The goal of this information is to educate you on how APAN might be used and could be beneficial to you, your projects and or organization. The Air University Communication and Outreach team believes that participating in a "Community of Interest" can enhance the discovery and collaborative aspect of trying to solve an issue or develop a final project, procedure or program. Once a team reaches the point where this "thing" needs a place to call home, on a more permanent basis, then a "Community of Practice" could be created, with a formal charter and assigned members. APAN can be both, in fact its a progression from idea to reality.
Here are some areas that APAN might be able to help.
Team Focused Research Project
Across the miles teams are collaborating via their tablets, phones and computers every day. The difference maker is APAN, where you can take advantage of tools and collaborative functions that provide a social look and feel. Project folders can be developed, discussions on progress, polls for consensus and voting, video uploads for interviews and critical idea capturing. There are many options to use chat rooms and DCO connect rooms for presentations and briefings or updates across the miles.
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Community Website
APAN has all the tools, styling and capabilities to build an entire community website. The website can have banners, rotating banners, polls, blogs, discussions, image galleries, and dozens more functions.
Training Scenarios
You can develop a training area so your students can master subjects, skills, and competencies. Building APAN group sites with functions focused on training will allow you to deliver content and get feedback from any device.
Conference Information Site
Do you need to get information out about your conference or workshop? Information sites can be created quickly and shared to anyone around the globe. You can provide maps, agendas, and even keynote address bios as well as information about other presenters. The best thing about providing this information on APAN is that you can also create a community of interest/practice around the conference and continue the dialog until the next event. You can bring audiences in and keep them here to get answers, address solutions, and provide a continued presence on top subjects. Click here to get a look at a sample conference information area to look at.
Meetings and Workshops
Much like conferences you can hold regular meetings on apan to tackle tough issues and or improve awareness among audiences by presenting and sharing information, making documents and videos available for a group. The work space provides calendars and agendas to keep the group on task. Click here for a great example.
Crowdsourcing Ideas
You can't have every answer to every idea know to man. APAN can help you get the collective brain matter into a usable format for final decisions or just validation of your ideas. You can create polls and surveys to deliver the ideas and get quick responses, from any device where ever there is an Internet connection. Create open groups that anyone on APAN can self join and throw in their two cents. You can also create closed member-only groups to focus your attention on the task at hand. Spending the time to get your answers without using email, phone, text or other un-connected methods can give you the ultimate edge.
BlogBlogs are generally used to create a dialog through threaded posts, but have taken on more in-depth uses over the last few years. A blog post might deliver a question, or a discussion point. A blog post can also deliver complex instruction, training, or education on a subject. Most of the time those posting expect to gain feedback about the information posted. Hence the word "Blog", referring to the derived term "Web Log". A log is usually a compilation of relevant dialog or event based entries that aggregates the larger picture, or understanding of the issue posted. What is the goal of your blog? Do you want to educate? Do you want to run an idea by the masses? Are you an expert that wishes to inform, influence your readers on a particular subject? Finally, what do you expect from the blog post? Revelations? Answers? Validation? Praise? Think about it and blog purposefully.
Presentations and Briefings
APAN is designed for presenting your ideas, projects. You can upload documents in microsoft format or Portable Document Format (PDF) for display full screen where ever you are, on any device. Imagine pitching an idea to an interested person or the boss. Whip out your phone or tablet at the restaurant and present your ideas within minutes. Come on guys, this is a no-brainer!