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? (Part19-XMas is coming!)

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Christmas with the WikiToLearn community

 

Let’s start with important things. Last Sunday the Milan local group had a special dinner to celebrate the incoming Christmas holidays. For sure we have to thank Spinnski: food was great! During the dinner we had Secret Santa: you receive a gift, given by whom? According to fate. It was funny, and we had lot of laughs for some funny gifts.

Ok, let’s get back to business. We are working to get more collaborations concrete, especially from the institutional point of view. WikiMediaCH, Rete della Conoscenza (Italy) and Imperial College London are among the most important “institutions” we are going to collaborate with. The test group is working harder and harder to get a (adjustment) stable release by Christmas, let’s say our Christmas gift for you! Nothing will apparently change for you, but the real show is in the infrastructure.

Stay tuned, we have great plans for the new year. The first thing you have to wait for is WikiToLearnConf India2017, happening in Jaipur 18-19 January. The first WikiToLearn global event is coming: call for papers are open, join and share Knowledge!

Probably you will read the next “Wiki, what’s going on?” episode in the new year. Hopefully great work is incoming and we hope to impress you more and more! Let me take this occasion to wish you happy holidays, from the whole WikiToLearn community 😀

 

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 15-It’s been a while)

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WTLGoinOn

 

Even if you’ve not heard from us for a while, doesn’t mean we disappeared! Here we go again with “Wiki, what’s going on?”.

So, what happened after Akademy? Quite a lot, since everything you’ve read in our previous posts was developed in details and the 1.0 release is now getting closer and closer.

Let’s have a step back: during Akademy we started working on the new skin, which is now almost complete and available in a beta version in production! Course Editor was one of our biggest efforts during our period in Berlin and now we are happy to announce that is alive in production. With these two features WikiToLearn is going to change, and you are going to love it! With more attention to UX and a easier editing environment we hope you to use WikiToLearn more and more: share your knowledge!

The site usability is improved also thanks to the creation of new guides, localized to every language portal, to allow anyone to be able to write on WikiToLearn.

In this period we also had the MediaWikiToLearn at Amrita University, Amritapuri Campus. Here we had the first Memorandum of Understanding signing between WikiToLearn and the Amrita University. Many students had the possibility to discover WikiToLearn and the way it works, hoping that they loved it and are willing to join our project. This event gave us the possibility to collect important feedbacks, extremely useful for the 1.0 release.

 

WikiToLearn 1.0 is going to be released soon, with lot of new (and cool) features. Beside course editor and the new skin, with the new release we are going to launch our new communication plan. “Wiki, what’s going on?” was thought as a series of blog posts to allow you to be updated on what happens in our community, but with the problem that it’s not really periodic and it based on a blog structure. With the new communication plan, anyone can be always updated thanks to the new “WikiToLearn Reports”: a bi-weekly official report of what’s going on in our community, with statistics of each project.

For sure there is something I’ve not told you about in the new WikiToLearn, but you are going to discover it by yourself (or thanks to the new report system, or with “Wiki, what’s going on?”). Stay tuned: WikiToLearn 1.0 has never been this close!

Wiki, what’s going on? (Part 8-Akademy2016)

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WTLGoinOn

 

Hello everybody,

It’s august and probably you are on holiday, life seems beautiful and you hope this period never ends, but… Happy or not September is about to arrive, and your daily routine is too. Don’t be afraid though: in these months the WikiToLearn community is working hard to provide you the best WikiToLearn you’ve seen so far.

 

From a brand new homepage to a better organization for news and social pages: you’re going to love it! September is not that sad though: why? If the new WikiToLearn isn’t enough for you, probably Akademy is: the annual word summit of KDE, this year happening in Berlin with QtCon, is one of the greates events for FOSS and we are taking part to it! Why is it so special for us? First of all because we’re part of the KDE community and we are looking forward to meet other members, share opinions and help each other, but also because this period is going to be special: KDE has its 20th birthday while Free Software Foundation Europe and VideoLAN both have their 15th birthday. Not over yet: you know who’s celebrating its birthday too in the same period? WikiToLearn! 😀

 

During these months we worked hard to create local communities, to spread the word about our project, to give more attention and help to new users and to come up with a better communication plan that allows you to be always up to date on what’s going on in our community. September is not that far and it’s full of great news, get ready and prepare yourself!

Watch out: #wtlatakademy #wtlbirthday and others can become viral on our social pages in few weeks, we’re going to Akademy! 😉

Bye

 

akademy