minor dilemma

I was uploading knowledge nuggets and came across a couple of reports where there were three field officers who collaborated and contributed information. While uploading, I was wondering whether I should upload these documents three times under each of the personas that contributed, or just upload it once and type the other personas names that were involved in making the report. I’m not so sure how tagging the document with the names would affect the search process. Would the same document just show up three times when doing a manual search for it ? Will the document show up on the contributors’ page even if I dont upload it specifically on the persons’ page?

I tried tagging both Grover and Peter on the reports that Sarah uploaded because they worked together.

When I did a search using another member’s for ‘grover’, this is what the search pulled up.

I found it quite strange that while all the collaborative work that Grover took part in was shown and the ones that he uploaded weren’t part of the search results. This probably means that if a user wants to upload a file and be credible for it, they’d have to type in their own name as a tag.

I tried searching for the keyword “long distance trails” in the search bar and this is what came up.

Only the file that Sarah updated came up in the search results and there was no mention of either Grover or Peter.

Judging by this, in order to get recognition for their work each of them would need to upload their own copies of the report – even if it is the same document on repetition. An alternative to that would be to find a widget that would allow the user to tag other users in the document. For now, I’ll just upload the document multiple times (one for each user involved) and also include the names of the other personas involved in the tag bar.

Jane

Jane is now D. Jensen’s alter ego.

I had to change her profile quite significantly so that it could incorporate all the information from Jensen’s reports. So now, instead of just being interested in fire management and erosion, she is also involved in ecological/flora and fauna monitoring as well as search and rescue. =D

This is her new profile.

Along with the change in the ‘About me’ section, Jane now has two files uploaded to her account that back up what she says she’s achieved during her attachment in Canada.

I’m back =D

Hello all!

I know I havent posted in a while and it’s because of the assignments I had to get done. I really hope I did them well enough to get good grades =S. Anyways, I had a meeting with Adrian and while everyone will be having fun and kicking back during their winter break, looks like I’ll have my work cut out for me.

Here’s my to do list so far:-

- I need to get my 3 Plain Language Statements sorted out for the ethics form. I know I’ve really been dragging with this but the sooner I get this done, the better. When this is good and approved, I’ll be able to conduct surveys and what not. Priority level: Super high!

- I need to put up the knowledge nuggets for the rest of the personas and make them look fantastic. In doing this, I also need to narrow down the number of widgets there are on KT and make it really very basic so people wouldnt have a problem using it at first glance. Then maybe later on when people have gotten used to the structure, I’d maybe add one or two additional widgets sort of like to update the site.

- When everything is in, I’ll need to start doing ‘how-to’ videos using screencasts. Now, this is something I havent done before. I dont even know where to start when it comes to software. Any suggestions, readers? Well, if there isnt any feedback from this post, I guess I’ll try ‘Screenflow’. I need a screencasting software that allows me to take videos and use audio simultaneously; and it needs to be Mac compatible. =D

I think those are the priority tasks for now.

While doing all that in the first couple of weeks of the holiday, I think I need to get started on the exegesis writing process. It’s all moving so slowly (maybe because it’s only been a couple of days since I handed in my sem 1 assignments and I havent actually done anything productive yet). I just feel like vegging out for a bit but I dont know if I have that luxury. :S My sleeping pattern is on the blitz and everyone else has got World Cup Fever. Oh…and I cant stop playing WoW. AWESOME start to the working holiday =D

Enjoy your winter breaks everyone =D

Change of Persona Details

I think in order for the personas from the test site to work for the live site, some details of their being need to change to include that of live individuals. These personas will just now be treated as aliases of live people who have submitted their details in the form of knowledge nuggets.

Update of knowledge trails has been really slow lately and will continue to move at this pace for the next couple of weeks. I’ll try my best to update the personas as much as I can but because I have assignment due dates coming up, it progress will be quite snail-paced. I will record the updates of the individual personas as they happen. =D

Updating the live site

I’ve only just gotten around to making updates on knowledge trails and progress is really slow. It doesnt help that my drop-down ‘Tools’ tool bar doesnt really work (I dont know why it doesnt work now when it used to). Well, I’ve asked Adrian about it, I just need to wait for a reply now. I’ve made updates to the Terms and Privacy external pages using content from the elgg site. It’s pretty similar and contains shareable content so why not right ?

I’ve been trying to sort out the User Generated content plugin (for forms) but I seem to have quite a bit of problems getting it in the mods file exactly the way the plugins author specifies. I guess I’ll just have to try again a bit later. So far, I’ve gotten rid of the spotlight section that one plagued the site. I had to download a plugin just to erase the whole section. I figured that would be an easier option, rather than having me muck about with the core codes, messing up then later having to retrace my steps to see where I went wrong.

I also downloaded plugins to insert a tag cloud and a task list onto the knowledge trails site, after all, tags are important as a search function and we all like making lists yea ?

Anyways, I should be uploading the rest of the personas soon. It seems that Chris is quite lonely, what with only 2 other admins on the whole site, and I’ve only recently befriended him.

Elgg Personas

So I’ve finally come up with the background stories for each of the elgg personas. They arent very detailed but you can tell that there are connections between them. I chose the profile pictures of each persona to be a cartoon character that shares the same name as the person so that I didnt need to use pictures of random people without their consent.

Peter

Peter has lived in Halls Gap all his life and currently works at the Grampians National Park. He is a proud father of 7-year-old twin boys and spends what ever free time he has with them. His two boys also share his passion for nature, so during school breaks, it is quite common to see the family out doing outdoorsy activities such as camping, fishing and hiking. Having spent so much time in the wilderness, Peter trekked along many trails and watch them erode across time. This spurred his interest in finding out how to slow down this process so the trail would still be around for his future grandchildren to trek.

He was sent to the Prince Edward Island National Park in Canada to learn more about Erosion and Trail Management.

Chris

Chris lives at Tidal and has worked at Wilsons Prom National Park for over 10 years already. He is married to Jane  and lives in semi detached house near his workplace. In his spare time, he volunteers as a firefighter. He thought that this would be good for his career since Wilsons Prom is a fire-prone area and he always likes to be prepared for any possible situation that may occur.

He is a fire management enthusiast looking to be an expert in the field but also has experience managing trails. He met his wife in his second year working at Wilsons Prom and their interest in fire and finding ways to manage it in different environments was the starting point of conversation that got them interested in each other.

Jane

Jane lives at Tidal River and has worked at Wilsons Prom National Park for 14 years. She met Chris at a talk she presented in the department regarding peat fires that she learned about while she was working on attachment at the Yosemite National Park in California. In her free time, she helps vets by providing a small scale sanctuary for orphaned animals that were hurt in bushfires.

Grover

Grover lives at Little Desert and has been working at the Little Desert National Park for the past 20 years. He recently lost his wife in a car accident and hasnt been very socially active. He spends most of his time in seclusion, caring for his wife’s hydrophonics greenhouse (she was a botanist). Working at Little Desert National park, he specialises in weed control and trail management. The interest in curbing weeds is the result of a number of his wife’s potted plants dying due to insufficient nutrients in the soil – nutrients were taken up by the weeds and they flourished. He was sent to the Prince Edward Island National Park of Canada to investigate the weed control problem they experienced there and also to learn about trail management.

Sarah

Sarah lives in Bright and works at the Mt Buffalo National Park. She has only just started working here as she just finished her degree in Environmental Sustainability at the Swinburne University of Technology. She hasnt had very much experience in the field except she was recently sent to the Kahurangi National Park in New Zealand to analize the measures that were taken in order to ensure the sustainability of the national park. The Kahurangi National Park was created in 1996 so a lot of studies had been done before it was set up to ensure it would be able to sustain itself to last a long time.

Jim

Jim lives in Melbourne and works with Park Victoria. His main intention of joining this site is to see if he can find specialists to become speakers for a conference his department is hosting. He has found specialists for almost all the topics that are to be discussed in the conference; all except specialists on erosion.His purpose here is to see if he is able to use the system to find his specialist.

On the second sheet from the meeting last week, Adrian posed a few questions:

1. What does elgg want/do/need?

Elgg is an open source network that provides the functionality which allows people to set up social networking sites where like-minded people are able to meet online, share information and if need be, join forces to complete a task either externally (on the world wide web) or internally (as a local site for interdepartment communication).

Elgg requires the user to have a pre-existing webserver already running as well as some knowledge on how to do create websites using this server, either that or at least have access to people who have information on how to code websites.

2. How does it work?

In order to get elgg it to fulfill the requirements of your social networking site, plugins can be downloaded from the elgg site. For example, in the Parks Victoria test site, there is a focus on tags that are associated with information that is posted. In order to make the tags appear on the main page in the form of a cloud, a plugin called ‘tag cloud’ had to be downloaded and inserted into the mod file associated with the main site. This can be done with all sorts of add ons to make the site more interactive.

3.Why?

Having all these plugins gives the user better access to the various functions of the site. For example, using these plugins, the user will be able to find any and all information regarding fire management, just by clicking the ‘fire management’ tag in the tag cloud. It makes information easier to find and people easier to contact from this information.

4. What are the affordances and how do they affect the purpose of the actual site?

Elgg allows the administrator/creator to manage and take control over a social networking site. The site allows for cross-site tagging, powerful access over control lists, allows people to view the site over different modes (on computers as well as on mobile internet forms), it also allows people to personalise their individual pages and make use of pre-installed widgets. It also allows users to make use of RSS feeds and send messages internally to other users.