Join our WikiEducator discussion group or Register now for free skills training.

From WikiEducator

WikiEducator Tutorials
Tutorial 1	Introduction  |  Advantages and Disadvantages  |  About WikiEducator  |  Summary & FAQs
Objectives of this tutorial

The WikiEducator family

WikiEducator^[1] was launched by the Commonwealth of Learning^[1] in 2006. It provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use. WikiEducator was introduced at the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) course developers' meeting in Mauritius in August 2006. It is now being used extensively for the development of free educational resources around the world.

Many wiki communities believe that content should be free. The slogan of the Mediawiki software, which runs WikiEducator and all the projects of the Wikimedia foundation, encapsulates this spirit rather well: Ideas want to be free. This is why Wiki software is often cited as an example of social software^[1] because of the ease with which users can work together on content. This combined with the communication features of wikis enables people to connect with each other and to build a real sense of community.

The values of our WikiEducator community

It is important to recognise and respect the core values of the different wiki communities. The WikiEducator community believes in the following values:

• The social inclusion and participation of all people in our networked society (Access to ICTs is a fundamental right of knowledge citizens - not an excuse for using old technologies).
• The freedoms of all educators to teach with the technologies and contents of their choice, hence our commitment to Free/Libre and Open Source technology tools and free content.
• That educational content is unique - and by working together we can improve the technologies we use as well as the reusability of digital learning resources.
• In a forward-looking disposition working together to find appropriate and sustainable solutions for e-learning futures.

WikiEducators strive to be friendly and neighbourly. Our mantra is: "Just try it! Our community will support you".

WikiEducator's learning content

The WikiEducator community is working together to develop free educational content that incorporates the educational features associated with well designed distance education materials. Therefore, you will find that content in WikiEducator typically includes educational elements like learning objectives, activities and case studies. In the tutorials which follow, you will learn how to include these elements into the content you author.

Types of content on WikiEducator

There are four distinctive types of content you will find on Wikieducator:

1. Pages used for planning of WikiEducator projects;
2. Content pages -- our free educational materials;
3. Resources on how to create open education resources (OERs)
4. Funding proposals developed as free content.

Selected examples of the different types of WikiEducator content are listed below.

Pages used for the planning of initiatives or projects

Consider for example:

• International clusters or project hubs within the WikiEducator community, for instance:
  • The FLOSS4Edu^[1] initiative including regional clusters like the Pacific OER workshop^[1];
  • Learning4Content^[1] which aims to support and promote capacity building in wiki skills;
  • Handouts4Teachers^[1] -- a project to promote the collaborative development of handouts used to support teaching in the classroom, for example worksheets, small group projects, homework sheets for students to practice mastery of new concepts;
  • The Open Schools^[1] initiative -- a community node of WikiEducators working together on the development of distance education materials for school-level education;
• Workshops, for instance South Asia eLearning Workshop for Teacher Educator's^[1], New Dehli 2007;
• Planning and managing international developments, for instance the Commonwealth Computer Navigator's Certificate^[1]

Development of free content^[1] on WikiEducator

Selected examples include:

• Projects led by educational institutions, for example, content development at the Otago Polytechnic^[1] in New Zealand or the University of Educatioin, Winneba^[1] in Ghana. .
• Write2Teach^[1] initiative of the Asian Society for Open and Distance Education.
• The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth^[1], for example:
  • Applying effective communication skills^[1] which is part of the VUSSC course on Tourism;
  • The unit on Starting up a business^[1] which is part of the entrepreneurship course being developed.
  • The course on Life Skills^[1]

Resources on how to create open education resources (OERs)

For example:

• WikiEducator's Newbie Tutorials^[1]; or
• OER Handbook for Educators^[1]; or
• OER Tutorials developed by OCLOS and co-funded by European Union’s eLearning Programme^[1].

Funding proposals developed as free content

WikiEducator encourages the community to develop funding proposals for free content or free software initiatives that are released as free content. Successful bids include:

• Learning4Content bid^[1]
• Multimedia development for the CCNC^[1]

Discussion

Educational wiki projects -- Thinking about similarities and distinguishing features There are a growing number of wiki projects working in the educational sector. Consider for example: The Wikimedia Foundation[1] projects, specifically the Wikibooks[1] and Wikiversity[1] projects; The Curriki[1] project; The Scholarpedia[1] project (See also the Scholarpedia[1] entry on Wikipedia.) Google's Knol[1] project. (See also the entry for Knol[1] on Wikipedia). Questions for discussion In what ways does or should the WikiEducator community differentiate itself from these projects? Based on your analysis of the listed wiki projects, what advice can you provide for our community to promote a sustainable and successful project?

Additional reading

• Early history of WikiEducator^[1]
• News archive^[1] providing a chronological history of main events and milestones

URL links in this section

|

--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)--Chrisgun 09:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC) Hello gladys For question 1, I do think that because of the availability of technology and the world being flat(globalization), it is high time that examination institutions throughout the world should adhere as much as possible to a common and broad and flexible syllabus. What I mean is that it should not be rigid but should have enough materials to fit a syllabus. Then the questions about the quality of educational resources developed should be of good standards and should not originate from one body only. Lets suppose we have 10 teachers teaching the same topics to students of the same capabilities over a period of time. You will agree that the materials given to these students will not be the same for the ten teachers. Moreover the method of delivery will again not be the same. In extreme cases, some teachers might be boring in their approach while others might be very inspiring. Therefore some students will be disadvantaged. But if we take the best from all these teachers, add them together and deliver them to the students on the same platform, using a variety of methods, we are sure to end up with value added work. In that sense , I think that an open authoring approach, vetted by a body(so as not to allow bias materials), do certainly contribute to high quality learning materials. People from different countries, living different experiences, seeing things through different angles, may contribute enormously in the creation of knowledge for our cognitive mind, at the same time creating a better awareness of situations. People have conflicts when they think differently and have different awareness of situations. So we must have an open mind and be able to unlearn and relearn because we have at some times been brainwashed to think in a certain way only.

Question 2 So I firmly believe that course development for education should use open authoring approaches. Throughout history, knowledge has been built up in that way. Man has always improved on what his predecessors have done. But unfortunately development has been slow because of political reason, wrong belief , strong egos and the lack of proper communication. Today with new technology and the superhighway things are happening faster. Young people are digital natives, always in communication and collaborative. So we have to be adaptive and give opportunities to others and even giving a voice to the young to construct their world.

3) What mechanisms can be adopted to assure quality of educational content developed in Wiki environments? Web 2.0 tools allow collaboration and sharing through its platform. Just imagine large groups are formed among teachers around the world. They are then assigned to develop different topics for different subjects and syllabus. They would discuss, share, add, monitor, collaborate to produce these materials and would have them vetted by authorities (say, universities) and changed through time where necessary because of new development.

chris gunnoo, educator gunnooc@gmail.com