Over the last month or so I’ve been doing some work with a group from the Aboriginal Government Employees Network (AGEN) – a fantastic group set up in NSW to to increase the support, networking, and opportunities for collaboration between Aboriginal workers in NSW Government agencies. We’ve been working on an online community presence for them, which will be launched at their Annual Gathering this week.
The approach I’ve taken with this is to look for really simple solutions that a small, and ever changing team of volunteers can manage without too much ‘geek intervention’.
In the end, I went with Wordpress as the content management solution. As much as Joomla is cool, and I love Mediawiki – the simplicity of the Wordpress interface and structure is what works here.
Here’s the Vanilla install of Wordpress we started with…
and here’s the re-skinned AGEN design we’ve ended up with:
There isn’t much to learn now that the pages are all setup and we’ve got the blogging functionality working as a News section that can be updated quickly and easily by the team.
I’ve added a few other bits and pieces- a groovy form from Wufoo – and of course we’ll have a Flickr stream (would it be a jokay design without one? LOL!) and a Frappr map as a way of connecting people and locations.
The other key component I’ve setup is an install of PHPBB – a free bulletin board tool which is pretty easy to install and configure. This is your basic run of the mill discussion forum, which will allow the community to share info together quickly and easily.
We decided to go with this as it allows the team to manage the environment effectively to ensure that it is a positive and supportive environment for AGEN members to meet and collaborate in. All AGEN members will be provided with access to the discussions, with the space used for both official AGEN projects and social networking and sharing.
I’m hoping that this structure will work well for the AGEN team. They were certainly a very positive group to work with at our first training session.
Many of them had been through the experience of trying to learn some Dreamweaver skills, and were obviously worried about how hard it was going to be at the beginning of the day – but I think after having the opportunity to play with a sandbox version of their site they are feeling positive about this new foray into community web publishing.
It’s going to be great to hear the feedback from the community as the site goes forward!
You can check out the new AGEN website at: http://www.agen.org.au.
A note about Facebook for Kerrie
Friday, May 8th, 2009Note: Kerrie Smith asked me to share some info about how use Facebook via a Tweet, and adding a comment with URLs on her blog got all too hard, so im posting it here! You can view the posts it relates to on Kerrie’s Blog here and here.
Hi!
My name’s Jo Kay and I’m a Facebook addict! You can view my FB profile here. hehehe!
Joking aside, I use Facebook from both a personal and a professional perspective, and despite the random apps (quizzes, mafia wars, superpokes etc) I do find it a very useful tool.
From the professional perspective, I use Facebook as a communication channel for the community of practice I facilitate on the Islands of jokaydia in Second Life. We have created a Facebook Group for jokaydia and it has been very effective for promotion of events and activities, but also gives people a space to connect with us and find out more. This is particularly important for us, as it allows those who cant or arent in Second Life to connect with our activities via the 2D web. The jokaydia Facebook Group has about 300 members and growing – check it out here.
We also use Facebook to promote the jokaydia Blog via the Networked Blogs Facebook App and have an Islands of jokaydia Product Page which provides info and pathways to our various spaces/presence online.
For my own professional development:
From a personal perspective:
Ultimately, Facebook has both good and bad qualities and its important to understand how to use it properly. For example some see it as spam city – but this can be mitigated by setting up your account alerts properly and blocking spammy apps.
A few other things to note:
But what about actually answering Kerrie’s Question – should teachers have a Facebook presence?
In my opinion, all teachers need to have an online presence and an understanding of how to manage their digital identity. They also need to develop a personal online learning network to access fantastic professional development opportunities.
Facebook is one of a huge list of useful tools that can help teachers and students to do this and is a good option for some users. BUT there are many other tools out there, and its important to choose something which suits you!
Anyway, I will be very interested to hear what others share about their own Facebook experiences. Thanks Kerry!
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