WikiEducator needs to keep the focus

[jkelly952]

Two important points can be made from a survey which Randy Fisher
noted last month:
http://www.oerafrica.org/SearchourDatabase/tabid/295/mctl/Details/id/36643/Default.aspx
"Why teachers chose resources (i.e., OERs)
The top two responses (by far)
The content matches the grade level of my students
The content is up to date"

Educators are managers of information. Like all managers (in and
outside of education) they want operating information quickly and
they want it current. WE needs to work on portals like Brent
Simpson's http://www.wikieducator.org/Portal:Primary to provide
information by grade level (and/or age - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_education
) cross referenced with subject. This will help users find information
quickly thus making WikiEducator.org the choice of educators.

Secondly, WikiEducator has as one of its missions to help different
learning communities to develop courses and materials. Being of the
old “New Math” teaching approaches a greater emphasize on examples, as
opposed to “this is the definition” approach, is needed. Examples,
illustrations, activities, “reflections on what we see around us”,
content filled situations, etc. need to be emphasized. This will do
more to help learning communities formalize educational programs in
the context of their language, economic and social environment. Some
math examples are available in my sandbox section http://wikieducator.org/User:Jkelly952


Jim Kelly

[valerie]

Hi Jim

You are so right. These are the exact needs of teachers that
WikiEducators is addressing, and can be doing more.

The Categories workgroup are working toward this end.
http://www.wikieducator.org/Workgroup:Categories

I am hoping to get some interest in math and science activities for
middle school - high primary / low secondary grades.
http://www.wikieducator.org/Open_Resources_Collaboration/Middle_School_Math_and_Science

Now all we need to do is get WikiEducators working collaborative to
develop, revise, review and promote the content that matches the grade
level of students, and is up to date.

And we have to toot the WE horn to let everyone know where to find it
- here at WikiEducator.org.

..Valerie


On Oct 28, 8:49 am, jkelly952 <jkelly...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

[Steve Foerster]

Jim wrote:

<< Secondly, WikiEducator has as one of its missions to help different
learning communities to develop courses and materials. >>

I've been pretty quiet for a while now, sorry about that everyone!
I've been busy with doctoral study and switching from employment to
contracting, and it's been pretty intense, although now things are now
fairly well settled. :-)

Anyway, Jim's comment reminds me about what I've long thought is our
most important issue: That our biggest barrier to gaining more content
is that there is no WYSIWYG, rich text editing interface to WE. We
spend a lot of effort on teaching wiki skills, but the barrier to
entry of wikicode is intimidating and unnecessary, and a solution is
long overdue.

-=Steve=-

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

[Randy Fisher]

Hi Steve,

 

That barrier is set to fall very soon, with Jim Tittsler's work, community input and NZ Ministry of Education funding.

 

We have a rich text editing beta up at: http://en1.wikieducator.net

 

You can log into it, using your WE settings  as usual.

 

Try it out! - but make sure that you don't 'leave content' there, - just copy it over to your regular wiki page.

 

Wayne can advise of the timing for release.

 

- 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

[Steve Foerster]

Randy wrote:

> That barrier is set to fall very soon, with Jim Tittsler's work,
> community input and NZ Ministry of Education funding.

> We have a rich text editing beta up at:http://en1.wikieducator.net

> You can log into it, using your WE settings  as usual.

Whoa, I didn't know that. I suppose this is what I get for not
staying in the loop!

> Try it out! - but make sure that you don't 'leave content' there,
> - just copy it over to your regular wiki page.

It seems to work really well! That's so exciting! Thanks much to all
who are making this possible!

> Wayne can advise of the timing for release.

Wayne, when do we plan for this to go into production? Or, if there's
a particular testing sequence that needs to be exhausted, how can
interested people help out? Count me in!

Thanks,

-=Steve=-

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve,

Welcome back! They say changing jobs, moving house etc are among the top 10 stress generators. Add a little PhD work into the mix --- that's more than enough to divert attention!  That said, we're most appreciative of the time you've volunteered during the recent Community Council meeting.

We've been looking at rich text editing for some time -- and have been listening to your call for WYSIWYG wiki editing. Thanks to significant progress in the Mediawiki FCK extension, support from the New Zealand Ministry of Education and OERF appointing a Lead Software Engineer (and dedicated WikiEducator) we are in a position to move this forward. 

We're getting close to moving this into production -- we still need to tweak the installation and optimise/ improve performance of the servers at Athabasca University, but we're making excellent progress. In the mean time -- have a play on the test servers and let us know of any issues. (Note that we will not preserve edits on the test server when we update the test servers with snapshots of the production WikiEducator.)

Rob Kruhlak and Helena Mill are helping us out with reconfiguring our existing tutorials in preparatation for the move to Rich Text Editing.

See:

http://wikieducator.org/Help:Rich_text_editor_tutorials

We've scoped the changes which will be necessary over here:

http://wikieducator.org/Help:Rich_text_editor_tutorials

Any time you may have in helping with editing of these tutorials is always well received.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/11/1 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.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

[Steve Foerster]

Wayne wrote:

<< Welcome back! They say changing jobs, moving house etc are among
the top 10 stress generators. Add a little PhD work into the mix ---
that's more than enough to divert attention! That said, we're most
appreciative of the time you've volunteered during the recent
Community Council meeting. >>

I only wish we could get things done more quickly! But then I suppose
that's always the way, isn't it? :-)

<< We've been looking at rich text editing for some time -- and have
been listening to your call for WYSIWYG wiki editing. Thanks to
significant progress in the Mediawiki FCK extension, support from the
New Zealand Ministry of Education and OERF appointing a Lead Software
Engineer (and dedicated WikiEducator) we are in a position to move
this forward. >>

I remember at one point we were concerned that FCK would break other
Mediawiki extensions we're using. I'm glad to see it seems those
issues have been resolved.

<< We're getting close to moving this into production -- we still need
to tweak the installation and optimise/ improve performance of the
servers at Athabasca University, but we're making excellent progress.
In the mean time -- have a play on the test servers and let us know of
any issues. (Note that we will not preserve edits on the test server
when we update the test servers with snapshots of the production
WikiEducator.) >>

So, if I'm doing things correctly, then the editor allows text to be
WYSIWYG formatted once it's there, which is great, and it takes
whatever's already on the page and makes it available for WYSIWYG
editing, which is also great. But it doesn't seem to allow text
that's already formatted to be pasted into the editor and retain that
formatting. When I try to paste formatted text into it, it brings up
a new window specifically calling for plain text. Am I doing
something wrong?

The reason I want to be able to do this is that there are a lot of
textbooks old enough to be in the public domain but much of the
content of which is still surprisingly relevant. I'd like to be able
to put those old textbooks onto the wiki so that they could
collaboratively revised and made useful for today's students. If
there are few enough steps to get them from word processor document or
HTML to wikicode, then that would speed up these "XXI Texts" up
enormously.

<< Rob Kruhlak and Helena Mill are helping us out with reconfiguring
our existing tutorials in preparatation for the move to Rich Text
Editing. See: http://wikieducator.org/Help:Rich_text_editor_tutorials
>>

Well, I guess I can't kvetch about it and then not help. Let me see
what I can do with it once I feel sufficiently familiar with the
extension. At what sort of timeframe are we looking here?

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Steve,

2009/11/2 Steve Foerster <st...@hiresteve.com>

So, if I'm doing things correctly, then the editor allows text to be
WYSIWYG formatted once it's there, which is great, and it takes
whatever's already on the page and makes it available for WYSIWYG
editing, which is also great.  But it doesn't seem to allow text
that's already formatted to be pasted into the editor and retain that
formatting.  When I try to paste formatted text into it, it brings up
a new window specifically calling for plain text.  Am I doing
something wrong?

Thanks Steve -- that's a good point, haven't noticed this issue with my testing -- the benefits of the community helping us out with testing different use case scenarios.  The "paste" window with the FCK editor is not ideal for large volumes of text.  From what I see, the best way to copy big chucks of test is to use the wiki source option (reverting back to wiki text ;-) ) . Their may be a more elegant solution - we''ll investigate.
 

The reason I want to be able to do this is that there are a lot of
textbooks old enough to be in the public domain but much of the
content of which is still surprisingly relevant.  I'd like to be able
to put those old textbooks onto the wiki so that they could
collaboratively revised and made useful for today's students.  If
there are few enough steps to get them from word processor document or
HTML to wikicode, then that would speed up these "XXI Texts" up
enormously.

That would be an amazing project -- we should also investigate alternatives for converting entire PD texts -- possible developing a script which could convert a Gutenberg text, set up subpages and basic formatting with headings and sub-headings.  We'll take a look.  Do you have any example texts you want to convert .... Worth a look.

<< Rob Kruhlak and Helena Mill are helping us out with reconfiguring
our existing tutorials in preparatation for the move to Rich Text
Editing.  See: http://wikieducator.org/Help:Rich_text_editor_tutorials
>>

Well, I guess I can't kvetch about it and then not help.  Let me see
what I can do with it once I feel sufficiently familiar with the
extension.  At what sort of timeframe are we looking here?

We're hoping to have the RTE tutorials finished by the end of the month --- may be a bit tight, but any help, even editorial review will be a great help.

Cheers
Wayne
 

-=Steve=-


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