This learning activity was held as a pre-conference event prior to the 2nd world congress of agroforestry held at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), United Nations Avenue in Nairobi. The event took place on Friday, 21st August for the English speaking participants and on the subsequent day our French speaking counterparts went through the same.
PREAMBLE.
Information technology in general and internet revolution in particular are taking place at a rather breathtaking pace. A vast majority of IT practitioners are girding their loins never to be caught unawares by the revolution and hence be rendered redundant or ineffective in their professions by the scores of changes and new products being churned out on daily basis. One such area that has seen unprecedented rise and change in the practice of IT is the web2.0 field of IT. It is in this vein that organizations such as CTA and their vast network of collaborators and partners, with a keen interest in sharing knowledge to improve rural livelihoods have taken a trail blazing role in disseminating to promote the use of such cheap conveyance means.
What is web2.0? A great deal of definitions have been put forward by major IT practitioners as pertaining to web2.0 and its capabilities. To mention but a few, some of the definitions and descriptions put forth and how they differ from the conventional web practice, include but not limited to:
● Participatory web
● user generated and user centred web
● Data driven web
● Read/write web because as well as viewing websites, anyone with internet access can create
their own content and tailor pages to suit their own particular needs
● Tim O'Reilly, credited with the coining of the term web2.0 has defined thus: The business
revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as the platform.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned definitions, a lot of opinion tend to coalesce at the following
definition, which may therefore be deemed as standardized one. It goes thus:
Web2.0 are the free or low cost interactive web applications that are increasingly available to the
public. These innovative services allow individuals and organizations to work together in creating,
sharing, collaborate on and publish digital information on the internet. They were created for and
thrives on the the participation of people and empowerment of users.
Web2.0 applications Examples.
These applications include but not limited to the following:
Blogging
Wikis and social networks
Tagging
Feeds
Mash-ups
Closely related to the application is the fact that they inter marry with the following so as to give out
result:
People – They are people driven
Access – anyone with access to the internet can easily use them unhindered.
Participation – They rely heavily on participation of people/groups of people/collaborators
Content – owned by groups as opposed to privately hosted sites where content is private.
Impact – Has resulted into wider usage of internet, freely available stuff, etc
The interrelationship between the applications and the approaches has been pictorially demonstrated by some web2.0for Dev practitioners – Jon Corbet- into the following two hand image.(see Fig 2.0)
Differences. Apparently, the conventional web paradigm put a lot of emphasis on issues like platform dependence, i.e languages of programming operating systems supported, whereas here, one uses these applications without even attempting to know their platforms.
Conventional web has strict ownership structure where only particular individuals can upload,
moderate content in analogy with this where anyone with access can create own profiles, load, discuss and generally participate in discussions unhindered by anyone.
Short Review.
Having gone through the training with lots of enthusiasm, and having been tasked with ensuring
knowledge transfer to colleagues, further, having been tasked with ensuring institution of mechanisms that will allow immediate use of the learnt applications of intrinsic interest to us, I have decided to document as many as possible of the learnt applications. This will by and large serve to kill two birds with one stone. First, it will serve to entrench the use of the relevant applications deep into my mnemonic devices and secondly, as Seth Godin once observed, “Ideas that spread through groups of people are more powerful than those delivered at an individual”, this will be particularly true as I will seek gain more experience as I pass through the knowledge.
Therefore, in my quest to accomplish the above, and for the keeps sake, it is my pleasure to put down the lessons as I understood them, so that they will be subject to scrutiny by peers who attended the training and criticism from those entrenched in the practice.
The areas that caught my attention and attracted my interest are as follows..put simply, the capabilities
of the web2.0 tools. One such capability was collaboration via Google Documents....
This article will continue to be published in bits. for more information, email the author at owino.rudesat@africaonline.co.ke.
Posts
