Wiki project

Wikimania ;) if not Wikimedia is on our doorstep as our own online collaborative wiki project has started in class this week. We’d do good to keep our “ICT Applications in LIS” caps firmly in place for the next few weeks at least.

As Wikipedia is the pioneer of wikis, I chose their definition: "A wiki (i/ˈwɪkiː/ wik-ee) is a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser usually using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor". Libraries are using wikis (the word comes from Hawaii and means fast or quick) for all kinds of reasons: for knowledge management community websites and intranets, which may permit control over different levels of access.

As Nambitha and myself work in academic libraries it makes sense that Sandy wants us working together on a wiki appropriate for our library environment – we’ve heard it should be at least 10 pages which amount to 3 pages each, so we'll have to decide which are pertinent topics we'd like to cover in the wiki, but social colloboration tools should definitely feature to my mind.

Francoise may join any one of the groups and has chosen our group, so all three of us have our work cut out this week as the wiki content planning process – as with any website planning - needs thinking to get us to an outline of topics first before hitting any ‘edit’ button on StudenteHulp.wikispaces.com.

I've implemented a wiki on SharePoint for our library staff who can all access, modify and update to allow for creating, sharing, keeping and updating various snippets of information that we need to refer back to when performing our duties, but this is a very simple style in-house wiki which do not really compare with the project ahead. 

It was interesting to read in Wikipedia that Ward Cunningham (see photo on LH), the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described a wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work." That is exactly how I will describe our library's wiki for the staff. Nothing fancy, but it works!

Back to our assignment... can one call this work? Apart from the time we have to set aside for ICT Applications assignments, I find it enriching to read, explore and have a web presence in the field of ICT with our blogs and the Twitter account. The short, but rich tweets reaching me on various ICT issues and how “technological librarianship” is crystallising out in today’s world, have exceeded my expectations. But enough of Twitter for now….

We decided the aim of our wiki will be the support and (information literacy) training of postgraduate students –to support their information needs and to push tips and appropriate resources to them via the wiki. We had a look at the literature as well to help us focus the wiki topics to that which postgraduates students struggle with most.

Looking forward to this online collaborative wiki project!

More on wikis

clog: Powerpoint presentations

Some powerful tips and tools on presenting, too much to name these individually, but this is one page to bookmark. Be sure to scroll down to the botton of the page for more that I'm sure we can all benefit from. 

Sharpening of skills: Powerpoint slides & Presentation design

Delivering a speech in public needs more skills and I have yet to come across a person who prefer to deliver the presentation in stead of listening, but I've always taken heart that the more one practice the better it gets.

If you would like to sharpen your skills in designing powerful PowerPoint presentations, check out Training with Duarte and tools and resources, which list a few videos, including Five Rules for Creating Great Presentations. 

 Three rules to remember according to Duarte are:

The client is king

Let them see the message

Spread the message

I'd like to try out using Twitter comment on powerpoint next time I'm having a class for a training session.... never heard of this till now... use Twitter in PowerPoint with Poll Everywhere, you can invite people to tweet a short comment directly to your slide in real-time, ... it will be pick it up as fast as Twitter allows.

The online Stand Up, Speak Out book with its 18 chapters on public speaking has been a great help to me when I had to prepare for a presentation last year. A true lifeline this one! but it seems one now has to buy it?! Would have loved to hear what you think.

The following was shared during a workshop that I attended >
 When delivering a presentation:
7% of meaning is in the words that are spoken
38% of meaning is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said).
55% of meaning is in the visual

In the end it needs practice as well, so as to eliminate that which doesn't work.

Source: Haroun, Faika. 2012. Powerpoint: Managing the content for effective presentation. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University Language Centre.

D-Day for presenting

Tonight some of us were up for delivering our topic presentations in class and I was glad to be part of the group that could present, so now I can focus on my next presentation; other subject, other topic, but just as interesting :)

It seems we all found it challenging to present our topics in only 5 minutes, but it was a very good exercise to make sure only the pertinent is included.

Beforehand I wished for my presentation, which I had a lot of fun with putting together, to be well received and clearly understood.   The remarks afterwards seem to indicate that I reached my goal. Good luck to those of you who will present next week!

I'm including my short presentation as promised, and hope you'll find time to read the "Making a difference" document or even just scan through it as it gives a good idea of the wonderful work that Research4Life does with their four programmes. There's also a librarian reporting how the open access information is helping him when asked for information.

 Here is the video link to Prof Mary Abukutsa-Oyango from Kenya's report on how both approaches to OA have benefited her research and community. The direct link from within the PowerPoint don't  open in the file format I had to change it to before I could upload.