- “Knowledge Sharing in Research” Project: A year in the life of six pilot projects
- Online Learning Resources: the way forward
- KS Workshop runs, runs, runs with FAO
- Google Apps case study ended and the users are satisfied with this new experience!
ICT-KM supports events and conferences
"Making Our Research Outputs Available - the AAA Approach"
Co-organized with FARA, this event will look into methods and systems to ensure research outputs are available, accessible and applicable. Tentatively scheduled to be held December 1st 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.
"Knowledge management- Why and Who for?"
The session will look into the "why" of knowledge management and sharing and discuss the challenges and opportunities afforded by implementing knowledge management techniques. The sessions is tentatively scheduled December 2nd, 2008 during the CGIAR 2008 Annual General Meeting in Maputo.
"Knowledge Management and Sharing: How?"
This all day event will specifically look into different strategies and methods and the benefits and or shortcomings. Scheduled for December 4th 2008 in Maputo
Read more about the Knowledge Sharing in Research project in the September issue of CGIAR e-News.
For more information on ICT-KM activities and events, visit our website and blog at http://ictkm.cgiar.org/
Snippets
Are you setting comfortably? Farmers share knowledge through storytelling
"My story with farming began when I was a child," says Mahmoud Shlash, whose village lies near the ancient city of Aleppo in northern Syria. "At that time, the rainfall was high unlike the rainfall this season. I watched my father when he collected spikes (barley seedheads) from here and there and brought them home. I asked him, 'Why are you collecting the spikes and nothing else?' Now I realise that he was doing the same as ICARDA is currently doing with the farmers."
For more information, please visit: http://www.new-ag.info/08/05/develop/dev2.php
Strengthening Partnership through increased collaboration: ICT-KM and FARA
Working with partners to increase effectiveness continues to be an important aspect of the ICT-KM Program. With this in mind, the ICT-KM Program, represented by Enrica Porcari recently participated in the CGIAR-FARA (Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa) consultation held in Accra 2-4 September 2008. The consultation aimed at increasing this strategic partnership and harmonizing research in Africa.
Taking into consideration past successful collaborations, representatives of FARA (Myra Woopereis-Pura and Francois Stepman) discussed with Enrica ways forward to increase ICT-KM/FARA partnership and joint activities.
More information about the consultation can be found at http://farastaff.blogspot.com
/2008/09/cgiar-fara-consultation.html
Pilot projects paving innovative paths to sharing information
The Institutional Knowledge Sharing project is supporting three pilot activities in three CGIAR centers in order to contribute to institutional innovation, and learn about the effectiveness of KS approaches. Two of the pilots have now made available their products.
“Recovering from natural disasters” A ‘Storymercial’ by WorldFish
“The storymercial is e a combination of video, audio and images. At the heart of the storymercial is the story; the oldest most proven way humans learn and remember information.” says Helen Leitch, Pilot Project Leader. “Despite a huge investment in communications, awareness of the CGIAR Centers’ work and contribution to development is often low. Since knowledge products with more mass appeal are needed, this project examined the role storymercials can play to attract our donors and partners to knowledge, thus increasing the uptake of research outputs”. Have a look at: http://www.worldfishcenter.org
/v2/rehabilitate%20livelihoods.html
Best Practices in Research data Management (IRRI)
“There is still little experience in using wiki technology within CGIAR. The openness and visibility of a wiki is often seen as a risk, rather than an opportunity for increased participation and collaboration in communities of practice.” states Thomas Metz, Project Leader. This project developed, collected, recorded, and applied good practices in research data management, and initiated a communities of practice for research data managers. It is enabling scientists to produce better quality research and release their primary data as global public goods that will be available and usable for future secondary use. See the wiki at: http://cropwiki.irri.org/everest/
ICT-KM Homepage
“Google Apps case study ended and the users are satisfied with this new experience!
As the CIO office and the ICT-KM program continues to look at innovations, we launched The Google Apps Case study, a joint initiative of the CGIAR IT Managers and the CGIAR's ICT-KM Program, to evaluate the overall performance of using outsourcing services to improve the user experience of remote offices users and traveling staff, enhance business continuity, reduce costs of using these services across the CGIAR centers or part thereof.
Google Apps was selected as an online hosted service which includes: Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Start Page and Google Site applications in an effort to explore new tools that could enable our organization to better communicate, share, and collaborate.
"This was an excellent experience," stated Tania Jordan, Coordinator of the Google Apps case study, "this initial study is a very good start, and shows there is a real need out there. To go further we need a real pilot study to take into consideration the particular technical challenges and needs of the CGIAR, highlighted by the case study, to identify an optimal solution."
One important premise for our organization is to have tools that work well anywhere in the world given our worldwide presence. Google blocks some of their services in certain countries, so for some participants to access their accounts for the first time, they had to find expedients to be able login. Also, the participants that had the opportunity to travel during the case study period reported there were problems accessing Google Apps from some countries. Most of the users agree that offline email access is required since connectivity is very limited in some parts of the world so these issues should be solved before the CGIAR decides to move to a different email platform.
Participants comment on their experiences
The case study included 282 participants from 14 centers, and gave each an opportunity to test the use of google mail as well as a variety of other online collaboration tools. The case study ended on September 15, 2008, and results on experiences were collected in a final survey. Initial reactions seem mainly positive with over 60% of the respondents indicating they were satisfied with the services Google Apps provided.
The participants mentioned that the most advantageous features of Google Apps are the Storage capacity and speed. They mentioned they find the 'Email, Calendar and chat integration' is useful for their work and the collaborative features of Google Docs such as sharing documents, publishing documents are also useful; nonetheless the majority of the users still expressed their preference for Microsoft Office over Google Docs since this tool still doesn't have all the features required for professional documents.
The results of the case study and final survey are being reviewed at the Annual Information Technology Managers meeting taking place at the time this newsletter is issued at ICRISAT's headquarters in India.We welcome feedback on the ICT-KM News, so please feel free to contact us at ictkm@cgiar.org