesmartin 12:38, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Many smiley faces! SuperJosh 12:46, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

smileys are one of the things we will have to learn to live without, along with youtube embeddings (although that might actually be useful here), block wars, little red and green arrows and RobS's clinical McCarthyisms. Totnesmartin 12:57, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

It's so pathetic that we miss RationalWiki this soon! I really wanted it now as well so I can brag about my exam results. I think everyone's just taking refuge wherever they can find it. By the looks of things not everyone knew about the blog. Although I've posted a notice on my Liberapedia page about it. SuperJosh 13:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

No bugger ever reads my blog so there's not a lot of point linking to here from it. BTW which of the great universities was your first choice, Cambridge or Hull? Totnesmartin 13:05, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice work, Josh.--PitchBlackMind 15:48, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys! I'm reluctant to inform of which uni I'm going to but if you email me I'll tell you. SuperJosh 15:55, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Student Bar

I see someone made an impromptu student bar for the displaced mob. Perhaps we should decamp to there rather than impose ourselves on the Teachers'room. And BYO! There's some celebrating to be done. Congrats to SuperJosh! Genghis Khant 15:59, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Cheers Genghis!!! SuperJosh 16:27, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I would like to add my support for RW editors using the student' bar.--Bob M 22:36, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that was brilliant. Human 00:42, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Sooo...

Where's that hot teacher that every school has? o.O Kektklik 11:03, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

15 Seconds

How soon before I can edit more than once every 15 seconds? I'm quite fed up! Proxima Centauri 12:52, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Learn to use the preview button? Nx 15:34, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Couple of days I think.--Bob M 07:16, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Autoconfirmation requirements are 5 edits and account age of 1 day. Nx 13:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

It also makes one think before you post; which can't be bad. Ⓖⓔⓝⓖⓗⓘⓢ 16:45, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

It made me think "b****y computers" I'm afraid. Totnesmartin 16:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Other debates

Greetings All! There is currently a heated debate going on here as to how much communication is non-verbal, urban legends, etc. It's a free-for-all and your input is welcome. Cheers! --Technopat 14:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Another debate open is whether testing is a different enough concept to warrant its own article as opposed to being a part of the assessment article. Feedback? --Technopat 18:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

101+ 121 Conversation questions

Greetings, Folks! Just thought you might be interested in checking out some of the great Conversation questions available here at Teflpedia, as well as a newish sister page of Quick conversation questions. Additions welcome! Cheers! --Technopat 18:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Polarisin' the conversation... Sorry! Couldn't resist that one! :)

Greetings Bob M. I know that you like to de-polar as much as possible, and in the broad, general whatchamallit, I agree with you. However, my criteria is that if the normal question I would ask a native speaker is a polar question, then that's the question I ask me students.

That often means that the initial question requires a simple yes/no answer (although I do insist on the need for the aux.) - which must be immediately followed up with a wh-question.

In other words, rather than construct some grammatically-intriguing-but-artificial question to obtain a grammatically-satisfying response, I encourage that first yes/no answer (+ do/does/am/is/would etc.) in order to engage 'em in the conversation - they usually have much more to say on the matter, and I find the problem isn't so much getting 'em to talk, but getting 'em to stop... Topic for the Teachers' room? --Technopat 10:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC) Yes, so I've cut it here. Bob

Hi TP. Well, it depends. If the teacher is managing the conversation process from the front of the class with a small group who are communicating with him/her then the questions can really be totally polar, as the teacher can follow up each one with, "Really? Why do you think that?" But in a situation where the class has been split up into pairs or groups which are talking to themselves it's not so easy. Even if you tell students that the objective is to turn each question into a short conversation there are still some who are capable of treating the yes/no ones as just that and fly through them. (This is usually the case where there are two young males together for some reason, girls seem to be a bit more prepared to be chatty.)

Also I'm not actually trying to generate any particular grammatical response. Just trying to avoid a yes/no response. Obviously if the teacher has the questions as a crib sheet in from of him/her then they can re-word the questions of the fly - but if they're going to distribute them to groups then it would seem to be best to cover all the odds.

Having said all that, if there's a case where I've created something which seems really horribly artificial then please bring it up so that we can make it more natural if necessary.--Bob M 10:56, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Point taken. If the aim is pairwork, I guess you're right. But that brings us onto the aims and mechanics of pairwork. I take for granted that pairwork is controlled practice and I would have the students work from their own crib sheets. So I would get them to write down their own wh-questions developing on from the initial polar questions when/wherever possible.

By the way, I've used some of the conversation questions as dictation items and students have had to expand on 'em with additional questions off their own bats such as "How often...?", "When did you last...?"

In any case, my underlying whatever-it-is is to avoid teacher talk at all times and to avoid artificial sentences (as in Postilion sentences and the ones they use for drills). --Technopat 11:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, well I suppose we all do things differently. The site has various suggestions for using them here. TESl suggests they be used by pairs; ESL partyland suggests they be used as conversation material between students; and that is how I have used them in the past. My objective is to get students talking as naturally as possible and then go round and monitor as far as I can - well it used to be, now all my groups are sufficiently small that I can talk to them all at once. But not everyone is in the same privileged position and you and me and I think it would be best to create something which works well in all situations - and I think that means avoiding polar questions.

However, as I said in my previous post, if any have any horribly artificial constructions then let's talk about them.--Bob M 14:49, 6

Edit-warring

Greetings All, Have been away for a while enjoying a well-earned rest and just popped in to try and catch up with latest edits at this 'ere great teflpedia. Haven't yet had time to check the exact state of things, but am slightly dismayed to see that there has been some edit warring going on.

We are a small community of editors here and it would be great if we could keep things on a friendly level. One basic thing we need to observe is that when editing other users' contributions, we use the edit summary to explain what changes we've made & why, except when undoing/deleting obvious vandalism. Further rationale can be given on the corresponding talk page. I realise that time is usually a problem & we may want to avoid giving long-winded explanations to seemingly obvious modifications, but edit warring is more time-consuming in the long run & just leads to bad vibes all round. I don't mean everything should be lovey-dovey and smiles all around, but observing some common courtesy guidelines goes a long way. Cheers! --Technopat 12:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

If I may: I made two of the reverts in question; in cases like that I tend to keep comment to a bare minimum, usually letting the auto-summary of the rollback function suffice. The edits I reverted were insertions of politically loaded language which I believe has no place in the context of this wiki. If a teacher wishes to allow potentially divisive discussions of e.g. politics or religion in the class, that is one thing.

Stirring up an open wiki whose primary purpose is not the discussion of such matters is another thing entirely. I believe in giving that only the minimum necessary attention, since anything more rewards attention-seeking disruptive misbehaviour. best, Will 12:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's in the past isn't it? Or have I missed something?--Bob M 12:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

You may wish to check the contribs of la mosca-culo or a troll bearing his name. Will 13:10, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah. Now I understand. Perhaps we could have kept the edit without necessarily maintaining the political content.--Bob M 13:33, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Exactly what totnesmartin did in one or two instances [1] Will 13:44, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Greetings Will - Thanks for your explanation. I now see what you were at and agree with your rationale. Problem is when an editor comes to the article cold (as was my case) and has no idea of where it's coming from nor time to spend checking earlier versions or googling the background of previous editors. The edit summary does help in such cases. Cheers! --Technopat 22:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Those who have gotten to know me realise that I am a harmless geezer who means well. As I've said elsewhere, I intend to be a wiki-gnome here for a while, mostly fixing the odd typo and such as I read random articles. I do not earn my daily gruel by teaching English to folks with another mother tongue, but in my workplace I try to use clear correct spoken English around my Latin American co-workers, making an effort to use Spanish or Portuguese when that makes them more comfortable. Carry on, :-) Will 14:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Coursebooks

Dare we start articles on individual coursebooks, both current & past, i.e. Headway, Streamline, etc. (and open up a new category) or do we risk opening up Pandora's whatchamallit by providing an escape valve for frustrated teachers to vent their wrath, rather than offering useful and constructive criticism to would-be teachers? As a teacher who for many years has been fortunate not to have to rely on/teach from a coursebook (but owes part of my experience to ideas first presented in such books) I realise that for anyone starting out, such info would be very useful. Feedback, folks? --Technopat 11:31, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a very good idea. Though, like you, I'm not up to speed on any of them at the moment. But something which talks about their individual strengths, weakness, target audience, ease of use by teachers, student reaction/opinion, quality of the authentic texts/listening (if there are any) etc, etc would be great to have. The problem is getting teachers (and ideally students) who have used them to contribute. Actually I've got a few "Headways" from a few years back, but as they update them every year - for obvious reasons - they are out of date.--Bob M 14:10, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Trial run/layout/format (based on yours above) on its way...

As I said it's a great idea. What would be fantastic would be to have a resource which an inexperienced teacher with 25 shy pre-intermediate engineering students could turn to and quickly get an idea for a good coursebook. The trick is going to be filling in the blanks.--Bob M 15:54, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for not signing off above - hyper-active kids coming home form first day at school and urgently wanting the messenger the same classmates they've been with all day. My fault for using their superscreen PC while they were out...

Re. yours, trouble is that most general coursebooks don't cater for engineering students. I still have some excellent books (somewhere?) based on study skills and which were ideally suited to the mindset of engineering students. Panorama, by Longman, was one and English for Study Purposes (developed by the SEAMO Regional Language Centre in Singapore), by MacMillan, was another. But they ain't sexy enough for yuppie publishers' marketing departments and probably get dropped from the catalogue sharpish.

They also required teachers to have the necessary language and teaching skills to be able to explain things to their students, unlike Headway, which just went through Exercise 1 to 4 and fill in the gaps in teachers' knowledge with the grammary summary at the back, which meant that language schools could hire native English teachers with degrees in History or Biology and... Well, you know what I mean. --Technopat 16:34, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm sure you're right. But my shy engineering students were just an example pulled from thin air - they're not an actual example. (After living so long in Spain do you sometimes doubt yourself when writing "actual" in English--Bob M 16:48, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to add a bit here about how there doesn't seem to be much point reviewing books such as the above redlinks 'cos they're probably long out-of-print. But it's just occurred to me thayt maybe a novice teacher has come across a tattered copy in the school "library" and not even bothered to flick through it. So maybe it is useful to include 'em after all, as there might be some ideas that could be re-hashed. --Technopat 23:53, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

New Members

Just like to say "Hi" again to our new editors - who I guess signed up after a mention on the Dogme forum and a couple of tweets which have been going round. I'm afraid that I'm not too active at the moment becauise an activity called "Work 1.0" seems to be taking up a lot of my time. Interestingly, I have found that "Work 1.0" can be used to generate something complicated but useful called "Money 1.0" which can be exchanged for goods or services.--Bob M 11:29, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Conversation questions

AS those who know something about the net may be aware, I'm able to see what search terms drive traffic to the site. "Copyright in English language teaching" is always a favourite as are our various conversation question articles.

As of early Feb 2010 - which is shaping up to be a very active month - main drivers for conversation questions are: Business, holidays, global warming and banking.--Bob M 18:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Question for the teachers here (or anyone in general, really)

I was just wondering what the contributors to this site, as well as the readers of this site in general, thought about the quality of the United States' public education system. Do you think it is effective as a "one size fits all" system, does it need fundamental change? If it needs fundamental change, are private schools and home-schooling the solution? As an American who attended American public schools for the bulk of my pre-college schooling, I'm curious what the opinions here are. Gooniepunk2005 00:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I know very little about it. The only thing that I do know is that the US seems to do surprisingly badly in international comparisons - but I have no idea why this should be.--Bob M 11:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Greetings Gooniepunk2005. As you asked for opinions, am willing to go for it. Although I have no direct experience of US schooling, my evidence is based on reliable sources who had no need or wish to be critical. I know two high school kids with average marks here in Spain who got top marks during their respective stays in the States (and were both very surprised at having to do far less work - as were their parents). In both cases they considered their time at US high schools vacations in comparison to the time they spent here. I also know two electronical engineers who did masters at US universities and both were surprised at the low level of effort required. That said, a deceased friend of mine was a professor of Spanish literature at Chicago and had the most amazing level of knowledge and culture, but whether that was a result of his own abilities, his education, or is the exception that proves the rule, I know not.

On the other hand, as the victim of a UK secondary modern school in the 70s, I doubt that anything could be worse. While the school excelled nationally at just about every sport, of the 120 kids in our course, only six of us went on to higher education (whether all went on to university, I don't know 'cos our ways separated). But I digress. So, while generalising is not where it's at, notwithstanding any of the above, and despite the typical cries of "the education system is far worse now than it was in my time", my kids, here in Spain, aged 13 & 16, are enjoying, literally and figuratively, a far better education than what I done got in every possible aspect, with incredibly dedicated and experienced teachers in every subject, except English (as a foreign language) - but that ain't an issue for them or me. A reflection of the generally low level of English teaching in this country.

Returning to your original public vs. private education, this is very much an issue here in Spain, with most of the population erroneously believing that private is better. They have all been brainwashed into thinking that private by definition must be better - as in private health - but I have much direct evidence to the contrary. Anecdotal, of course, but interesting nonetheless. A friend of mine, director of HR for a US multinational here in Madrid, does not hire graduates from Spanish private universities. Another friend, director of a doctorate programme, is increasingly concerned about the low level of work being submitted by students from private universities here. Could go on for hours, but...--79.150.181.232 16:29, 15 May 2010 (UTC)--Technopat 16:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC) (Thought I was logged in)

Yes ... but ... I taught some engineering lecturers at the University of (Name Redacted) a couple of years ago. Interesting gig. But the thing that stuck in my mind was the very low opinion they had of their students. They maintained that standards were constantly being lowered so as to ensure a consistent stream of students - a stream constantly reduced by the low Spanish birthrate. Of course it could have been the old "It wasn't like that when I were a lad" syndrome. --Bob M 17:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Undoubtedly the case for both private & public universities here in Spain. In the case of the former, ROI for newly set up businesses, and in the case of the latter, newly created public universities in newly created (relatively) autonomous communities. But I fear our US-based readers will be bored by this local slant... Just a quick note: two of Madrid's public universities, the Autonoma and the Complutense, have hugely differing reputations in those subjects they both offer.--Technopat 18:16, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses gentlemen. I assure you both that I wasn't expecting you to have intimate knowlegde of the US public school system; I was just curious if others outside of the US had similar thoughts to mine. As it turns out, the bulk of people seem to agree with me (I am, by the way, a product of US public education) that US public schools spend waaaay too much time talking down to their students and discouraging actual acceleration in exchange for an attempt at a one-size-fits-all learning model. Thus, that model is, in my humble opinion, a failure at best, and some of the most intelligent people I knew were underachievers simply because of sheer boredom. On the other hand, students would be in advanced learning courses who would, based on things like SAT and ACT scores, should not have been placed there at all. Gooniepunk2005 00:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I suppose it's common knowledge, but I thought I'd better mention it: public school. Re. your "some of the most intelligent people I knew were underachievers" I'm pretty sure they would have been bored sick wherever they went to school, whether private or public. Around half of my friends were privately schooled, and with the exception of one of 'em, none are distinguishly more "intelligent" than the . Another matter is if they could have had access to private tuition at home, a sort of tailor-made education, which is great for cultivating geniuses, but lousy for cultivating social skills. One typical phenomenon observed here in Spain is that pupils at private schools score high marks while at their private school, with heavy emphasis on rote learning, and suddenly take serious drops when entering the public education system at university, for example. Likewise, their concept of teamwork apparently leaves much to be desired, as they are often more accustomed to having private teachers to spoon feed 'em. Another aspect to be taken into consideration is the dumbing down of society, a process that commences at school where, again, learning is not based on satisfying curiousity, but on passing exams. Which takes us full circle again to rote learning.--Technopat 14:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, rote learning and exam passing are certainly the main objectives of the Spanish education system. It's one of the reasons that they have such problems with language teaching. Learning lists and rules isn't the way.--Bob M 15:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Short URL

What if TEFLpedia dropped "index.php?title=" from article page URLs? Any reason to not do this? --Roger 00:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes it would be prettier wouldn't it? The problem is that I wasn't sure how to do it when I first set it up and asked somebody to do it for me. Unfortunately they didn't do a very good job of it. Now we've got links in from various places and I don't really want to go messing with them now in case the links stop working.

But if you've got any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.--Bob M 19:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If you have the kind of access to your server files that I do to mine, you can set up short URLs in such a way that the old links still work. The Short URL instructions at MediaWiki have ballooned and are therefore difficult to sort through. However, I can show you how I do short URLs at Wikigogy and if this works on your server, splendid! This involves editing two files in your wiki directory on your server: .htaccess (you will add it if it is not there yet) and LocalSettings.php. More about this later. Gotta run pick up my son from school. --Roger 21:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Sounds cool - and like the way to go. Thanks.--Bob M 21:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help on this Roger. The URL's look a lot better.--Bob M 16:03, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Main Page Looks good! http://www.teflpedia.com/index.php?title=Main_Page still works, too. So no broken links. Happy snowman. --Roger 16:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm very happy with it. It's fixed a problem which I've had for a long time.--Bob M 17:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikigogy migration

Discussion of the proposed transfer of content from Wikigogy ash been moved to Teflpedia:Wikigogy migration.--Bob M 08:43, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Freestuff namespace

Bob, could I persuade you to change the "Freestuff" namespace? Maybe to "Lesson:"? I feel "Freestuff:" is a cheap throw away namespace. Is there anything on TEFLPedia that is not free stuff? So what does it mean to segregate pages under that title? I would not be comfortable, nor honored, working in the "freestuff" namespace. Alternatives: --Roger 19:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

• "Lesson:"--for lesson ideas, learning activity ideas, things written along the lines of a lesson plans or lesson plan ideas. What else might people want to put on TEFLPedia that would not fit either in a "Lesson:" namespace or in the main encyclopedic space (classroom management ideas, for example, could be handled in encyclopedic namespace under suitable idea names, ditto learning activity ideas.)?

I favor "Lesson:" --Roger 19:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

or

• "More:"--if you really want a catch-all namespace for everything that is "more" than strictly encyclopedic.

But I like "More:" too, because it means what is says and is open to more. --Roger 19:54, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

or both

Namespaces are defined in LocalSettings.php. Bob, I think you could simply change "FREESTUFF" to "LESSON" there, and if you want to, add "MORE" there, following the syntax you find in there. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces. --Roger 20:20, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know how to create namespaces.  :-) OK. I'm convinced. I'll create a new namespace "lesson", transfer the existing stuff in "freespace" to that namespace and update the help instructions. OK - that's new namespace "lesson" in existence. I'll tidy the other stuff up.--Bob M 21:09, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Got to go. Back tomorrow.--Bob M 21:10, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Had a few more minutes. So:

• Created namespace "Lesson"
• Moved articles into that space and deleted them from freestuff.
• Put cat in WK banner.
• Updated Wiki to refer to "lesson" instead of "freespace".--Bob M 21:53, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

(Applause) --Roger 00:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Welcome

Welcome to the Teachers' Room.^{this unsigned comment was made by: user:PhilipR}

Deli

Bob, if you add <\/u>'''<\/big>]<\/center>== to $wgSpamRegex in LocalSettings.php (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgSpamRegex) it will stop the current script prepared lunch meat we are getting that contains that markup. Email me if you need help with the syntax. --Roger 16:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Really? I'll have a look at that in a moment. Got something on right now. Thanks muchly.--Bob M 17:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I have send you a very important email.--Bob M 17:47, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Subpages

A subpage (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Subpages) is page that is subordinate to another page.

Example:

Lesson:Writer's Workshop Story Starter/Prompts is a subpage of Lesson:Writer's Workshop Story Starter.

Bob, it might be a good idea to turn on subpages within the Lesson namespace so that a link will automatically appear at top of each Lesson subpage (just under page name) that will take you to that subpages' parent page (the page the subpage is subordinate to). This can be turned on in LocalSettings.php (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages). Note that subpages appear to be turned on already for User namespace (User:Roger/Subpage Test has auto link at top to parent page) but not for Main namespace (Sandbox/Subpage Test has no such auto link). Why not turn on subpages for all namespaces? --Roger 23:06, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Roger. I'll have a look at it this evening.--Bob M 06:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe before Halloween? @:-) Roger 04:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes. Sorry about that.--Bob M 06:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Would you like to give it another go Roger?--Bob M 16:55, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Works! Bravo! --Roger 10:56, 10 February 2012 (CST)