The Transition Team at Camden have had a busy six months creating content and making wikis with a group of young people in the borough. The result is that the Camden Click Start information portal is now officially live.
Camden have created some fantastic wikis giving information about services in the borough and used them to construct a really exemplary portal. The fruits of Camden’s labour can be seen by clicking HERE. Take a look and get inspired!
During 2011 and 2012 The Rix Centre is leading a project that will take Click Start technology and approaches and research and develop their use in a European context.
W2ID, an EU funded project at UEL, explores the range of new media tools available across Europe for people with intellectual disabilities to use to advance their citizenship and employment opportunities. W2ID will combine existing Click Start tools and best practice with a new set of training resources in a programme called ‘Klik In’ that pilots across five European states in 2012.
The existing Click Start community will benefit as many improvements & new technical features that emerge through this research will be integrated into the Click Start system.
We are delighted to announce that four new London Boroughs will be joining the Click Start community of co-researchers in the coming months.
The London Boroughs of Camden, Greenwich and Enfield, as well as Mencap in Ealing, have opted to join the Click Start network and will be attending training sessions at The Rix Centre throughout May and June this year. The new boroughs will explore possible applications for Click Start; as an accessible information resource for people with learning disabilities, as a tool for training and work experience in multimedia and web building, and as a tool for person centred planning using the new ‘private wiki’ feature.
In each borough Click Start is being led by a different group or service; the Transition Team in Camden, Adult Services in Greenwich, Children’s Services in Enfield and Mencap in Ealing. We look forward to seeing the different ways in which the new participants will use Click Start and the creative models and approaches that they will develop.
Click Start wikis now have a brand new privacy feature that allows the wiki owner to decide whether their wiki is public or private. The new feature allows the wiki owner to change the privacy setting of their wiki in the ‘wiki set up’ area. They can choose to keep their wiki private and unpublished, or they can choose to make their wiki a publically viewable website.
If a wiki is private the wiki owner is given a ‘read only’ username and password, in addition to their usual username and password. The wiki owner can then share his or her wiki with people without making it public by giving them the ‘read only’ details. In future all new wikis that are set up will be private wikis by default, until the wiki owner chooses to make their wiki public.
This new functionality opens up a range of potentially exciting new applications for Click Start as a tool for person centred planning and electronic CV.
If you are visiting the Click Start portal at www.clickstart.org.uk you might have noticed that things are looking just a little bit different…..
Last week we launched Version 3 of Click Start. If you weren’t involved in the portal user consultation process last year then you may not know that in recent months we’ve been working on the latest upgrade to the Click Start software.
The Click Start portal has been given a radical makeover. The red and black pages have been replaced with a new lighter, cleaner colour scheme and a simple, less cluttered interface. The new seach interface makes finding information on Click Start super-easy, with clear new catagories and icons and a simple 3-step search process and results window. Portal Editors have a new, improved Admin area giving them an instant overview of all Wikis in their borough. It makes managing their local portal quick and easy. Wiki owners can now choose to make their Wikis private. There’s also a range of great new colour themes they can add to their Wikis.
So how will the upgrade affect you? The Click Start local portals will be offline for a few days while we tag the existing Wikis to make them easy to search. Visitors to www.clickstart.org.uk will find a notification to say the site is temporarily unavailable. Wiki users can still log into their Wikis by clicking on the ‘Login to your Wiki’ button, or by visiting www.clickstart.org.uk/user/login directly. Also visitors can visit the Click Start blog as usual by clicking the ‘Visit the Click Start Community’ button. We estimate that the new improved local portals should be live and available by Tuesday 3rd May 2011.
We are working hard to ensure that disruption to Click Start is kept to a minimum during this period of transition and we thank you all for being patient. We know it’ll be worth the wait!
A big welcome to the London Borough of Lewisham, who are the latest borough to 
join the Click Start community of co-researchers.
Lewisham are initially working with different groups and services in their borough as part of an inclusive twelve week training programme with staff and service users. They plan to work together with the wiki software to produce content and explore the different applications for Click Start, before setting up a Lewisham Click Start information portal.
Click Start now has a feature that lets you upload video files directly to your Wiki, without the need for first uploading to YouTube. You can still use the YouTube option if you want to. If you are uploading video to Click Start directly, here are some tips:
1. Make sure that the video file you are trying to upload is less than 9mb in size. We recommend that your video file is between 5-9 mb. If your file is bigger than 9mb then before uploading it you must compress it. You can compress video files in Windows Movie Maker. For a guide on how to do this click HERE.
2. Try to keep your video clips short, so not more 40 seconds long. This will make the clip easier to upload. This is also good practice for keeping your Wikis usable and accessible by not giving your visitors too much information in one go.
Bring organisations and service providers from your borough to the Click Start Wiki making afternoon at the Rix Centre on Tuesday 8th June 2010! You can download the Wikimaking publicity flyer here: Click Start Wiki Maker Flyer. So make sure you come along to the workshop where you will find support and guidance on building easy-build, accessible Click Start Wiki websites. The workshop will run from 1pm. If you will be attending please email info@rixcentre.org
We have added a new feature on the Click Start Wikis which allows you to choose a different kind of page to display your information.
Now when you add a page of content to a section you can choose between having the normal page, which has a large image and some words, or you can choose to have a more text based page which has a smaller thumbnail image, space for lots of text and to which you can add up to 6 links. We would welcome your comments about this new feature which you can view and learn how to use by clicking HERE.
Struggling to make your logos and images fit nicely into the central image space on your Wiki home page? Watch this instruction video and find out how it’s done.
