Last day of Web 2.0 Collaborative Tools Training

The Web 2.0 Collaborative Tools Training ended today. 45 participants representing various agricultural stakeholders in Mauritius attended the training.

During the two days, participants were exposed to tools covering: social media, RSS, blogs, wikis, Dgroups, GoogleDocs, social bookmarking, learning management and online surveys.

The group is now aware of possibilities in information exchange and collaboration and it is their turn to raise further awareness among colleagues. They were also called upon by the resource persons to look at how things could be improved at institutional levels.

During the training session, one farmer demonstrated his ability to use facebook- an example the resource persons said should be reflected upon as it showed that even farmers are going online and using Web 2.0 Tools.

One realisation that emerged was that although most agricultural institutions (represented by participants) had a website, yet none of them provided the RSS feature. RSS, as it was demonstrated, allowed users to get updated information from websites (through their RSS readers, like Google Reader) without having to access the websites. For users, it means less time wastage and quick access to updated news. On the other hand, institutions also benefit as they are able effectively communicate information to users. A few partcipants showed interest in having their existing websites go Web 2.0 compliant and RSS ready.

Next week, as from 12th July 2010, we are having a 3 days National AICKM workshop in Mauritius. So keep tuned to get latest information.