July 2008
New MAF LT Project Wiki
Submitted by thettinger on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 10:00
Learning Technologies has been abuzz recently with a migration of information from the old L.T. wiki to a new L.T. wiki. The new wiki is now available for friends of Learning Technology to create a login and look at the projects of Learning Technology. You can access the project wiki at:
https://projectwiki.maflt.org/ .
The old L.T. wiki functioned on the Twiki platform. Twiki is a good technical tool with lots of features that make it a great tool for specialized wikis. If you already know HTML and are comfortable writing formatting expressions in wiki script, then Twiki could be the tool you need.
However, the new tool that Learning Technologies is implementing is based on the Dekiwiki platform. The Dekiwiki wiki is a gathering of several open source tools into one offering. The Dekiwiki wiki has a simple to use WYSIWYG page editing interface, allows for the easy uploading of files, and easy management of wiki information and collaboration.
The setup can be relatively painless, as the Mindtouch company also releases a pre-configured debian based VM with all the necessary software already installed and running. You can get a VMware player, or the VMserver and fire up a Dekiwiki in probably less than an hour. Or there are free alternatives to hosting your own Dekiwiki.
The Dekiwiki’s performance is excellent for a wiki. The development team for the Dekiwiki is very active, and they releases new features fairly often. Overall, it is an excellent piece of open source software that is going to help make the internet, and Learning Technologies a better place.
The particular wiki that Learning Technologies is using Dekiwiki for is our Projects wiki, where L.T. hosts details about projects and material related to different types of projects throughout the world. The project wiki offers a place for collaboration and focus on these different projects. Take a look at what is happening at Learning Technologies though our Project Wiki!
MAF LT ProjectWiki goes LIVE!
Submitted by jmanley on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 15:34Coordinating the efforts of a worldwide consulting team that spans multiple cultures poses daunting challenges. Jetting about the globe for meetings breaks budgets when done too frequently. And, jet-lag wastes the first few days while everyone figures out what planet they’re on.
Online technology seemed like the ideal solution, but just how to accomplish that eluded us for quite awhile. After serious time and energy investments in a couple abortive attempts, we finally settled on a freeware wiki called, DekiWiki.
Now, links from the MAF Learning Technologies website point to our ProjectWiki (see button on the Projects tab). On ProjectWiki, we display summaries of projects for several of our ministry clients in the same place that we actually work on them. Any viewer may comment on a project and, involved partners can collaborate directly on project development from anyplace in the world via the Internet.
