Randy Fisher - Community-Builder

Welcome to the Neighbourhood: Your Friendly WikiNeighbours

Wayne Mackintosh and I have collaborated on a page within WikiEducator, to develop the concept of a WikiNeighbour. The role is akin to an internal WikiAmbassador for the WikiNeighbourhood - so that when new people visit or join us, then there is some measure of support, while they get acquainted...consider it a step change from a simple welcome or greeting.

I can use my experience, for example. When I joined the WikiEducator community, one of the first things that I did, was set up a user page (I actually modelled it on fellow user Leigh Blackall's user page, whom I met earlier at the WikiEducator Techtonic Shift Tank conference, in April 2007.

I then started creating my WikiRandy user page, trying to figure out how to use the Wiki, working with the Wiki syntax (i.e., HTML code is not as scary as it seems!), and even inserting pictures. I was fairly successful, but the pix just didn't seem to load, nor go where I wanted them to...

Well, along comes Wayne, my neighbour in the wiki...What does he do? Well, legions, for starters.

On his own initiative, he welcomes me to the WikiNeighbourhood, with a friendly welcome, and then fixes up the code on my page, so my picture sits just right! Imagine that...now that's a WikiNeighbourly welcome!

If that's not enough, he sets up a Blogfeed for me, on my page. (I don't know how he did that, but I sure am thankful!)

 

Now, I can focus more of my energy and acitivity in facilitating theWikiEducator instead of worrying about how-the-heckl-I'm-going-to-configure-my-user-page. And, I've got a relationship with a WikiNeighbour. I truly feel much more oriented, and connected to this community, and I can tell you that, I also feel like I want to return the favour to future WikiNeighbours too.

Link:  WikiNeighbour - WikiEducator.

Who is an Educator?

Educators come in many shapes and sizes, in many languages, and from around the globe.

An educator is:

• a mother in Malawi who teaches her 10-year old daughter how to cook a meal
• a father in Sri Lanka who teaches his 15-year old to fish for the family
• a social worker in the US who teaches her clients life skills
• a university professor in Canada who teaches mechanical engineering
• a sister, touched by the loss of her brother to AIDS, devotes her life to teaching others about safe sexual practices
• ...the list goes on...feel free to add your own...

In essence, an educator is someone who has something to teach others...

An educator can also be...a WikiEducator!

Innovating Under Challenging Circumstances

Here's some food for thought about the purpose of WikiEducator, and the challenge and opportunities, from Wayne Mackintosh, Education Specialist, e-Learning and ICT policy - Commonwealth of Learning.

 

"My pressing concern is that the majority of learners who we are aiming to help in the developing world will not have access to the Internet, and if they did, its unlikely that they will be able to afford the connectivity costs.

The reality in, for instance, in Africa, is that on average, more than 60% of the children of secondary school going age will never see the walls of a classroom nor will their parents be able to afford the costs of public funded education.

We will not have the money to train enough teachers to satisfy the demand for secondary education by 2015.

Universal secondary education is just not going to happen by 2015. These learners will not have the privilege of joining wikispaces or wikilearner.org to participate in the pedagogy we envisage. These are the learners we are trying to help with WikiEducator's free curriculum.

I'm not in anyway suggesting that we should drop the ideas of a socially constructed learning experience - but I am saying that the WikiEducator community has an obligation to innovate under these challenging circumstances. After all - one of our community values is a forward looking disposition

When we innovate we must also be sensitive not to exclude those learners who do have connectivity from our free curriculum. I think our learning design must be smart - socio-constructivist foundations that can function using multiple delivery options (for example online, print-based learning resources etc.)

Link to Wayne's Post - WikiEducator | Google Groups.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Necessary Preconditions

This article, recommended to me by WikiEducator's Wayne Mackintosh, is focused on programming, but has lessons for other types of activities. Interesting reading: The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond.

"When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn't have to work particularly well. It can be crude, buggy, incomplete, and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future.

Learning Design vs. Course Management of Revisions - WikiEducator | Google Groups

In Learning Design vs. Course Management of Revisions - WikiEducator | Google Groups.

The challenge here, I believe, is that the focus is on the 'communities taking ownership for nurturing and sustaining the quality of learning resources"....the technical challenges [for WikiEducator and other technology platforms] will be steadily overcome over time.

As the communities mature - and I recognize that they are fairly new at this stage - their requirements will shift slightly, to focus on overall content usability, searchability, navigation, quality and relevance.

I think it's very important for us to keep our energy focused - on
both the technical challenges *and* the community-building
challenges...certainly both reinforce the other...but in my view, the
communities are the most important...

Simply put, people and communities tend to use available technologies to achieve their objectives - until a better one comes along...

It's easy to leapfrog onto a new technology platform; it's much harder
to shepherd those communities along, especially if they weren't fully
engaged in the first place. ~ wikirandy

Please see the rest of the dialogue at: In Learning Design vs. Course Management of Revisions - WikiEducator | Google Groups.

Redux: Wanted: Course Revision Without Pain

I've come across this post -  The Technology Source Archives - Wanted: Course Revision Without Pain by Jo B. Paoletti through a Google Search - "course revisions software" - as I wrestle with how to manage the course reviews and revisions in my day job. (RF note: This is an old, but timely subject. His ideas were presented at the 2001 WebCT conference in Vancouver.)

MS Excel and MS Project are nice tools, but they just don't cut it - especially when it comes to keeping track of all of the iddly-piddly information, such as supplementary materials, content sources, who's doing what, timelines, percentage of completion, to-do's, etc. Copyright is an issue too.

As Jo says:

All I ask is that the same creative minds turn some attention to course revision and maintenance. More and more, the challenge for online educators is not getting a course online but keeping it there. Everyone involved needs to start paying more attention to course revision as a critical task and to work together to develop software that supports the revision process, rather than complicating it."

How does this apply to WikiEducator?

As we move into the course development cycle, it is likely that we will run into the very same issues, perhaps with the exception of copyright. However, as I look at the eXe software, I notice that educators / learning designers can designate the types of licences that they are using, for their content development.

This is for Phase I of the learning content development. Subsequent phases involve the review and revision of material. I mean, content doesn't stay static - there are always updates, innovations and new ideas coming along - these have to be reflected in the content.

Facilitating Questions:

• Has the WikiEducator community thought about how it will actually manage the course development process? How will this be accomplished / shared with others? Where will this information reside? On the Wiki?
• Does anyone know of / have used software to manage the course review / revisions process?
• What has been your / their experience?
• Is there an open source opportunity development here - public service and / or business?
  (I know that any organization that develops learning content, struggles with managing the course review / revision process
• What user groups / communities are thinking about this? What have been their approach, practices, etc.

 

Where's the US Participation

In response to a post on this blog: Sunfell's Earth Walk - Commonwealth of Learning.

He wrote: Here's something that the Internet is really going to amplify: free education for everyone.

Commonwealth of Learning

Sadly, the US is not (yet) a signatory to this organization.

Wiki Educator

                                                                  ***
My reply:

I just wanted to let you know that there are a number of people from the US, actively working with WikiEducator to help it to be a success. Recently, I attended the Tectonic Shift Think Tank conference held at Commonwealth of Learning (www.col.org).

There were a number of participants (aka "Thought Leaders") present and actively engaged....Among them:

* Chris Geith, MSU Global
* Samuel Klein, One Laptop per Child
* Mike Halm, Penn State University
* Murugan Pal, CK12 FlexBooks for Every Student
* Joel Thierstein, Connexions, USA
* Ken Udas, World Campus, USA

The full list of participants is at: http://www.wikieducator.org/Tectonic_shift_think_tank#Participant_List

The level of participation and interaction was awesome - I felt privileged to be a part of this unique event. The challenge is, to spread the word, and to get people to find their passion within the WikiEducator community. There are many roles and opportunities...

Technorati Profile

Stealing the Goose: Copyright & Learning by Rory McGreal

In a post to TeachandLearnOnline, Bronwyn Hegarty makes mention of Rory McGreal's useful article on Copyright and Learning. I'm posting it here for easy reference, and because I think it makes sense:

Abstract
The Internet is the world's largest knowledge common and the information
source of first resort. Much of this information is open and freely
available. However, there are organizations and companies today that are
trying to close off the Internet commons and make it proprietary. These are
the "copyright controllers." The preservation of the commons and expanding
access to digital content and applications are very important for distance
educators. The educational exemptions for "fair use" in the United States and "fair dealing" in the Commonwealth countries are integral to any understanding of copyright, which was instituted for the dissemination of knowledge, and not, as is commonly believed, to protect the rights of the copyright owners. Copyright law was expressly introduced to limit their rights. Yet, these controllers are successfully turning a "copy" right into a property right. The traditional rights of learning institutions are being taken away. The balance for researchers should be restored. Research and learning must be allowed the broad interpretation that was intended in theoriginal laws.

Rory McGreal, Stealing the Goose: Copyright and learning
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
Volume 5, Number 3. ISSN: 1492-3831
November – 2004
At http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/205/819

Rory is Associate VP, Research at Athabasca University - I met him in the mid-1990's when he was at Tele-Education NB - as part of a set of interviews the Canadian Advanced Technology Association (CATA Alliance), to get a feel for the economic transformation that was happening in New Brunswick. I was able to parlay that assignment into a set of consulting engagements focusing on economic development / strategic planning projects - to help a community college in Miramichi, NB develop a plan for launching a technology-assisted learning institute.

 

NPR : Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web

Interesting story this morning on NPR's Morning Edition (see link below):

Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web Listen to this story... by Laura Sydell, May 7, 2007

The Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School's seeks to lay the groundwork for artists and academics to use copyrighted work without permission in certain situations.

Related Links:

• Center for Internet and Society
• CIS News Releases

Source: NPR : Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web.