Update & Council Meeting 7 - 18 September 2009

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Everyone,

A quick update.

The WikiEducator Community Council meeting is scheduled for 7 to 18 September 2009.  So mark these dates in your calendar.

The meeting will be convened asynchronously in WikiEducator and should not be too onerous in terms of time commitment other than: registering your attendance; regular visits to the wiki pages; participating and reviewing discussions; and casting votes as required. I will prepare a brief information pack on the wiki prior to the meeting to assist us during the meeting.

The WE community is currently working on at least three policy proposals which I anticipate will be tabled for approval at the meeting. These include:

1. A workgroup that is developing policy guidelines and support resources for the constitution of workgroups for the development of community-wide guidelines / policy proposals. (See: http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups )
2. A workgroup convened to develop a policy proposal for selecting, appointing and guiding the work of WikiEducator Administrators including Sysops Bureaucrats, and Bots
3. A workgroup proposing a policy for the development of style guidelines for WikiEducator (http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:style_guidelines )

It is refreshing to see the level of engagement by some of our Community Council members in these community initiatives, not to mention the passion and commitment from community volunteers in moving these important projects forward. I would encourage all Community Council members with experience or interest in these areas to consider signing up as workgroup participants. Posts on the relevant talk pages are also well received. We are making the future happen!

On matters financial, I am happy to report that the Open Education Resource Foundation has secured the funding necessary to support the technical infrastructure of the WikiEducator project as well as funding support for strategic projects that will enable our project to scale over the next two years. I will be posting more detail on the main WikiEducator list in the near future. The Commonwealth of Learning has also published a noteworthy news item on WikiEducator's independance (http://www.col.org/news/Connections/2009jun/Pages/News.aspx ) as well as a feature article on the success of our Learning4Content training initiative (http://www.col.org/news/Connections/2009jun/Pages/default.aspx ).

A BIG thanks for your ongoing support in living out and implementing the core values of our project -- namely that education is about sharing knowledge freely!

Looking forward to a productive meeting, new horizons and opportunities for WikiEducator!

Cheers
Wayne



--
Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D.
Director,
International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Board of Directors, OER Foundation.
Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg