seems slow?

[kirby urner]

I'm having a dickens of a time loading Wikieducator pages
this afternoon, not a serious problem as I'm not projecting
in class today.

There could be a million explanations that have nothing to
do with New Zealand, right?

Gratifying to see over a 1000 views of our Python Tutorials
page.  The view count feature is quite useful.

Since that long thread on Wikipedia, how some teachers
like to dump on it, I've ventured to contribute to it myself,
including an entire entry on some mathematical work
completed and published back in the 1990s.

Mostly I've collaborated on getting the Bucky Fuller pages
up to snuff, so that theater-goers in Washington DC aren't
too frustrated by lack of content (play about Bucky starting
in June at Arena Theater).  Not that this is our only motive,
but people do tend to hit Wikipedia when seeking reality
checks, and it was just a stub page for the longest time.

This has been a somewhat grueling exercise, as we had
to go through a lot of peer review internally.  The result is
stable enough however. 

I'm glad to have had a Wikieducator thread on the topic
beforehand, gave me perspective.

Here's from today's blog post, where I again take up the
issue of teachers being down on Wikipedia, or sometimes
all things Internet, putting it in context:

Buzz and I are yakking about Beaverton high schools and Google's reputation, also Wikipedia's. At some schools, teachers like to dump on all things Internet, consider these technologies a threat. Buzz had some anecdotes.

So is this a union thing? No, we don't think so. Probably more generational, with some individuals disliking change. Many go into math teaching seeking to escape impermanence, become psychologically distraught at the prospect of using Youtube, even when literally begged by students to share content by this means.

Beaverton's Sunset High, in contrast, is very pro Internet and encourages students to develop their communications skills with new media. This is one of the top schools in the nation. Do they teach about Mites, Sytes and Kites? Soon if not yet I'll betcha.

Kirby Urner
Linus Pauling House Campus
Portland, Oregon

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Kirby,

Yeah - -WE is slow at the moment -- based on our tests it appears to be a rather slow Internet at the moment.

Thankfully our servers are not physically located in New Zealand -- you would then definitely experience a slow connection.  Sadly the pipe into New Zealand is not adequeate to host an international site like WE. Jim ran a few tests early this morning from a server located in the US -- and it appeared to be a general network problem.

Wow -- a 1000 page views on the Python Tutorials already -- that's impressive. Well done! 

Yeah -- in the coming months, I really want to spend some time and energy on remix and reuse scenarios using Wikipedia content and figuring out ways to map these to national curricula, age level suitable educational mechanisms for peer review that would be acceptable to a (conservative?) education audience. Being part of the free culture movement we are all working together in making the world a better place - -- we need to figure out smart ways of collaborating more effectively.

After all -- OER is a sustainable and renewable resource.

Cheers
Wayne 

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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
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