WE blog or newsletter?

[valerie]

Did anything ever come of earlier suggestions that there be a
WikiEducator blog with multiple contributors or a collaboratively
written newsletter?

I poked around and didn't find much.

old discussions
http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator/browse_thread/thread/fa1128ff6e7401a4/dfa591a45e4391f6?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=newsletter#dfa591a45e4391f6

old pages
http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:NewsLetter

Write an article for a magazine/newsletter styled publication
describing the wiki concept and how people can become involved
http://wikieducator.org/WikiMaster/WikiApprentice_Level_1

I'm having my students work collaboratively in small groups to come up
with a WikiEducator promotion.
http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2009#Final_Projects

Naturally, their first question - Where is the WikiEducator
newsletter? Umm, I'll get back to you on that...

Is there a good answer to this question?

..Valerie

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Valerie,

I'm pleased that you have reminded us of the Newsletter and blog ideas!

Thoughts about a Newsletter

Yes -- the OER Foundation definitely wants to support and promote a newsletter for the WikiEducator community.  There is so much happening in our family around the world and we need to keep folk up-to-date with what's happening. A newsletter is also a great way to connect the disconnected :-).  It's difficult for WikiEducator's who are less active on the site to know about all the exciting things that are happening.  WikiEducator will certainly be able to put the community journalism concept to good use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_journalism)

In short - -the OER Foundation is very supportive of this idea and I want to see a professional, high quality quarterly newsletter for our family. As you know, WikiEducator will succumb to corporate advertising on our open education sites. However, I'm wondering about how the community feels about advertising in a professional Newsletter?  We need funding to support the editorial and professional work associated with a high quality newsletter (notwithstanding the contributions from WikiEducators around the world for the newsletter.) Thoughts?

Thoughts about a WikiEducator blog

Over the last three years -- I've been wanting to host a WikiEducator blog. In fact, we installed Wordpress on our server with the view to a WikiEducator community blog. However, we need to do a little thinking about how best to implement a "community" blog for WikiEducator, for example:

• Do blog posts on a collective WikiEducator blog represent the views of WikiEducator as a community? The blog sphere is typically a personal publishing space -- as opposed to a collective community voice. What is the approach that WikiEducator should adopt?
• For example, While WikiEducator was operating under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Learning --- understandably a "blogging" policy was introduced by the agency, which restricted freedom of speech of individuals wanting to blog about different issues. Where do we draw the line between personal views and collective organisational opinion of an international project?
• The OER Foundation is very keen to host and support a community blog for WikiEducator. However, we need advice and support from the community regarding the best way to do this. Perhaps we need to establish a blogging workgroup to think about all the issues and propose a set of guidelines for a WikiEducator blog - technically, hosting a dedicated blog for WE is no problem and the OERF will support this. However we need a clear set of guidelines developed by the community regarding the best way to implement.
   

Thanks Valerie -- great suggestions and thanks for reminding us of these gaps in our community :-)

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/4 valerie <vta...@gmail.com>

--
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

[Wayne Mackintosh]

OOPS --- A major typo :-(

My earlier email reads "As you know, WikiEducator will succumb to corporate advertising on our open education sites."

MEGA typo -- this should read  "WikiEducator will NOT succumb to corporate advertising on our open education sites."

WE don't do corporate advertising on our site and will not be doing this in the future -- non-negotiable. Apology for the typo -- trying to do too much.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/4 Wayne Mackintosh <mackinto...@gmail.com>

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Valerie,

Good idea, and thanks for raising it again....

One thing that comes to mind, is if the 'blog' or whatever, is well-planned, it could take a page from Ken Udas' creation - Terra Incognita (Penn State).

http://blog.worldcampus.psu.edu/

He had a lineup of folks on a monthly basis who brought some pretty interesting news and perspectives to it...

- Randy

--
Open Education is a sustainable and renewable resource.

________________
Randy Fisher, MA, OMD
Senior Consultant & Facilitator, Intersol Group, Canada

Senior Consultant, Organization & Business Development
International Centre for Open Education / OER Foundation, New Zealand

Elected Member, WikiEducator Community Council, www.wikieducator.org
+1 613.230.6424 x144 (EST)
Skype: wikirandy
Twitter: wikirandy

* Stakeholder Engagement, Change / Transition Management & Performance
* Organization Design & Development
* Sustainable Project Implementation & Community-Building
* E-Learning, Online Collaboration & Communities of Practice
* Coaching & Facilitation
* My Bio: http://www.communitybuildingexpert.com

[aprasad]

Dear friends,

 

As almost other sectors of communication, Blogs also have a very big mass of audience. For this audience penetration, though Blogs are generally considered personal publishing, almost all the Corporates in the world maintain Corporate Blogs.

I hope we can combine together the ideas of Blog and News Letter. The major items of the Blog in a given period will become the content for the Newsletter, and as Dr. Wayne has mentioned, it will talk for the WE community among those who are not active in WE site and not a frequent visitor of our blog.

In the Blog and newsletter we may find place for corporate advertisements that have deliverance to our mission. It can be advertisements about events, ODL courses, publications, public awareness campaigns etc etc

--
Warm regards

Anil

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad

http://www.apletters.blogspot.com

 

[aprasad]

Dear friends,

 

Let me correct the typo ‘deliverance’ to ‘relevance’ in the last paragraph. In the strict sense it is not a typo, I was dictating my finger to type the word ‘relevance’ some tricky impulses played in between in made my fingers type very different word deliverance J

[valerie]

Hi All

Thanks Wayne - having Wordpress installed is a great first step. Is
there a placeholder or a link?

The example Randy suggested - http://blog.worldcampus.psu.edu/
It is really Ken's blog with friends and colleagues as contributors.

The WE way would be more open - a few editors and lots of
contributors. There are plenty of examples of this working - I'll have
to dig up some links, but I'm sure most people have seen this team
blogging in action.

The glossy newsletter could wait until there is some content from the
blog to incorporate into a more formal (and costly) production.

I'm very much of the "try it and tweek it" school, but there are good
reasons to take a more measured approach. Looking forward to seeing
this take shape

..Valerie

On Nov 3, 5:06 pm, Randy Fisher <wikira...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Valerie, Anil and Randy

I too like the "try it and tweak it school" -- a process of continuous
improvement, something WikiEducator does very well :-)

Please post a few links pointing us to a few good examples or
exemplars we might want to tweak for our own purposes. Given that a
blog is a personal publishing space -- we need to think carefully
about how to set this up -- If its a WikiEducator blog -- in some
respects it represents the "voice" of WikiEducator and we should thing
creatively about editorial processes. Individual posts are personal
comments, whereas the blog posts would be the community voice --
consequently we will need to have open and transparent editorial
processes that will support the editors in reflecting the voice of the
community.

Why don't we set up a "blogging" workgroup to review and propose the
processes and editorial guidelines for the WE blog?

I see the newsletter serving a "different" audience -- its a way of
connecting the disconnected, that is educators who may not regularly
surf and / or participate actively in the wiki project. The digital
"natives" are more likely to keep up-to-date through the blogsphere,
but WikiEducator has thousands of members in the developing world who
do not have the luxury of affordable and reliable connectivity. The
newsletter, which can be reproduced locally in print format is a great
way to support our diverse community.

Clearly there will be blog posts and items that we would want to carry
in the newsletter -- but at the same time, there would be news worthy
items that may not be ideal for the blog.

Thoughts?

Wayne

On Nov 5, 3:20 am, valerie <vtay...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> Thanks Wayne - having Wordpress installed is a great first step. Is
> there a placeholder or a link?
>

> The example Randy suggested -http://blog.worldcampus.psu.edu/

[Steve Foerster]

Randy wrote:

> One thing that comes to mind, is if the 'blog' or whatever, is well-planned,
> it could take a page from Ken Udas' creation - Terra Incognita (Penn State).

> http://blog.worldcampus.psu.edu/

> He had a lineup of folks on a monthly basis who brought some pretty
> interesting news and perspectives to it...

That's an excellent example! Ken did a great job with that, I was the
guest presenter one month and it was a neat experience.

I believe that Ken has moved from Penn State to UMassOnline, and it
seems that Terra Incognita has languished in his absence. What about
asking him whether it's something we could take over and run in a
similar fashion to how he did it? We could host it at
ti.wikieducator.org or something like that.

This wouldn't be the same thing as having a newsletter, but there's no
reason we can't have different publications for different purposes.

-=Steve=-

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve

mmmm -- that's an interesting proposal.

All content posted on Terra Incognita was licensed under CC-BY-SA -- which technically means we can create derivative works. I too had a very positive experience posting a contribution to the project.

Understandably -- Terra Incognita was branded as a PSU project, but with open licensing  there is no reason why we couldn't port the content. Its a great project and WE / OERF could become a good home for future contributions along similar lines.

Hey -- the more publications we have on OER the better!

Let's ping Ken and see what he thinks? I'm sure Ken could provide us with valuable pointers for the future.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/5 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com>

[aprasad]

Hi friends,

Here is a pointer from an area were extremely cautious moderation is required . THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF US ARMY! http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/about/ . It is the higher end of caution-in-moderation scale. Framing moderation policy for WE blog may not be that much difficult. Let us start.

 

--
Warm regards

Anil
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad
http://www.apletters.blogspot.com

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Anil,

Great example!

I agree let's start by constituting a WE workgroup to frame the guidelines for our collective editorial policy -- hopefully a leading, open and transparent set of guidelines developed by our community.

As you say -- let's make this happen!

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/5 aprasad <aple...@gmail.com>

[aprasad]

Hi Dr. Wayne, can we have Ken as the lead person?

 

--
Warm regards

Anil
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad
http://www.apletters.blogspot.com

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Anil,

I would love to see Ken leading a project like this :-) -- That would be amazing! However that's a decision for Ken.

I know that Ken has significant demands on his time, and may not have the time available to give this project the time it deserves. But no harm in asking.

[aprasad]

Dear friends,

Let us start working here http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Blog

Warm regards,

[valerie]

Wayne - fyi ...

We have moved beyond digital natives - we now talk about "visitors"
and "residents". :o)
http://blip.tv/file/2714106
I find this a more satisfactory characterization of a continuum along
multiple axises.

On Nov 4, 1:38 pm, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>The digital "natives"

[aprasad]

Dear Dr. Wayne and other friends,

Steve has consented to be the Convener of the WE Blog WorkGroup. Now  all those community members interested in framing policy for WE Blog may be invited to enlist their name at:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Blog#Members_and_signatures

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad

http://www,apletters.blogspot.com

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Valerie,

Well said!

(Personally I dislike the digital native characterization and glad you've pointed me to a much better reference :-) )

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/6 valerie <vta...@gmail.com>

[Steve Foerster]

Anil wrote:

> Steve has consented to be the Convener of the WE Blog WorkGroup.
> Now  all those community members interested in framing policy for
> WE Blog may be invited to enlist their name at:
> http://www.wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Blog

One thing I can report is that I briefly corresponded with Ken Udas
and he's interested in moving Terra Incognita to WikiEducator, and
that a neutral location like WE might be better than as part of a
university web site as it's been thus far. He's at a conference and
said we should discuss it further on his return.

While TI would be a very nice feather in WE's cap, I'd like to see a
few different blogs for different purposes, including a relatively
open access one where there are a few moderators but anyone can sign
up to contribute. But we can talk about many possibilities once we
get a working group together. :-)

-=Steve=-

--
Stephen H. Foerster
http://wikieducator.org/steve

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve (& Anil)

BIG thanks to you both for volunteering to set-up and convene the Blog workgroup :-)  This workgroup is in very capable hands! I'll be signing up -- and do my best to keep up (I  have a lot on my plate at the moment -- setting up the foundations for OERF etc.)

WE would be a great home for Terra Incognita --- well aligned with our values and community.  TI will be a tremendous community asset which we can nurture and help grow.  I also like your thoughts for different categories of blogs.

Do you envisage the workgroup to be informal or a Community Workgroup constituted in terms of our Policy for Community Workgroups? See: http://tinyurl.com/yebzyw7 -- The work of this group is certainly important enough to qualify for a WE Community Workgroup.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/6 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com>

[john stampe]

Steve,

>I'd like to see a
> few different blogs for different purposes,

One idea may be to have separate "personal" blogs and then have a
community blog aggregated from those. For example see http://planet.gentoo.org/
which is aggregated from different developer's blogs.

John

[aprasad]

Hi John, thats a great idea!

--

[Steve Foerster]

John wrote:

> One idea may be to have separate "personal" blogs and then have a
> community blog aggregated from those. For example see
> http://planet.gentoo.org/ which is aggregated from different developer's
> blogs.

Do you mean where people would have their own blogs, hosted wherever,
and if they posted something relevant to WE could tag it, say in
Delicious or something, and then those posts from various sources
would appear somewhere on the WE site?

[valerie]

There are lots of different ways to handle "aggregation"

- Plant Gentoo - each contributor listed maintains own blog whereever,
all posts are automatically? included in this blog - quick scan seems
to indicate that there isn't any editorial control over what appears
in the aggregated blog. Implies an honor system and single topic
contributor blog - everything posted to my blog will be broadcast via
the aggregation blog
http://planet.gentoo.org/

- OLDaily - Stephen Downes comments on everything he posts - a huge
job for one guy
http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm

- Slashdot - contributors send in tips
http://slashdot.org/

- Community College Open Textbook Project - uses Ning so this is more
a federation - individual blogs, but I subscribe to them all with a
single RSS feed.
http://collegeopentextbooks.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

- single WE blog - many contributors, few editors - individual
contributions are not published by the author, only editors have
publish authority

?? individual blogs on the WE Wordpress installation with editors
pulling in what they want to publish as the WE blog - contributors can
publish as their own blog, editors publish to the WE blog


On Nov 6, 6:06 am, Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com> wrote:

[Jesse Groppi]

Hi all,

Neat thoughts going around here.  I've been wanting to comment, so here we go. :-)

 In my short jaunt into freelance writing, and in my (and my friends') experience as a reader, I find there are LOTS of reasons for writing blogs, and generally one set of reasons for writing newletters. 

corporate blogs: These are done for two reasons.  The first is to attract search engines to the corporate website.  Websites that are frequently updated (most corporate site pages aren't, but a blog is) are frequently crawled, and as long as it is SEO, it will stay at or near the top of the search engine results page (SERP) longer.  The other reason is to engage the public.  This is a new thing and a big deal for product marketing.  The idea is that if you can engage a potential client on more than just a salesperson to customer level, you are actually more likely to succeed in selling him or her that product. This is the same reasoning behind social network marketing.

entertainment/informative blogs: These come in two categories: independent and sponsored.  Independent blogs tend to be used to interact with the public on a favoured subject.  Examples of these are

http://failblog.org/ - images of concepts that did not succeed as popularly intended
http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ - commercially presented images that were poorly proofed
http://lovelylisting.com/ - bizarre and unusual properties on the market
http://notalwaysright.com/ - recounts of hillarious, ridiculous, and strange retail and service encounters with customers
http://jnorad.blogspot.com/ - about paper model design, based on the author's models of a famous Valve video game world
http://blog.stephenhorlander.com/about/ - about user interface design based on the author's experience with several famous software packages.

These blogs run on a theme and usually stick with it.  The blogs that are identified by a specific author will occassionally veer off into something different or personal, but the author tends to stick with a certain theme.

Sponsored blogs are organised by a single internet entity, are usually commisioned by the entity, and revolve around an umbrella subject that has lots of facets, but typically are not required to "represent" the sponsor in any specific way.  This has the effect of engaging a wider audience on their potentially infinite range of interests, all within a specific "home space" on the internet.  Examples are:

http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/ - one of a collection of blogs sponsored by Mozilla
http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/bout/ - Anil's US Army example
http://www.wow.com/ - used to be more clearly a collection of hired bloggers, but now appears to resemble more of a web-magazine

And then there are newsletters.  These are a way of keeping the interested public aware of official goings on, and opinions.  They can highlight internal blog articles or communications that reinforce organisation ideals.  The blog concept can reciprocate by taking newsletter stories and engaging the public with them.  Newsletters help keep people informed and aware of the organisational identity.

I think a newsletter would be a fantastic idea for WE.  Contrary to the way the mail list works, it could be automatically sent via MW to all registered emails, keeping members connected. (We do have a lot of people that register but never come back, don't we?).  There could be a preference that  can be unchecked to stop sending the newsletter.

The blog thing, I believe, would require some analysis on what we want out of it, and then how to organise it.  What would blogging do for us? Which of the above blogging sectors do we fit into? (Probably sponsored, informative)  How much blog content do we want to have, ideally?  What blog topics are integral to presenting a cohesive, professional blog umbrella to the public?  Do we allow just anyone to blog, or restrict it to author/subject/ability approvals?

I do think there is a difference between the "freedom of speech" issue, and the "appropriateness" issue brought up by Anil's US Army example.  It is definitely ideal to edit for appropriateness, and I do think the newsletter should be edited for its adherence to WE's ideals, but I believe that blogging should be open to opinion, nevertheless containing an opinion disclaimer.

Anyway, just the things that were running through my head this week.

Jesse
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Jesse_Groppi
skype: jesse.groppi

[Steve Foerster]

I have made a number of edits to the Blog Workgroup charter here:

http://www.wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Blog

I mostly just turned boilerplate into verbiage that refers
specifically to this workgroup. We have four people signed up at this
point. Would anyone else like to join us?

-=Steve=-

[Steve Foerster]

Jesse wrote:

> I think a newsletter would be a fantastic idea for WE.
> Contrary to the way the mail list works, it could be automatically
> sent via MW to all registered emails, keeping members connected.
> (We do have a lot of people that register but never come back,
> don't we?).  There could be a preference that  can be unchecked
> to stop sending the newsletter.

Have the people who have already created accounts agreed to receive
that sort of email? I mean, they're not having come back is already a
sign of disinterest, so while it's not my decision to make, I'd be
reluctant to subscribe them to a newsletter under those circumstances.

Besides, do we want to have a newsletter newsletter, or would we want
to consider having a blog as a newsletter, so that news would be sent
out on that channel whenever it arose, rather than trying to fill X
number of pages every month or quarter or what have you?

> The blog thing, I believe, would require some analysis on what we
> want out of it, and then how to organise it.  What would blogging
> do for us? Which of the above blogging sectors do we fit into?
> (Probably sponsored, informative)  How much blog content do we
> want to have, ideally?  What blog topics are integral to presenting
> a cohesive, professional blog umbrella to the public?  Do we allow
> just anyone to blog, or restrict it to author/subject/ability approvals?

One of the thoughts here has been that we can support more than one
blog for more than one purpose. For example, I'm very excited about
the idea of becoming the home of Terra Incognita, which consists of a
month guest post with concomitant discussion in the comments. The
goal was to to have each post be high quality, and one that would stir
a lot of conversation.

But that's just one. Another one could be a blog where there would be
a very low threshold for WikiEducators to sign up to post, and
moderators would have a set of guidelines to prevent posts that are
inflammatory or off topic, but otherwise be hands off. A similar
model would be to let people tag their own posts on their own blogs
with "wikieducator" and let those all be displayed together.

Then a third could be a blog where posts come from certain people
(Wayne, Jim, etc.?) on a relatively well scheduled basis, and this
would be the newsletter.

If we make a variety of resources available, it will be interesting to
see what people will do with them. Sort of like WE itself. :-)

> I do think there is a difference between the "freedom of speech"
> issue, and the "appropriateness" issue brought up by Anil's US
> Army example.  It is definitely ideal to edit for appropriateness,
> and I do think the newsletter should be edited for its adherence to
> WE's ideals, but I believe that blogging should be open to opinion,
> nevertheless containing an opinion disclaimer.

The newsletter should definitely be edited. But in my opinion it
would be nice to have at least one outlet that isn't, or if it is
edited is very gentle about it.

-=Steve=-

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve and Jesse ,

Additional comments in text below.

2009/11/7 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com>

Jesse wrote:

> I think a newsletter would be a fantastic idea for WE.
> Contrary to the way the mail list works, it could be automatically
> sent via MW to all registered emails, keeping members connected.
> (We do have a lot of people that register but never come back,
> don't we?).  There could be a preference that  can be unchecked
> to stop sending the newsletter.

Have the people who have already created accounts agreed to receive
that sort of email?  I mean, they're not having come back is already a
sign of disinterest, so while it's not my decision to make, I'd be
reluctant to subscribe them to a newsletter under those circumstances.

Agree we need to be very careful with mass-email which can arguably and justifiably be labelled as WE  spam. I would suggest implementing an option for new users to subscribe to a news / letter magazine.  We can consider a once off notification to WE account holders regarding the option to subscribe to the news letter once this option has been implemented for new account holders. However -- this would need to be an affirmative action to subscribe rather than a default that everyone gets the newsletter unless they opt out.

Besides, do we want to have a newsletter newsletter, or would we want
to consider having a blog as a newsletter, so that news would be sent
out on that channel whenever it arose, rather than trying to fill X
number of pages every month or quarter or what have you?

Personally, I'd like to see both -- they serve different audiences and I don't see one replacing and / or duplicating the other.  WikiEducator has extensive reach in the developing world -- places where connectivity is difficult, unreliable and expensive. The newsletter / WE magazine is an innovative way to "connect" the "disconnected" and keep those who want to stay abreast of what is happening online.  Notifying teachers around the world of exemplary resources that may be of use. Profiling and sharing experiences of the efforts in setting up national OER collaborations (eg Uganda,  Bangladesh, India etc.)  --- These experiences are invaluable for other countries trying to bootstrap OER.  We could have a low-resolution version to simplify local reproduction and keep costs to a minimum. Certainly, within the formal education sector -- there are still large numbers of educators who do not surf the blog sphere --- lets cast a wide net for open education :-)
 

> The blog thing, I believe, would require some analysis on what we
> want out of it, and then how to organise it.  What would blogging
> do for us? Which of the above blogging sectors do we fit into?
> (Probably sponsored, informative)  How much blog content do we
> want to have, ideally?  What blog topics are integral to presenting
> a cohesive, professional blog umbrella to the public?  Do we allow
> just anyone to blog, or restrict it to author/subject/ability approvals?

One of the thoughts here has been that we can support more than one
blog for more than one purpose.  For example, I'm very excited about
the idea of becoming the home of Terra Incognita, which consists of a
month guest post with concomitant discussion in the comments.  The
goal was to to have each post be high quality, and one that would stir
a lot of conversation.

A great model -- and Terra Incognita has a proven track record.
 

But that's just one.  Another one could be a blog where there would be
a very low threshold for WikiEducators to sign up to post, and
moderators would have a set of guidelines to prevent posts that are
inflammatory or off topic, but otherwise be hands off.  A similar
model would be to let people tag their own posts on their own blogs
with "wikieducator" and let those all be displayed together.

Then a third could be a blog where posts come from certain people
(Wayne, Jim, etc.?) on a relatively well scheduled basis, and this
would be the newsletter.

Hopefully there will be more people than Wayne, Jim posting -- we should also include posts from Council members, workgroup leaders, featured teachers etc.  This model would need some sort of editorial team to oversee alignment with community values etc. 

 

If we make a variety of resources available, it will be interesting to
see what people will do with them.  Sort of like WE itself. :-)

> I do think there is a difference between the "freedom of speech"
> issue, and the "appropriateness" issue brought up by Anil's US
> Army example.  It is definitely ideal to edit for appropriateness,
> and I do think the newsletter should be edited for its adherence to
> WE's ideals, but I believe that blogging should be open to opinion,
> nevertheless containing an opinion disclaimer.

The newsletter should definitely be edited.  But in my opinion it
would be nice to have at least one outlet that isn't, or if it is
edited is very gentle about it.

We definitely need an outlet that isn't edited --- we just need a clear communication / disclaimer  that the posts are the opinions of the individuals writing them.
 

-=Steve=-

[aprasad]

Dear all,

 

I think, the concept is now concrete by putting together the last responses of Jesse, Steve and Dr. Wayne.

Warm regards,

Anil
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad
http://www.apletters.blogspot.com

 

 

[Steve Foerster]

Wayne wrote:

<< Agree we need to be very careful with mass-email which can arguably
and justifiably be labelled as WE  spam. I would suggest implementing
an option for new users to subscribe to a news / letter magazine.  We
can consider a once off notification to WE account holders regarding
the option to subscribe to the news letter once this option has been
implemented for new account holders. However -- this would need to be
an affirmative action to subscribe rather than a default that everyone
gets the newsletter unless they opt out. >>

Good, that's a reasonable approach.

<< Personally, I'd like to see both -- they serve different audiences
and I don't see one replacing and / or duplicating the other.
 WikiEducator has extensive reach in the developing world -- places
where connectivity is difficult, unreliable and expensive. The
newsletter / WE magazine is an innovative way to "connect" the
"disconnected" and keep those who want to stay abreast of what is
happening online.  Notifying teachers around the world of exemplary
resources that may be of use. Profiling and sharing experiences of the
efforts in setting up national OER collaborations (eg Uganda,
 Bangladesh, India etc.)  --- These experiences are invaluable for
other countries trying to bootstrap OER.  We could have a low-
resolution version to simplify local reproduction and keep costs to a
minimum. Certainly, within the formal education sector -- there are
still large numbers of educators who do not surf the blog sphere ---
lets cast a wide net for open education :-) >>

Very well, but there's no reason that a blog and a dead-trees
newsletter couldn't have the same content. We could have the official
news blog, and when there have been enough posts to fill however many
pages we want the newsletter to be, we release the same content as
PDF, RTF, ODT, etc. (Our actually printing and posting it sounds
expensive, I assume that's not the intent here?)

One potential issue with treeware is that some countries use Letter
size and some use A4. (My wife's doing an LLB through a school in the
UK from here in the U.S. where A4 is annoyingly hard to find, so we've
been hit in the head by this one.)

<< Hopefully there will be more people than Wayne, Jim posting -- we
should also include posts from Council members, workgroup leaders,
featured teachers etc.  This model would need some sort of editorial
team to oversee alignment with community values etc. >>

Valerie edited the workgroup charter to have us continue to oversee
whatever blogs come out of this process. That's okay with me, at
least as a starting point.

<< We definitely need an outlet that isn't edited --- we just need a
clear communication / disclaimer  that the posts are the opinions of
the individuals writing them. >>

Very good, so then it seems our workgroup should refine the approach
of having three blogs:

1. Terra Incognita if possible, or if not then a sort of "Nova Terra
Incognita".

2. An official newsletter blog, the contents of which are also
periodically released in paper format.

3. An open blog where WikiEducators can easily add posts and there's
light-handed moderation.

-=Steve=-

[Ray Sharma]

Agree that anything you do should have an easy opt in opt out option

Don't forget RSS either - most blogs generate RSS (a list of recent
submissions) anyway and this can form the basis of a newsletter too. Google
homepage, many email readers today all support RSS subscription.

The real difference between the blog and newsletter in terms of content is
that usually a blog is collaborative, self building, and up to date whereas
a Newsletter is usually composed by somebody and thus requires greater
effort (someone collates all the info and sends it out) and has some time
lag . However, Newsletter's can be targeted better, as marketing tool and
direct to people but that in-its-self is a double edge sword, as you have to
maintain your audience.

I suspect for the first couple of communications you want a targeted
newsletter. As you catch up with the information you want to deliver then
moving to a more automated communication, RSS and possibly email
subscription would be the way. I would say go straight to the blog and
automated option.

For offline people, this changes. The advantage of an up to the minute
automated information service such a blog will never be met. For these
people an offline version of a newsletter is required. However, even an
offline newsletter can be generated from online content though some
automated process - the creation of the content may not be the issue - but
how they receive it could (which impacts frequency). As well as traditional
post, you can also deliver a newsletter as an Acrobat file which can be
downloaded and printed (in 100000's if neeed) in the destination country,
they could even do this from a web page. So the web can still be used to
facilitate offline users.

Ray

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve.

2009/11/8 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com>

Wayne wrote:

<< Agree we need to be very careful with mass-email which can arguably
and justifiably be labelled as WE  spam. I would suggest implementing
an option for new users to subscribe to a news / letter magazine.  We
can consider a once off notification to WE account holders regarding
the option to subscribe to the news letter once this option has been
implemented for new account holders. However -- this would need to be
an affirmative action to subscribe rather than a default that everyone
gets the newsletter unless they opt out. >>

Good, that's a reasonable approach.

Also, considering that supplying email addresses is optional when registering an account -- I think that this is a responsible approach.
 

That's a good point -- I've had the privilege of working in both A4 and Letter format countries -- and you're right, it can be a pain. PDF will provide a best fit solution, and using open file formats I'm confident community members will assist wtih the DTP for the different sizes.

 

<< Hopefully there will be more people than Wayne, Jim posting -- we
should also include posts from Council members, workgroup leaders,
featured teachers etc.  This model would need some sort of editorial
team to oversee alignment with community values etc. >>

Valerie edited the workgroup charter to have us continue to oversee
whatever blogs come out of this process.  That's okay with me, at
least as a starting point.

That's a useful approach and as we progress, we may be able to develop editorial guidelines to help us with the task.

<< We definitely need an outlet that isn't edited --- we just need a
clear communication / disclaimer  that the posts are the opinions of
the individuals writing them. >>

Very good, so then it seems our workgroup should refine the approach
of having three blogs:

1. Terra Incognita if possible, or if not then a sort of "Nova Terra
Incognita".

I like the ring of "Nova Terra Incognita" -- lets see what Ken thinks.

2. An official newsletter blog, the contents of which are also
periodically released in paper format.

And also cross-fertilisation of the newsletter / ezine where commissioned or featured pieces can be harvested and reworked for the blog formats.
 

3. An open blog where WikiEducators can easily add posts and there's
light-handed moderation.

-=Steve=-

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Ray,

2009/11/8 Ray Sharma <r...@raymondo.net>

Agree that anything you do should have an easy opt in opt out option

Don't forget RSS either - most blogs generate RSS (a list of recent
submissions) anyway and this can form the basis of a newsletter too. Google
homepage, many email readers today all support RSS subscription.

Agree -- we already run the Mediawiki RSS extensions where we can push and or pull feeds in WikiEducator.
 

The real difference between the blog and newsletter in terms of content is
that usually a blog is collaborative, self building, and up to date whereas
a Newsletter is usually composed by somebody and thus requires greater
effort (someone collates all the info and sends it out) and has some time
lag . However, Newsletter's can be targeted better, as marketing tool and
direct to people but that in-its-self is a double edge sword, as you have to
maintain your audience.

Good points -- The Newsletter / ezine will require greater effort. I'm keen to find a sponsor to help cover the editorial and the production side of things. As we practice open philanthropy copy of the newsletter / ezine will be developed openly in the wiki.
 

I suspect for the first couple of communications you want a targeted
newsletter. As you catch up with the information you want to deliver then
moving to a more automated communication, RSS and possibly email
subscription would be the way. I would say go straight to the blog and
automated option.

For offline people, this changes. The advantage of an up to the minute
automated information service such a blog will never be met. For these
people an offline version of a newsletter is required. However, even an
offline newsletter can be generated from online content though some
automated process - the creation of the content may not be the issue - but
how they receive it could (which impacts frequency). As well as traditional
post, you can also deliver a newsletter as an Acrobat file which can be
downloaded and printed (in 100000's if neeed) in the destination country,
they could even do this from a web page. So the web can still be used to
facilitate offline users.

All good advice -- thanks Ray :-)

[valerie]

There must be WikiEducators who blog or write articles that could be
WE blog posts. Perhaps by looking back through our posts we can find
some things to re-post on the WE blog as contributors.

I blog now and then - mostly as "course" assignments, but sometimes
when there are other important community discussions going on.
http://learningonline.blogspot.com/

If you have a blog and would be interested in contributing past or
future posts, please reply with a link to your blog.

Let's see what we have available. This will really help kick-start the
WE blog process.

..Valerie

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Everyone,

I got the OK from Ken Udas to move his Terra Incognita / Penn State blog to WikiEducator. He also said that he would help out.

- Randy

--
Open Education is a sustainable and renewable resource.

________________
Randy Fisher, MA, OMD
Senior Consultant & Facilitator, Intersol Group, Canada

Senior Consultant, Organization & Business Development
International Centre for Open Education / OER Foundation, New Zealand

Elected Member, WikiEducator Community Council, www.wikieducator.org
+1 613.230.6424 x144 (EST)
Skype: wikirandy
Twitter: wikirandy

* Stakeholder Engagement, Change / Transition Management & Performance
* Organization Design & Development
* Sustainable Project Implementation & Community-Building
* E-Learning, Online Collaboration & Communities of Practice
* Coaching & Facilitation
* My Bio: http://www.communitybuildingexpert.com

[aprasad]

Hi Randy, that is great! 

[Ray Sharma]

I was wondering if there is a better way to do without duplicating the effort and increasing the number of people who may contribute.

 

Does our Wikieducator software allow us to present RSS content and then send that out as another RSS in some way – I can do this via Drupal, another open source content software, I m wondering if the wiki can too ? This is all about using open standards (RSS and XML in this case) to link and reuse data.

 

I am thinking that we could use something like delicious, stumble upon or similar to capture an article from a blog and by adding a tag (like WikiEducator) have that appear on our site and thus newsletter . The main article itself will still be hosted on the contributors main blog site, but a plug/leader will appear on our site and sent out as part of our newsletter – a true mashup.

 

By the way I don’t want this holding up any implementation, we should be able to do something like this post anything set up for now (if the technology supports it)

 

Ray

 

From: wikied...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wikied...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Randy Fisher
Sent: 11 November 2009 13:43
To: wikied...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [WikiEducator] Re: WE blog or newsletter?

 

Hi Everyone,

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Valerie, Ray

There are a fair number of folk who blog and reference WikiEducator --- You can get some indication by using "Wikeducator" as a search term at sites like Technorati.

We have a page where some folk have aggregated their RSS feeds on this page:

http://wikieducator.org/ELearning_Blogfeed

This answers Ray's question -- yes we can aggregate RSS feeds in Mediawiki. The downside is that the page takes a wee while to load -- so perhaps one of the things our Blog workgroup may want to consider is optimisation of how we list feeds from different WikiEducators.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/12 valerie <vta...@gmail.com>

[Jim Tittsler]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 16:54, Wayne Mackintosh
<mackinto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This answers Ray's question -- yes we can aggregate RSS feeds in Mediawiki.
> The downside is that the page takes a wee while to load -- so perhaps one of
> the things our Blog workgroup may want to consider is optimisation of how we
> list feeds from different WikiEducators.

This may also get faster after the server migration since we can teach
the RSS "fetcher" to cache results rather than getting a fresh copy of
the feed on each page hit.

But optimization is still good.

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Jim,

Its great to have a Lead Software Engineer on board --- I like the idea of teaching RSS fetchers to behave they way we want :-)

Good hackers can do real magic!

Thanks Jim.

Cheers
W

2009/11/12 Jim Tittsler <jtit...@gmail.com>

[Phil Bartle]

I do not really know what a blog is. Is my set of rants a blog?

If the coach does the pushups,
The athlete will not get stronger
Community Empowerment:
www.scn.org/cmp/
WikiEducator
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Philbartle
Join our discusssion forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Community_Strengthening

[aprasad]

Hi Phil,  any piece of thought or information you circulate or publish online, on your liberty and responsibility, can form your Blog, provided, you should have at least one landing page to link them, and that page will be the home for your Blog.

 

--
Warm regards

Anil

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad

http://www.apletters.blogspot.com

 

[Jesse Groppi]

Phil,

Your rants most surely are a blog.  I had always thought that was your intent! :D  You were, in fact, the first person I thought of when this discussion began.  I think you will get quite a lot of use out of this feature.

Jesse Groppi

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Jesse_Groppi
skype: jesse.groppi

[kirby urner]

I'd be OK with contributing to a WE blog.

I do link to Wikieducator pages from my blogs sometimes but mostly in
a nod nod wink wink kind of way (Monty Python skit) to my readers and
students i.e. I'm preaching to some choir or using the shop talk of
some tribe.

What I posted for a flagship WE blog might have a different flavor,
however I could see contributing a future post, or maybe one or two
past ones would be useful. I could see how the blog shapes up and
look for something fitting.

Below one I just posted. Clearly it's technical and aimed at a
specific audience:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-curriculum-writing.html

On the other hand, perhaps your WE blog should just have this flavor
or random content, a so-called cross-section, formatted by
wikieducators as blog posts pointing into this content.

That would give casual browsers, thinking about jumping in, a sense of
what the waters are like.

In that sense, I could see this linked post being one such random sample.

Thanks for your work in providing this valuable world service.

Kirby Urner
User:KirbyUrner

4dsolutions.net

Institute for Science, Engineering & Public Policy (board), isepp.org
Python Software Foundation (voting member), python.org

[Steve Foerster]

Phil wrote:

> I do not really know what a blog is. Is my set of rants a blog?

It sure is! The only thing you need is an automated way to post new
entries, that facilitates comments from readers, and so forth -- and
that's exactly what we're talking about here.

You sound like a great candidate for the proposed OpenWe blog. I
really think that one could turn out to be fun and interesting!

http://directory.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Blog/Guidelines

-=Steve=-

[Jaapb]

about blog or newsletter,
Most wiki-groups, like in wikipedia do communicate by subscribe to the
users pages of the wiki. (one receives a message when something has
changed there)
this google group is a newsletter, if you did subscribe to it.

So knowing this, I don't get the point of another newsletter or blog
to communicatie. That would be slightly overdone I think.
kind regards Jaap

On Nov 4, 1:18 am, valerie <vtay...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Did anything ever come of earlier suggestions that there be a
> WikiEducator blog with multiple contributors or a collaboratively
> written newsletter?
>
> I poked around and didn't find much.
>

> old discussionshttp://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator/browse_thread/thread/fa11...
>
> old pageshttp://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:NewsLetter

>
> Write an article for a magazine/newsletter styled publication

> describing the wiki concept and how people can become involvedhttp://wikieducator.org/WikiMaster/WikiApprentice_Level_1

>
> I'm having my students work collaboratively in small groups to come up

> with a WikiEducator promotion.http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2009#Final_Projects

[kirby urner]

Example of an organization using a blog to connect to blogosphere
would be PSF on the right hand margin of this recent post re
Wikieducator content:

http://mybizmo.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-curriculum-writing.html

PSF has a board, voting membership, charged with protecting trademark,
language authenticity, PEPs, user groups, conferences. Individuals
track whatever special interest groups (sigs) interest them, e.g. I'm
prolific on edu-sig and do a lot of my business there.

Seems to me that subscribing to specific wiki pages is an esoteric
insider activity for those already sold on the idea of a wiki.
Blogging is somewhat a different medium and you'll find bloggers
who've never thought of Wikipedia as much beyond another static
website, not thinking to take part in the editing, treating knowledge
as read-only (same problem as Britannica had).

So it makes sense to me that a Wiki-based subculture, wishing to
recruit new citizens, might promote a more educated readership via
some synthesis blog that shows up in blog chatter. At PSF we think
about airport concourse signage as another way of advertising, like a
lit sign in some tunnel in O'Hare with our "just use it" slogan.

Kirby

[Steve Foerster]

Hi Jaap,

I see a newsletter as very different from this Google group. This
group is good for casual discussion, and for coordinating our
activities in an ongoing fashion. Yes, it's also a good place for
announcements, but that's only one of its functions.

A newsletter that is published in both blog and document format would
be a better way to highlight those announcements that are of
relatively high performance. That way, they would be likely to be
read not just by those who are active day to day who read this group,
but also people who are interested in WE, but from more of a distance.

Similarly, as Wayne's noted, a newsletter would be useful as a
recruiting tool. Making a good quality print version available as a
handout helps show that this is an active project that educators
looking for an OER home should consider. Saying, "Well, we have a
Google group," just isn't as sexy.

-=Steve=-


--
Stephen H. Foerster

http://hiresteve.com
http://hiresteve.com/blog
http://wikieducator.org/steve

[valerie]

Another thought. Perhaps the Slashdot model would work for the
WikiEducator community contributions blog.

http://slashdot.org/

Some interesting ideas for publication and administration - anyone
can post. Anyone can comment. Some folks can be moderators. Most of
the editing / administration / publishing are handled by readers/user
with tools in "the system". There is less reliance on the time and
efforts of individuals than some of the alternatives that have been
discussed. The moderation function allows readers to effectively edit
the comments - highlighting the good ones and marginalizing the poor
or inappropriate ones.

This is a robust environment that is sustainable and has a proven
track record. All of this is handled with the open source code from
Slashdot.

Worth considering. If it works for Slashdot, it could work well for
the WikiEducator community contributions blog, too.

..Valerie

[valerie]

Take a look at the Social Edge site
http://www.socialedge.org/

They do a nice job of providing information for visitors and
residents. The blogs of individual contributors are nicely connected
to the usual front page information. The blogs are a good way to keep
the content linked from the front page fresh. Lots of good ideas
here.

Is there anything here that could be used for making some progress on
the WikiEducator Front page/ Newsletter / Blog projects?

..Valerie

[Chris Harvey]

The way I've approached this is using planetplanet software.

You can see how I use it here.
http://superuser.com.au/planettalo

I believe many free culture communities also use planetplanet, Wikimedia have a planet too.
http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/

Theres many planet communities out there. I guess it could be described simply as a public feed reader/aggregator stream.

Theres advantages to this approach compared to setting up and maintaining something like wpmu. People can chose their own platform and just supply a feed, most blogging software has options for categorizing and tagging feeds so if your blog is about multiple topics you could easily tag/categorize some posts that will be aggregated for wikieducator topics.

Check it out, its worth it, it might be a good solution.

Kind warm loving regards and best wishes
Sincerely
Chris

[kirby urner]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Chris Harvey <gnuc...@gmail.com> wrote:

The way I've approached this is using planetplanet software.

You can see how I use it here.
http://superuser.com.au/planettalo

I believe many free culture communities also use planetplanet, Wikimedia have a planet too.
http://en.planet.wikimedia.org/

Yes indeed, Python Nation (right next to Republic of Perl) is an avid user of Planet:
http://planet.python.org/

Kirby in Cyberia

--
>>> from mars import math
http://www.wikieducator.org/Digital_Math

[valerie]

Thanks Chris

Yes, your solution looks great and has clear advantages. What do we
need to do get get one going for WikiEducator?

There was some interest a couple of months ago, but not much action.
If this is easy to initiate, I'm happy to work on it.

..Valerie

On Dec 9, 5:30 pm, Chris Harvey <gnuch...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The way I've approached this is using planetplanet software.
>

> You can see how I use it here.http://superuser.com.au/planettalo

[Chris Harvey]

I would assume this is an easy task for some of the technical people involved in wikieducator.

1. Someone download and install the planetplanet software maybe use a subdomain e.g blogs.wikieducator.org

2. Ask people interested in this to give the address of their rss/atom feed or perhaps have a wiki page for organizing that.

3. My favorite part, teach people how to make their own hackergotchi(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackergotchi)

For planet talo I made most peoples hackergotchi for them with their permission.

4. In a way this is covered in step 1, schedule a task to update the stream, I update mine at 12 noon and midnight

I guess Ive been running mine around 3 years, the only thing Ive had to bother doing was modify a text file to add/remove/update the feed list. You kind of set it and forget it.

I would suggest talking to Jim or Brent about it, maybe run a trial.

I don't expect it to automatically be the best idea just because its something I do, perhaps something like wikinews model is good too. I dont know, I do know that you have some talented technology people with the skills and experience to provide the community with a free web hosted service for this purpose.

Kind warm loving regards and best wishes sincerely
Chris

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "WikiEducator" group.
To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org
To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator
To post to this group, send email to wikied...@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
wikieducator...@googlegroups.com

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Chris, Valery and Kirby

The planetplanet software is great and well aligned with our open community values :-)

I don't see any issues with installing this as a WikiEducator subdomain. This will be great way for aggregating blog-feeds about WikiEducator from our community members. 

The only issue is going to be one of timing - -we're currently migrating WikiEducator over to the Athabasca servers --- however, our test installation is not yet performing at the levels we would like :-(. We're in the process of putting more metal into the cluster so that our site will perform at the levels we expect from WikiEducator.

If possible, We'd prefer to avoid double work with two installations of the planet software. We would appreciate a couple of weeks breathing space to get this operational -- Is that OK?

An open question -- with regards to the WikiEducator blog itself, we've been throwing around a few ideas. What do you think about the WikiEducator blog being more wiki-like -- in other words where the WE blogging team collaborate openly on the post in the wiki way -- a blog post which everyone can edit.  We'll need to take a look at available extensions and think about RSS feeds, comments etc. Personally, I think this would be rather COOL. Thoughts?

Cheers
Wayne

2009/12/10 Chris Harvey <gnuc...@gmail.com>

--
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

User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg

[Samuel Rose]

Hey WE friends!

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Wayne Mackintosh
<mackinto...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Chris, Valery and Kirby
>
> The planetplanet software is great and well aligned with our open community
> values :-)
>
> I don't see any issues with installing this as a WikiEducator subdomain.
> This will be great way for aggregating blog-feeds about WikiEducator from
> our community members.
>
> The only issue is going to be one of timing - -we're currently migrating
> WikiEducator over to the Athabasca servers --- however, our test
> installation is not yet performing at the levels we would like :-(. We're in
> the process of putting more metal into the cluster so that our site will
> perform at the levels we expect from WikiEducator.
>
> If possible, We'd prefer to avoid double work with two installations of the
> planet software. We would appreciate a couple of weeks breathing space to
> get this operational -- Is that OK?
>
> An open question -- with regards to the WikiEducator blog itself, we've been
> throwing around a few ideas. What do you think about the WikiEducator blog
> being more wiki-like -- in other words where the WE blogging team
> collaborate openly on the post in the wiki way -- a blog post which everyone
> can edit.  We'll need to take a look at available extensions and think about
> RSS feeds, comments etc. Personally, I think this would be rather COOL.
> Thoughts?
>

This is what we are doing with http://forwardfound.org/blog which
actually draws from wiki pages on our wiki! We have developed an open
standards-based API called FLOWS
http://flows.panarchy.com/index.php?title=Main_Page which makes it
possible to interface the FLOWS website/blog template with *any* blog
or wiki software, potentially. A "blog post" could be flagged when
ready for publishing, and a FLOWS object could be listening for the
specific wiki category, and then would post the blog post, for
instance. We are going to release the FLOWS blog template in Jan under
an open license.

--
Sam Rose
Social Synergy
Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
skype: samuelrose
email: samue...@gmail.com
http://socialsynergyweb.com
http://forwardfound.org
http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
http://socialmediaclassroom.com
http://localfoodsystems.org
http://notanemployee.net
http://communitywiki.org

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Sam,

That's a neat concept :-)  -- WE'll be sure to take a close look. Thanks for the pointer.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/12/12 Samuel Rose <samue...@gmail.com>

[valerie]

I took the liberty of starting the WE Blog as a regular wiki page a
couple of weeks ago.
http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Blog

I got stuck when I began thinking about RSS feeds...

..Valerie


On Dec 11, 2:45 pm, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Chris, Valery and Kirby

>

[kirby urner]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Wayne Mackintosh <mackinto...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Chris, Valery and Kirby

The planetplanet software is great and well aligned with our open community values :-)

I don't see any issues with installing this as a WikiEducator subdomain. This will be great way for aggregating blog-feeds about WikiEducator from our community members. 

The only issue is going to be one of timing - -we're currently migrating WikiEducator over to the Athabasca servers --- however, our test installation is not yet performing at the levels we would like :-(. We're in the process of putting more metal into the cluster so that our site will perform at the levels we expect from WikiEducator.

If possible, We'd prefer to avoid double work with two installations of the planet software. We would appreciate a couple of weeks breathing space to get this operational -- Is that OK?

An open question -- with regards to the WikiEducator blog itself, we've been throwing around a few ideas. What do you think about the WikiEducator blog being more wiki-like -- in other words where the WE blogging team collaborate openly on the post in the wiki way -- a blog post which everyone can edit.  We'll need to take a look at available extensions and think about RSS feeds, comments etc. Personally, I think this would be rather COOL. Thoughts?

Cheers
Wayne

Hi Wayne --

The Planet approach looks promising, as does a community blog.

We come to Wikieducator from different walks of life, so I'll tell some of my story as a use case example, including how I find myself promoting Wikieducator to peers, in hopes of attracting more content, such as lesson plans.

As someone involved with the Buckminster Fuller corpus, one of its long haul champions (since 1980s), I found Wikieducator gave me a fresh context, complete with well thought out tools, to package curriculum materials I've been collecting and refining for many years, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes alone.

Now that I have a small suite of pages, I'm looking for more internal links to pages others are working on.  I'm also out recruiting a breed of math teacher not afraid to innovate, to tackle new challeges.

One of those challenges is how to bring more experiences with computer languages into everyday math learning.

I just posted another update to Math Forum hosted by Drexel University, circling the new Sample MM Lesson Plan I just added yesterday. 

MM = Martian Math, one of four broad brush stroke topical areas designed to work either in unison, or as standalone modules. 

Martian Math is where we allow ourselves to get futuristic.  The geometry seems alien.  And yet it's correct, precise, accessible and with a strong track record of applications, especially in architecture, chemistry and biology. 

I'm always shocked that more teachers aren't already covering this same material.  I have little competition and it's a big world so wouldn't fear it, plus my efforts seem obscure to the extent no one else joins me in doing this work (at the college level, you'll find more overlap, but even here it's a bleak landscape these days).

My motivation in using Wikieducator to publish free content, is to encourage more teachers to pick up the ball and run with it, maybe tell me about it later.

As you can see, I believe in my product and so my recruiting drive sometimes has that salemanish fanatical tinge, but that's expected in a true believer, any died-in-the-wool "world game player" of any stripe. One needs driven individuals such as myself simply to get over the various learning curves associated with learning to use Wikieducator effectively. 

I'm still just a newcomer Wikibuddy and feel I have a long way to go on that score, yet have made excellent progress thanks to a supportive infrastructure and the benign, philanthropic motives of WE's leadership.

I'll post a link to that post in the Math Forum when it appears (this is a moderated list), so you can better see how I promote Wikieducator to my audience.  In the meantime, I have this short essay on Constructivism that might interest a few here (Ed Cherlin for example):

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2019948&tstart=0

My guess is a lot of teachers do something similar:  get their materials on-line and then face a peer group, suggesting a "come on in, the water's fine" attitude. 

Having a large repository of interlinked courseware is what everyone thinks is necessary (me included). 

I appreciate your work and encourage you to keep doing it. 

Our "global university" (GU) thanks you -- I use GU interchangebly with Fuller's moniker Spaceship Earth (SE), as a way of looking at the whole planet.

Kirby Urner
Portland, Oregon

[Joyce.M...@esc.edu]

 I think the more we work together to edit things the better...It not only helps clarify ideas, it gives us all practice on the best ways to do it collaboratively and cordially.  Joyce McKnight, SUNY Empire State College

kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com>
Sent by: wikied...@googlegroups.com
12/12/2009 09:25 AM PSTPlease respond towikie...@googlegroups.com

 To   wikied...@googlegroups.com
 cc  
 bcc   Joyce McKnight/SUNY
 Subject   Re: [WikiEducator] Re: WE blog or newsletter?
 

[kirby urner]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 2:40 PM, <Joyce.M...@esc.edu> wrote:

 I think the more we work together to edit things the better...It not only helps clarify ideas, it gives us all practice on the best ways to do it collaboratively and cordially.  Joyce McKnight, SUNY Empire State College

kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com>
Sent by: wikied...@googlegroups.com
12/12/2009 09:25 AM PSTPlease respond towikie...@googlegroups.com

 To   wikied...@googlegroups.com
 cc  
 bcc   Joyce McKnight/SUNY
 Subject   Re: [WikiEducator] Re: WE blog or newsletter?

Adding to my own use case (story) along these lines:

<use_case user = "Kirby Urner">

I came to Wikieducator thanks to Maria Droujkova and her Math 2.0 group which has this mathfuture Google Group.  Ed Cherlin and I have crossed paths on that list as well.  We had an international webinar on WizIQ about Wikieducator in particular (on Oct 31 of this year) and at that point I joined.

Since I'm an avid Python fan who has attended some conferences, rubbed shoulders with the great Guido, Tim Peters, other luminaries, I went straight to the PYTHON TUTORIALS page, found through the search box. 

What I found was an excellent beginning, and it seemed encouraged by the Wiki medium and culture that I should add considerably to that page, including more today. 

I contacted the original author with my appreciative comments and indications of my intentions to add more material, about functions, generators and classes for example.  She and I and whatever other interested parties could grow this page together.

This all came after establishing a user page and working through some of the tutorials, coming from prior experience with Wikis, including Wikipedia where I've made a few changes.  I got my WIkibuddy certification around then too.

The PYTHON TUTORIALS page has had a couple links added by people other than myself, but no substantial writing or rewrites have occurred.  On the other hand, probably relatively few members of the Python Software Foundation other than myself have been aware of Wikieducator?  Over on the edu-sig list (one of our many special interest groups) only Ed Cherlin and I seemed to know about it, until I started archiving all these links.

Anyway, just today, I posted notification to the PSF members list that I'd added a Python logo to the top of the page in question.  PSF is protective of its logo but mostly has no problem with this obviously consistent use of the brand, in a free and open teaching context aimed at spreading knowledge and appreciation for the Python computer language.

As to the several other pages I've constructed, another added in the last hour **, the history will show I've been doing these solo. 

I'm not averse to having help. 

Indeed, I would welcome lots and lots of assistance in getting these ideas out there, am somewhat miserable for lack of co-teachers. 

However, I think the curve might be (a) a Wikieducator fleshes out a vision, creates a grand design and then (b) co-teachers come along and start making improvements, as well as adding related / connected material.

The beauty of this arrangement is the symmetry:  each Wikieducator may assume "grand designer" status for some set of pages *and* still work in a team-spirited fashion as an assistant on pages where others assume responsibility for overall content. 

It makes sense to let pages rest with people who really know about them, but then to make provisions for organic growth and evolution, with page ownership transitioning from one generation to another.

Finally, I just want to register my pleasure at finally discovering the Table button in the editor, and the two tables this enabled me to create these two:

http://wikieducator.org/Martian_Math#Unpacking_Polyhedra
http://wikieducator.org/Sample_MM_Lesson_Plan#Materials

I find these tables quite handsome and suitable for snipping as PNGs for including elsewhere, for example here:

http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-pkl-talk.html (scroll down for Table).

</use_case>

Kirby

** in the last hour:
http://wikieducator.org/Sample_CM_Lesson_Plan  (my first use of [[Media:<<flash file>>]] )

[john stampe]

Hi, Sam

That is an interesting idea. I have one question about the forward blog, how do you push/pull the blogs to the website.

When I went to your forward blog link initially the blog itself was blank (only the header and sidebar showed). Once I temporarily allowed javascript the blog appeared. (I run NoScript on Firefox as any person concerned with security should).

Just curious,
John

http://www.wikieducator.org/User:JohnWS
http://johnsearth.blogspot.com

---

From: Samuel Rose <samue...@gmail.com>
To: wikied...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, December 12, 2009 6:00:26 AM

Subject: Re: [WikiEducator] Re: WE blog or newsletter?

[kirby urner]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 9:25 AM, kirby urner <kirby...@gmail.com> wrote:

<< trim >>
 

I'll post a link to that post in the Math Forum when it appears (this is a moderated list), so you can better see how I promote Wikieducator to my audience.  In the meantime, I have this short essay on Constructivism that might interest a few here (Ed Cherlin for example):

http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=2019948&tstart=0

OK, here's an example of how placing a link to Wikieducator brings interested math teachers, curriculum writers and others towards pages on Wikieducator, and by extension to explore the underlying phenomena.  They might find the community blog and community portal as a result.

http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=6928072&tstart=0#reply-tree

Speaking of the community portal, I'm amazed at the flexibility of the Table semantics.  My use of that embedded gizmo has so far been primitive, but I see where WikiArtisans have these amazing talents and abilities.

Kirby

I appreciate your work and encourage you to keep doing it. 

Our "global university" (GU) thanks you -- I use GU interchangebly with Fuller's moniker Spaceship Earth (SE), as a way of looking at the whole planet.

Kirby Urner
Portland, Oregon

[Samuel Rose]

Currently on http://forwardfound.org we are in fact pulling in content
via AJAX, which is in part javascript based

Although, this need not be the only method for using FLOWS to
distribute content. We could just as easily simply print the content
as html directly to the doc that is set to the browser.

We may actually have our page gracefully "degrade" that way. Most
people do not keep javascript off, so it was not so much of a priority
for us. But, thanks for pointing this out!

[Jesse Groppi]

Has anyone taken a look at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Wikilog yet? Seems promising to
me, and I might just try it out on my own website. It also involves the
wiki collaboration that Wayne suggested recently.

Jesse

On 03/11/2009 18:18, valerie wrote:
> Did anything ever come of earlier suggestions that there be a
> WikiEducator blog with multiple contributors or a collaboratively
> written newsletter?
>
> I poked around and didn't find much.
>
> old discussions

> http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator/browse_thread/thread/fa1128ff6e7401a4/dfa591a45e4391f6?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=newsletter#dfa591a45e4391f6
>
> old pages

> http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:NewsLetter
>
> Write an article for a magazine/newsletter styled publication
> describing the wiki concept and how people can become involved
> http://wikieducator.org/WikiMaster/WikiApprentice_Level_1
>
> I'm having my students work collaboratively in small groups to come up
> with a WikiEducator promotion.
> http://www.wikieducator.org/DeAnza_College/CIS2/Fall_2009#Final_Projects
>
> Naturally, their first question - Where is the WikiEducator
> newsletter? Umm, I'll get back to you on that...
>
> Is there a good answer to this question?
>
> ..Valerie

> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~

> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "WikiEducator" group.
> To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org
> To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator
> To post to this group, send email to wikied...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> wikieducator...@googlegroups.com

> -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
>
>

[valerie]

Thanks Jesse

Wikilog looks like a nice wiki-centric solution.

..Valerie

[Edward Cherlin]

FLOSS Manuals does the kind of collaborative writing and editing you
propose, with a wiki-like editing interface and a chat channel open on
the same Web page. It is extremely productive, and produces results of
high quality, according to us and to our reviewers. I haven't seen it
tried on blog posts, but I expect that we can make it work. We would
need to have several pages for blogs in progress so that would could
let some stew longer and still have something to post every day (or
however often).

--
Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/