Blogs from WikiToLearn

Bells and whistles from the WikiToLearn Community

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 24-Badges and books)

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Books, badges and new functionalities are coming!

Hey WikiToLearn-ers! It has been a while, but now “What’s going on?” is back.

This last period was really difficult for all of us but we never forgot of WikiToLearn. In spite of personal commitments and exams, the members of our community kept working day after day and now we see the results!

Electromagnetism is now ready!

In the first episode of “Meet the authors” we have come to know Dan, a long term contributor of ours. It is now a pleasure to announce that his book about electromagnetism is ready! Dan is one of the most active editors in our community and on our website he wrote several books on the italian portal: analysis, physics I, mechanics and electromagnetism! Kudos Daniele for your strong dedication to the project and for your contributions!

We have badges!

The tech team never stops, the platform is always at his best and our sysadmins work hard to provide you great services. When we had problems we were able to solve them very quickly and to get back on our feet! In this period

our devs worked on a long-term requested feature for our website: badges! Yeah, now WikiToLearn has badges! Since our project was born we were asked a way to certify an imported or reviewed book and to give its author/reviewer the proper merit. We are very happy to announce that this feature is now ready! When you donate a book to be imported, a proper tag will be associated to it on the website.

Professors always asked us a tag to certify their books authority. To accommodate this request now we have the “Reviewed” tag. Are you the author of a specific book and you would like it to be certified? Now with WikiToLearn you can! One step further to guarantee high-quality content and to monitor revisions on our dynamical textbooks!

Let’s celebrate!

We never forget where we belong: that’s why we remind you that during this week Akademy2017 is taking place in Almeria! Akademy is the annual conference of the KDE community. WikiToLearn was born under the KDE umbrella and still today we fell part of the KDE family. This year WikiToLearn is represented at Akademy by Vasudha, a GSoC student of ours working on Ruqola. Today we remember Akademy with extreme pleasure: two years ago, during Akademy2015 our project was officially born!

Since the first official announcement to the public, so much happened. We can consider ourselves satisfied for the hard work we did and for the initial outreach we had. People feedbacks pushed us to work better and better to improve functionalities and to satisfy users’ needs. In this period we had the occasion to spread the word about WikiToLearn and we could obtain substantial involvement in our projects. We are extremely grateful to all the members of our community for events organized, books donated for importation, reviews and creation of new material on the platform.

For us now it’s time to work even harder. During these two years we came up to realize what we were doing properly and what has to be modified. In the next few months we are working on communication and style improvements to enlarge our community.

Content creation and usability are the two main issues we are facing right now.  Any kind of user should be aware of what the platform offers and should be encouraged to write on it. WikiToLearn collects dynamical textbooks and in the incoming future this innovative feature of our product has to become our strength point!

 

We are working for you, WikiToLearn-ers! Stay tuned, spread the word, join.wikitolearn.org and start sharing your knowledge in a completely innovative way!

 

Wiki, What’s Going On? (Part 23-Back from OSCAL17)

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Back from #OSCAL2017

It’s been a while since the last “What’s going on?” episode, but now we’re back!

A lot has been done in this period, as our social pages and blog can confirm. We’ve announced the release of the German portal and we’ve launched the new series “Meet the authors“, with the first episode dedicated to our italian contributor Atakanz. The community is growing and contents on the platform are increasing day after day, as you could read from our reports. WikiToLearn never stops: knowledge only grows if shared, then let’s share!

But now let’s move to more recent activities: we’re just headed back from Tirana, where we attended Open Source Conference Albania 2017 (OSCAL). I’ll try to keep it short because words are often not enough. First of all a special mention goes to the organizers and all the volunteers, kudos to you all! WikiToLearn also gave special thanks to the conference, make sure not to miss them 😉

Matteo and Riccardo had two talks: “Social Engagement for the Open Source” and “Web backends for native frontends” respectively. We also attended several presentations: every talk was very inspiring and gave us the opportunity to improve ourself and to share ideas with other speakers.

On Saturday we had a WikiToLearn meet up, main issues? Community building, outreach and some cool plans for the future. The support of external people, such as OSCAL volunteers, was fundamental: thank you very much! Having an external point of view helped us to understand where and what we need to improve, what we are doing well and what people expect from us.

Back from the conference, it’s time to work. We have planned our activities for the next weeks, but no spoiler here 😉

Acttually you don’t deserve it, so here it is a short list of what you should expect:

  • WikiToLearn has to be a powerful tool for your studying activity, that’s why we are planning to lunch WikiToLearn study groups;
  • Community building is a great issue for us and we’d like to start working on this more and more;
  • We’ve several books to import, TexLa will have to work hard: knowledge only grows if imported!

As you can see these taks demand strong efforts from the whole community. Are you corious about them? Want to help? You can find us at chat.wikitolearn.org and on join.wikitolearn.org, do not hesitate!We’ve learnt a lot from this country, which has suffered a lot in its history and now is trying to rise from its hashes. We hope all the best for the Open Labs community, you guys rock!

See you at #OSCAL2018

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 22-Throw back time)

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A glorious flash back to one year ago

WikiToLearn is doing great recently, but where were we one year ago?

Exactly one year ago I was about to have my first experience with WikiToLearn. When I left Milan, this day one year ago, I only knew I was going at CERN (Geneve) to start working at this project called WikiToLearn…

I didn’t know what a Sprint was neither what exactly I was going to do at a WikiToLearn-Sprint. I wrote a course on complex analysis (ITA) and I got it imported on the website: the thing I didn’t realize was that I became a WikiToLearn-er in that precise moment.  So, I left Milan having seen the other members of the community only once and I didn’t know what was my role (probably because I didn’t have one) but I was extremely enthusiast for this opportunity.

On this day, one year ago I discovered a beautiful world. I started discovering the open source world without knowing anything about it. Our week at CERN was extremely insane! We woke up at 8:30AM and used to work until midnight. When we were done with our work and we should had gone to bed, we met at CERN’s cafeteria and had glorious moments till late night: what happens at the Sprint, stays at the Sprint.

I could say so many things about the Sprint that a blog post wouldn’t  be enough. I met special people whom I am still in contact with and I am really happy to see when I have the occasion. Back then, my journey in the open source world began and I simply don’t want to stop now.

Since then I worked every day of my life at WikiToLearn. I understood what my role in the project is. Simply, I became part of a new family.

This blog post is somehow different from the others of the “What’s going on?” series, but it is necessary. One year ago, when I wrote the first episode I didn’t expect it to become a series. Actually I didn’t expect WikiToLearn to become so fundamental in my life too. If you have ever read a “Wiki, what’s going on?” episode, be aware that this is where everything started.

There is no better way for you to understand what I felt (and still feeling) than become part of the Wiki-Fam. Come join us at join.wikitolearn.org and change the world with us!

 

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part21-Guess who’s back)

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“Wiki, what’s going on?” is back again and has a lot to say!

It’s exams period and many of us are studying for our exams. You should already know where to look for good material to ace your exams: WikiToLearn!

It’s been a while since the last episode came out and we have several things to talk about.

Let’s start with the most important one: WikiToLearn India Conference 2017! I am very pleased to announce that the first conference entirely dedicated to and organized by WikiToLearn has been a great success! I did not take part in the conference personally, but I’ve only got positive feedbacks about it. These days our social pages are sharing blog posts of people who attended the conference, don’t miss them to have a direct validation of these words!

I am positively impressed by the huge number of people who joined the conference and by the quality of the talks organized. From what I heard and read, I am also very pleased about the hype surrounding WikiToLearn during conference days.

It is somehow surprising to note how the project is growing and the global interest in it. The location, the number of volunteers, the great quality of given talks and the possibility of dialogue between audience and speakers are fundamental for the success of a conference. I could not be more happy seeing that #WTLIndiaConf had all these points!

Talking about numbers and statistics, it is encouraging to see the number of active users growing as well as the number of registered users on the platform. Exams period indeed: study with WikiToLearn, improve the quality of the material you are studying on and pass your exams (almost) effortless!

Our tech team is working on minor improvements to give you the best WikiToLearn day after day. We are working on an official document to help us during the test phases of new releases. Become an official WTLdeveloper and help us find and fix bugs!

Recently, we have also been to FOSDEM. No talks delivered, but excellent opportunity to spread the word about WikiToLearn in an international event. We spoke with several people involved in academia and open education. Two complete books were donated to WikiToLearn and are about to be uploaded on the site.

Our project happens to interest more and more people and this is amazing. Spread the word about WikiToLearn and become part of the family. Create books, share knowledge!

Part of the core group is planning its presence at OSCAL. With WikiToLearn1.0 perfectly running and WTL2 set up for the (upcoming) future, we have a lot to share.

Hopefully we are taking part in more and more events to make WikiToLearn known and to find new, willing, collaborators. The WikiToLearn family is waiting for you!

This episode ends here… Hope to see news from you, WikiToLearn-ers!

 

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part20-2017 is here)

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The hype is great: WikiToLearn India Conf2017 is almost here!

 

Hello WikiToLearn-ers! First of all, let me wish a happy new year to all of you!

How better to start the new year? With lot of news!

In less than two weeks WikiToLearn India Conf2017 is about to happen. We are extremely happy because this is the first big international event entirely dedicated to WikiToLearn. We have to thank the members of our community who are working hard to provide you this amazing event. For sure, the best thing about this conference is the great variety of speakers: Ruphy is flying from Italy to India to attend the conference and give a talk about WTL. For this event we have speakers lined up from Mediawiki, KDE and Mozilla Community. Several projects and ideas will meet at WTL India Conf2017 and this is simply amazing for us! The entire event will be recorded and videos will be uploaded online: you won’t miss any talk!

We have planned other great things for this 2017. Few days ago some members of the community met to have a discussion about our targets for the future. We came up with a new strategic plan for the incoming months: join our communication channels to discuss it with us. New talks, new posters and technical improvements are just around the corner. WikiToLearn1.0 is great, but what’s coming now is even better!

2016 was fantastic for us, but in 2017 a turning point is waiting for us. Stay tuned!