Sue-Point-Oh!

I was directed to these “fifteen things” lists on Collaborage.com: Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Overview and I think they make great materials for presentations introducing the enterprise to web 2.0 technology. I would like to take the lists and adapt them for an education focused audience.

Fifteen Things Wiki Users Need Training On

Tuesday: July 3, 2007 10:50 AM Here are fifteen things end users need training, education, or training on. Don’t assume anything.
1. How to title your entry so that people understand the context
2. How to search and locate relevant content so content isn’t replicated
3. How to tag content
4. How to write clearly and succinctly
5. How to add attachments
6. How to include an image in the page
7. Other methods of content discovery; most popular, recently updated
8. How to use Rich text Editor or WYSIWYG Editor
9. How to use the Wiki markup syntax
10. How to create a new page or use [new page] function
11. How to roll back history and versioning
12. Understand that diversity of opinion is critical to wiki success
13. How to edit a page
14. How to manage your pages and keep the information current
15. Wiki policies and procedures

Fifteen Ways to Deliver Training the Enterprise 2.0 User Needs

Tuesday: July 3, 2007 4:09 PM 1. Online Instructions
2. Step-by-Step Guides
3. Product Documentation
4. One Page Tip Sheets
5. Communities of Practice
6. Lunch and Learns (Brown Bags)
7. Road Shows
8. Consulting Engagements
9. Word of Mouth
10. Frequently Asked Questions
11. Glossary of Terms
12. Sample Environments where users can see a Business sample
13. Podcasts
14. Video Training (Webcasts)
15. External Sources (Books, Classes, Magazine, Journals, etc.)

Fifteen Wiki Metrics That I would Like to See

Sunday: July 8, 2007 8:42 PM 1. Wiki Page Count
2. Page Update Chart with Quantity on the top and Age on the bottom
3. Number of Page Views Day, Week and Month
4. Popular Tags and Search Phrases
5. Number of Content Producers (People Updating the Wiki Information)
6. Number of Consumers (Readers of the Wiki Information)
7. % of Active versus Non-Active Producers (Active = Updated in the Past Two Weeks)
8. Number of Downloads
9. Distribution of Authorship (What are the most diverse pages?)
10. Most Updated Wiki Pages
11. Page Path Analytics (Where did the Reader Come From?; Tag Clouds, Search, Links)
12. Most Popular Pages
13. Most Linked to Pages
14. Longest Page
15. Most Favorite or Highest Ranked Page

A great visual demonstration of how wikis work by Common Craft. They have a series of web 2.0 terms in “plain english”. This little three minute video is very engaging and great way to give people a quick introduction to wikis.

Best parts: The humming and snapping!

I like random facts, random food and random quotes so naturally I am drawn to the “Random Article” page in Wikipedia. You never know what you are gonna get and it may expand your mind a bit. Please reply with a comment to this blog if you find a particularly “random” article. I was told that most random articles lead you to pages about Japanese cartoon characters but most of what I found were song titles.

Give it a whirl! Visit a Random Wikipedia Article

I just discovered a new Wikipedia program that allows new wiki users to be adopted by more experienced users. I think it’s sort of like a Big Brothers/Big Sisters/Mentorship program. Innocent new wikipedia members can put the {{Adoptme}} code onto their userpage and within 24 hours their wiki big brother or sister will offer to adopt them. I plan to go undercover as a novice user to see who will adopt me. I’ll report back with my findings!
The following adoption rules apply:

Adoption is:

• A mentorship, where the Adopter answers questions and offers friendly advice and support.
• For help with technical difficulties, policy interpretation and conflict management.

Adoption is not:

• Forever. Once experienced, an Adoptee will be able to graduate, though likely to stay in touch with their Adopter.
• A social club. Though fun, Adoption is there to help users use and improve Wikipedia.
• Just for the newest of users. Is also for users with limited experience who want to expand their involvement.

I am curious about what type of people are taking advantage of this program. I’m always telling people that wikipedia is successful because there are such a large number of devoted caring users who make the site a valid encyclopedia. Perhaps these are the same users who offer to adopt new users. Hooray to Wikipedia for once again trying to offer a totally level playing field where accurate information is king and collaboration is queen.

Maybe I’ve just been watching too much “24″ or spending too much time on my wiki research project but I found this article from the NY Time’s Magazine about the CIA’s use of wikis and blogs for intelligence gathering fascinating! How does a wiki help fight terrorism? Blogs and wikis can help intelligence agents “connect the dogs” of information and intelligence…these were the dots that failed to connect post 9/11. The idea is that agents will use blogs to record the intellgence they receive. The entries will be tagged and linked to other agents blogs. Google like search analyatics can be used to see which tags and intelligence pieces are the most popular and possibly the most relevant. This also will help pass information between the CIA, FBI and other agencies instead of each agency duplicating efforts.

One of the wiki projects involves the Intellipedia, a Wikipedia replica with intelligence articles written and edited by agents. There is less of a fear of the data being corrupt or false since the identities or the contributors are known.

Shockingly, this new Intelligence 2.0 tools are being eagerly embraced by the younger agent who are more comfortable with technology. The more seasoned agents are more resistant because it involves learning new technology that they don’t necessarily trust. These are also the agents that will be retiring soon and using blogs and wikis to capture their historical knowledge would be a very good thing.

Wikipedia has a section dedicated to the topic of schools and universities using Wikipedia for educational purposes. Here are some of their suggested exercises:

Suggested exercises

• Try having students start at an existing or requested article:
  • Wikipedia:Requested articles
  • Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs
  • Wikipedia:Most wanted articles
  • Special:Shortpages
  • Special:Randompage
  • Wikipedia:Requests for expansion
  • Template:Opentask
• Tell students to take existing orphaned articles and link them into appropriate places:
  • Wikipedia:Orphaned articles
• Tell students to fix spelling, factual, grammatical, and other errors.
  • Wikipedia:Cleanup
  • Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
  • Wikipedia:Peer review
• Have students translate articles into English from another language.
  • Wikipedia:Translation into English. As of February 2005 we have an enormous backlog of requested translations from German.
• Students could translate our featured articles into other languages or write their own.
  • Complete list of language Wikipedias available
• Have students contribute to a subject-matter area that has generally been neglected.
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias
• Students could work on the collaboration of the week.
• Students could help with the projects at one of the Wikiportals (pages organizing projects on a broad subject area)
• Students could add citations to existing pages, thus helping to improve the credibility of Wikipedia while they learn the significance of citing sources. (Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards.)