Tool Wiki Nairobi July2012 session

From ilri-training ilriwikis

Wiki training session Nairobi

Nairobi, Information Centre, 10 July 2012


This session was a general (and partly hands-on) session about using wikis.

The session covered:

  • Introduction:

What’s a wiki? Ask around. Why do we want to use wikis? See '[http:www.nickmilton.com/2012/07/6-wiki-rules-from-nasa.html| 6 wiki rules at Nasa]' and [http:www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY| Wikis in plain English] video. What advantages and what disadvantages from the wiki? Buzz and come up with that; What experience do you have with wikis? What would you like to be able to do or to discuss?

  • Basics and advanced:

Setting up account? Basic navigation: navigation menu, options top left, edit and more. Top right if you’re admin Basics functions (simple editing menu);  all to use a special page on the sandbox with their name on it and then peer support each other to do stuff together; Advanced: Navigation menu, other options (e.g. look and feel, users etc.) – but a lot of that is taken care of by Tsehay;

  • How we use wikis at ILRI:

For projects: * Put pages for all themes/teams: see NBDC pages * Bring other widgets e.g. pictures, calendar, RSS feeds (news and publications) * Put all links from other platforms (e.g. develop an ‘about’ page pulling text from blog or vice-versa) see NBDC page * Link to the wiki from Yammer etc. see NBDC yammer For events: * Prepare agenda on the wiki; see IMGoats page * Standard header (for context); see IMGoats page * Standard set of links: agenda, participants, outputs and occasionally other things; see IMGoats page * At the end of the event, clean up the wiki page to display results and quick links; see IMGoats page, Africa RISING and CCAFS social learning * Link to the wiki from Yammer etc. Other tips: save regularly (auto-save), copy/paste from a text file to avoid funny formatting.

  • How to pitch the wiki to others?

Saves time to store docs; Informs everyone in real time; You can work collaboratively on documents, pages, events etc.; You can find all project-related docs; At events, shows all participants where to find live documentation; Drives traffic to other platforms;