Tag Archives for wikis
Good news yesterday that our workshop abstract for the Cochrane Canada Symposium was accepted! This year’s symposium theme is Early Exposure to Cochrane: Accessible, Credible, Practical. Our topic (see below) is one that will hopefully spark some interest and some great discussion and practice at the symposium. Leading up to February, we’ll obviously be interested in gathering some sources and opinions on how others use social media for evidence-based practice, so please get in touch with your thoughts if your have ideas or suggestions!
“Using Social Media to Promote Evidence-Based Practice: A Primer on Blogs, Wikis & Twitter”
Dean Giustini, Francisco Jose Grajales, Daniel Hooker
When / Where: Fairmont Pacific Rim, Vancouver, BC. February 16-17, 2011.
Background
This workshop provides an overview of three popular social media technologies, blogs, wikis and microblogging (e.g., Twitter, Yammer). The authors will show where to locate medical blogs and wikis on the social web and the type of information that can be found there to support evidence-based practice. Through a mix of didactic lecture, hands-on practice, and group discussion, this workshop provides an entry point for social media beginners.
Learning objectives
At the end of this workshop, participants will:
- Understand blog, wiki and microblogging tools and how they are used in medicine
- Have some basic knowledge of how to select one of the social tools examined to support evidence-based practice and medical education
- Identify major blogging and wiki platforms to create accounts, new content and social networks
- Be able to assess issues of privacy on various social media platforms
- Contextualize workshop information for personal use in practice, research and continuing education
Presenters
Dean Giustini, UBC Biomedical Branch Librarian, Adjunct Faculty, SLAIS
Francisco Grajales, Trainee, Western Regional Training Centre for Health Services Research
Daniel Hooker, Researcher, eHealth Strategy Office, Faculty of Medicine
Format
A practical session that combines lecture, live demonstrations and practical exercises.
Equipment required
Participants can bring their laptops and mobiles. Internet access will be provided.
Level of knowledge required
Some awareness of social media and basic knowledge of the web.
The battle of the free wiki programs. The first thing to notice about Wetpaint as opposed to PBWiki is the coding. Wetpaint’s design is filled to the brim with cutting edge web stuff like floating toolbars for page editing, collapsible everything and transparency a-go-go. PBWiki keeps it a little simpler in this regard, and I can’t quite decide which I prefer. Being a web design fan myself, I can appreciate the effort which it must have required to develop Wetpaint’s functionality, but it seems perhaps that the money spent on design has to be made up by advertisements or membership fees.
This is, of course, not exactly an unfamiliar model for web applications, but coming from using PBWiki which has run both membership-free and ad-free since I have used it, it does take a little getting used to. I find that I use wikis the most for group planning or project development. In that context, having ads run on the sidebar is pretty unappetizing.
That being said, watching the CommonCraft video on WetPaint provides a different perspective on how Wetpaint is trying to develop its user base. These are not supposed to be wikis for a group of students planning out a project. Wetpaint is catering toward the book and fan club users, seeking to find a home on the web. This sense is heightened by the easy addition of page “modules” and “widgets” that connect your Wetpaint wiki to other web services like YouTube or iMeem. It also breaks some of the contextual barriers around the presence of ads. I am more comfortable seeing ads on Amazon Recommends, than I am on Google Docs.
In this course, we are already used to PBWiki, and it seems to serve the purpose of planning out the course quite well. The traditional WYSIWYG editor of the PBWiki pages is familiar, and with no ads lurking around it feels more like a learning space than Wetpaint.
Given my usual desires for a wiki, I think I’ll stick by PBWiki (as long as they keep it free, anyway). But, given the enhanced functionality of Wetpaint, it certainly would be something to consider for other users.
