Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 16 seconds

Unhangout & learning on #FedWikiHappening

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 16 seconds

So, wow, it’s been a week since Fedwikihappening has started. Can’t believe it’s been a week! Feels like I have been doing this forever (well, ok, i did start early) and at the same time like i just started (oh, no, only one week left! I hope Mike does not take away our accounts or anything).

So first of all, I was reflecting yesterday about how many new things I am learning about and reflecting about as I browse through what other people are writing. It’s not as brief as twitter’s 140 chars but quicker to read/browse than blogs, or longer stuff, and the side-by-side tabs means that if i am interested in following a link midway through reading an article, i can go and come back by just shifting my eyes, never having to navigate away from where i am at. I think this is one of the coolest, least talked about feature of fedwiki. I am sure i end up clicking more of the in-text in-wiki links than if i were looking at a regular website (where i would usually finish what i am reading first then click maybe a link or two).

Second, I managed to finally get on a hangout with Mike. Or not 🙂 For some reason I have connectivity issues these days, and for some reason they are exaggerated at 8am (10pm Pacific). I kept getting kicked out of hangout and coming back in. Even tho i have written previously written about my affinity for asynchronous learning, i have managed, in fact, in the past year to participate in probably 50 or so successful hangouts (about one a week, sometimes more during planning #TvsZ), three online conferences, and quite a few Skype and Bb collaborate meetings. Successfully. Yday i kept getting kicked out every couple minutes. It was more like a hangup than a hangout! But it was fun talking to Mike while making breakfast for my husband (and it might be the moving around the kitchen that caused the breaking up) and we did manage to discuss an issue i had which maybe the conversation clubs have solved? Unsure! I also got to briefly say hi to Alyson and Ward before getting ready for work.

Conversation Clubs
I am unsure what the magic is about this. In an email, Mike suggested we add this link to our welcome page:

[http://fed.wiki.org/trending.html Conversation Clubs]

And then click that link from your website, something VERY neat happens. You can suddenly visit pages without needing to load a community. Bonus (maybe) when you click the link you see all versions of the page, which might help with group editing projects

It is much faster than the whole loading recent changes thing. I don’t know why it is a bonus to see versions since i could already do that with recent changes? I also wonder about order – does it show most recent or most viewed or what? Unsure. Also interested in naming it conversations…when they are actually wiki pages, some of which invite conversation but not all?

Alyson and taking learning further
Ayson commented on my blog yday that after the hangout she edited my Freire & Egyptian Revolution page substantially and hoped it was respectful. I looked at what she’d done and it was awesome! She made new pages for terms she wanted me to write about, quoted part of my Critical Citizenship article, and asked really good questions. Since this is an offshoot of my PhD research and something I hope to write more about, this has really helped me think more deeply and critically about how i might go about this, how to use my other writing to date to integrate it into my upcoming research on it, and what questions i need to ask and discuss for a non-Egyptian audience. Thanks, Alyson! I can’t respond immediately coz it needs lots of reflection! But will do!

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