Wikieducator live online wiki skills and collaborative learning at WiZiQ

[Gladys Gahona]

Wikieducator live online wiki skills and collaborative learning at WiZiQ
July 3, 2009 -  6:00 pm GMT
Join us

Warm wishes

Nellie Deutsch
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Nelliemuller
nellie.mul...@gmail.com

Gladys Gahona
http://www.wikieducator.org/Chela5808
gladys...@gmail.com

[nelliemuller]

Greetings,
I would like to invite members to contribute to the success of the
workshop by adding to the presentation:
https://docs.google.com/PresentationEditor?id=dfhbndjd_233d8g847g8#
and speaking at the event. Please feel free to join the initiative.

In addition, I would your opinion on how to advertise these workshops
and perhaps answers to the following:

1. Should WE publish the workshops on the main page of Wikieducator?
2. Should WE put a logo/banner of the event on the main page?
3. Should WE conduct these workshops at all?
4. Should members of the community take initiatives without receiving
approval from the community members?
5. Should workgroups be created to make such decisions?
6. Is there any way WE can reach consensus on content added to WE?
7. How do WE go from the planning stage (workgroups) to operating
stage?

Please add your concerns.

Thank you.

Warm wishes,
Nellie

On Jun 28, 5:34 pm, Gladys Gahona <gladysgah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikieducator live online wiki skills and collaborative learning at WiZiQ
> July 3, 2009 -  6:00 pm GMT
> Join us
>
> Warm wishes
>
> Nellie Deutschhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Nelliemuller

> nellie.muller.deut...@gmail.com
>
> Gladys Gahonahttp://www.wikieducator.org/Chela5808
> gladysgah...@gmail.com

>
> Live online free wikiskills workshop

> <http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/155189-Wikieducator-Basic-Editing-S...>

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi everyone --

BIG kudos to Nellie and Gladys who are taking wiki skills development to a new level in WikiEducator! I'm proud to be associated with educators who share the value of sharing knowledge freely and promoting growth in our amazing project :-)

Thanks also to Nellie for raising important questions on the list regarding how we advertise workshops and use our collective space and real estate on the WikiEducator landing page. Herewith my thoughts and ideas to your questions:

1.) Should WE publish workshops on the main page?

Yes -- in the spirit of sharing knowledge and opportunities to widen skills in collaborating with the free culture in developing content resources in support of all national curricula -- we should advertise our free training as widely as possible.

2) Should WE put a logo/banner of the event on the main page?

Yes -- WE should provide links to community wide and inclusive initiatives.

That said, we need to recognise that the WikiEducator landing page is the doorway into our community and I have received personal queries from the community regarding the prominence of the rather large animated gif that was placed on the homepage.  With compliments to the facilitators of this training event being bold and taking initiative the wiki way  :-)

(See: http://wikieducator.org/index.php?title=Template:Frontpage_news&diff=prev&oldid=393778 )

However, historically we've used the news section on the landing page to keep to small thumbnails of images in the range of 100 to 150 pixels and then linking to a subpage to provide more detail. In the past I've taken on the responsibity of keeping the front page current and am very pleased to see more folk from our family taking ownership.

This raises the question whether we need guidelines and a community of volunteers to assist with keeping our landing page current.

3) Should WE conduct these workshops at all?

Absolutely! The Learning4Content project is the worlds largest wiki training initiative for educators -- Any projects, online sessions which widen access to learning wiki skills must be encouraged :-).

5). Should workgroups be created to make such decisions?

Well - decisions which effect the entire community, IMHO should as far as possible and  practicble involve as many members of the Wikieducator community as possible --- at least we should provide ample opportunity for wide participation.  The advantage of the workgroup approach (which was proposed by a community member) is that any member of the community can participate irrespective of rank or status.  I think that we'll be moving into questionable territory if we assigned all operational decisions, for example to the WikiEducator Community Council --- that would demish the democractic prinples on which our community is founded.

That said -- WikiEducator is an evolving community and we do not have all the mechanisms, guidelines and procedures in place that will contribute to our future success. The workgroup approach is Work-in-progress for consideration by the next meeting of Council.

6) Is there any way WE can reach consensus on content added to WE?

I think we should distinguish between two major categories of content:

• OER content developed by individuals or collaborations between educators. As long as this content aligns with the filters of the core values stated on our home page, I think folk should have the freedom to develop this content. This does not necessarily imply a consensus opinion by the community -- unlike Wikipedia, we are not developing "objective" encyclopedia content and I think we should encourage a diversity of pedagogical approaches.
• Community wide content, like policies and guidelines. As suggested above -- I think that we should strive for community consensus on this category of content including guidelines of how we should manage the consensus process.
  

7) How do WE go from the planning stage (workgroups) to operating stage?

We collaborate on developing community consensus on how we think workgroups should operate -- as we're doing at the moment (see: http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups ) and then we present this proposal to the Community Council as a policy.

I think this is the best way to move from planning to operations.

As they say -- Rome wasn't built in a day, but I think we're well on the road to future success!

Look forward to hearing thoughts, views and improvements on our current thinking.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/6/29 nelliemuller <nellie.mul...@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

[Ben]

"6) Is there any way WE can reach consensus on content added to WE?"

Whether we are talking about consensus between two people or the
community, the answer to your question is "yes". In my mind,
consensus doesn´t mean that everyone agrees. It means that everyone
has the right to express their opinion and is heard. Reaching a
consensus takes all the opinions into consideration and makes a
decision accordingly. The question, therefore, becomes How do we
reach a consensus (i.e. for OERs or community-wide content)?

Whether we are talking about OER content or community-wide content, I
believe the essence of developing a wiki is the process of developing
an idea. That is, someone starts an idea and others contribute to its
development or formation. Any prescriptive guidelines or rules that
are established from the start of an idea (i.e., OER content or
community-wide content) must facilitate this process and not bog it
down. Particularly for community-wide content, we must find that fine
line between facilitating and bogging down the process of idea
development, which is an issue being discussed in WE.

Just thinking out loud here (sort of), what would happen if there were
no guidelines (excluding the general rules and values set up by WE) to
community-wide content. Would more experts and newbies contributed as
a result? What would this process look like? Is there a single
process that could be followed that could apply to both OER content
and community-wide content development?

If we did establish guidelines to community-wide content development,
would one set of guidelines apply to all types of community-wide
content? Will the individuals that establish these guidelines be the
only individuals that participate in the community-wide content
initiatives? I´m still trying to get my head around this notion.

Just some thoughts on the matter as I see it at the moment.

Benjamin
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Bnleez
http://groups.diigo.com/groups/wikieducator

P.S. The success of the WE network is a result of the success of the
participants within the WE network.

I think we should distinguish between two major categories of
content:

- OER content developed by individuals or collaborations between

educators. As long as this content aligns with the filters of the
core
values stated on our home page, I think folk should have the
freedom to
develop this content. This does not necessarily imply a consensus
opinion by
the community -- unlike Wikipedia, we are not developing
"objective"
encyclopedia content and I think we should encourage a diversity
of
pedagogical approaches.

- Community wide content, like policies and guidelines. As

suggested
above -- I think that we should strive for community consensus on
this
category of content including guidelines of how we should manage
the
consensus process.

On Jun 29, 2:00 am, nelliemuller <nellie.muller.deut...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Ben,
You did an excellent job at reading between the lines. Yes, we "must facilitate this process and not bog it

down.  Particularly for community-wide content, we must find that fine line between facilitating and bogging down the process of idea

development, which is an issue being discussed in WE". This brings me to a motto from my teenage years: Talk talk no action. Hope I'm being too blunt but Wikieducator (WE) needs content.
Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
http://www.nelliemuller.com
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
Share your teaching experiences: http://www.wikieducator.org/Etnirag_Online_Journal

[Patricia Schlicht]

Good Morning!

 

I would like to add a point to the discussions while we are at it and add another point of for discussion, which is the promotion of WikiEducator offsite

 

1.       How does the community feel about setting up working groups for the discussion of the establishment of social network accounts such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

2.       Now that we will shortly arrive at a new stage of promoting WikiEducator, how should this be done.

3.       Is it necessary and if yes, why or why not

4.        

Any thoughts appreciated.

 

Cheers,

Patricia

[Gladys Gahona]

Hello everyone,

Our landing page should reflect the dynamism and wide participation
our evolving community is experiencing according to the last
statitstics. I'd love to see a vibrant landing page (particulartly in
the "News" section), animated banners, more frecuent updates, renewing
general layout on a regular basis.

I invite folks to suggest, but most imortant, make things happen =)

Warm wishes

On 29 jun, 03:28, Wayne Mackintosh <mackintosh.wa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone --
>
> BIG kudos to Nellie and Gladys who are taking wiki skills development to a
> new level in WikiEducator! I'm proud to be associated with educators who
> share the value of sharing knowledge freely and promoting growth in our
> amazing project :-)
>
> Thanks also to Nellie for raising important questions on the list regarding
> how we advertise workshops and use our collective space and real estate on
> the WikiEducator landing page. Herewith my thoughts and ideas to your
> questions:
>
> 1.) Should WE publish workshops on the main page?
>
> Yes -- in the spirit of sharing knowledge and opportunities to widen skills
> in collaborating with the free culture in developing content resources in
> support of all national curricula -- we should advertise our free training
> as widely as possible.
>
> 2) Should WE put a logo/banner of the event on the main page?
>
> Yes -- WE should provide links to community wide and inclusive initiatives.
>
> That said, we need to recognise that the WikiEducator landing page is the
> doorway into our community and I have received personal queries from the
> community regarding the prominence of the rather large animated gif that was
> placed on the homepage.  With compliments to the facilitators of this
> training event being bold and taking initiative the wiki way  :-)
>

> (See:http://wikieducator.org/index.php?title=Template:Frontpage_news&diff=...)

>    - OER content developed by individuals or collaborations between

>    educators. As long as this content aligns with the filters of the core
>    values stated on our home page, I think folk should have the freedom to
>    develop this content. This does not necessarily imply a consensus opinion by
>    the community -- unlike Wikipedia, we are not developing "objective"
>    encyclopedia content and I think we should encourage a diversity of
>    pedagogical approaches.

>    - Community wide content, like policies and guidelines. As suggested

>    above -- I think that we should strive for community consensus on this
>    category of content including guidelines of how we should manage the
>    consensus process.
>
> 7) How do WE go from the planning stage (workgroups) to operating stage?
>
> We collaborate on developing community consensus on how we think workgroups

> should operate -- as we're doing at the moment (see:http://wikieducator.org/Workgroup:WikiEducator_Workgroups) and then we

> present this proposal to the Community Council as a policy.
>
> I think this is the best way to move from planning to operations.
>
> As they say -- Rome wasn't built in a day, but I think we're well on the
> road to future success!
>
> Look forward to hearing thoughts, views and improvements on our current
> thinking.
>
> Cheers
> Wayne
>

> 2009/6/29 nelliemuller <nellie.muller.deut...@gmail.com>

[Ben]

"How does the community feel about setting up working groups for the
discussion of the establishment of social network accounts such as
Facebook, Twitter etc."

"Now that we will shortly arrive at a new stage of promoting

WikiEducator, how should this be done?"
"Is it necessary and if yes, why or why not?"

Here's one opinion, which happens to be mine (smile).

For those who wish to communicate to all the participants in WE,
either try to find a way to do it within the WE site or create a blog
(or Facebook, Ning, possibly Google wave, etc. - not Google Groups)
that is linked to the WE main page. People who wish to collaborate on
OERs and community-wide content should create simple group (i.e.,
workgroups) charters that state who are members, how they are to work
together, expectations, etc. Group charters should be completely open
and decided upon by the group. If there's anything standard that I´m
proposing here, it would be having the group charter appear on the
main page of the OER or community-wide content. The technology to be
used to achieve the group objectives can be anything (i.e., Facebook,
Twitter, etc.), but the group itself decides. Working this way means
that groups start right away on working on their OERs or community-
wide content and the overall goal of WE thus becomes how to connect
people with similar interests, needs, and competencies. I propose
this option in lieu of establishing a formalized workgroup initiative
with general guidelines and rules. I believe that once groups get
started, group charters get written, and WE finds a space and manner
in which to connect people, projects, etc., workgroups will become
more effective and efficient has they gain more experience and are
exposed to how other groups are conducting "business".

Forgive my ignorance, but I´m not sure what "new stage of promoting
WE" is referring to unless it has something to do with changing
technologies that facilitate communication flow among WEducators.

This idea addresses Nellie's 7th question...

"How do WE go from the planning stage (workgroups) to operating
stage?"

My answer is that each group (i.e., workgroup) just begins with their
respective charter.

Any other thoughts?

[valerie]

Communicate, communicate, communicate...

On Jun 29, 9:04 am, "Patricia Schlicht" <PSchli...@col.org> wrote:
>
> I would like to add a point to the discussions while we are at it and
> add another point of for discussion, which is the promotion of
> WikiEducator offsite
>

Some really good examples of communication and discussion forms came
out of the CCK08 Connectivism online course. Jenny, John and Roy have
been conducting surveys and interviews about the processes.

Jenny Mackness - jenny.m...@btopenworld.com; http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/
Sui Fai John Mak - suifai...@yahoo.com.au; http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/
Roy Williams - Roy.Wi...@port.ac.uk; http://www.roys-discourse-typologies.blogspot.com/
http://roytwilliams.wordpress.com/

I know that for me, there needs to be some information about what can/
should be prescribed - identifying content is open for collaboration,
a mechanism for requesting and reporting OER reviews, a basic set of
categories to facilitate searching,... But beyond that, more is
better. It shouldn't be easier to get forgiveness than permission. We
want/need to encourage new and expanding ways to add and reuse WE
content.

The other thing that is really helpful is outbound communication.
CCK08 had a very cool blog harvester so that if any registered
participant blog added a post including the keyword CCK08, it was
automatically included as a link in the regular (in their case -
daily) email to the participants list. As these were produced
programatically, there wasn't any manual intervention once they were
set up.

And this Google group works pretty well, so unless you come up with
something that works as well or better, please keep this group going
and growing.

Thanks to all who make this such an amazing community.

..Valerie

[simonfj]

On Jun 30, 2:04 am, "Patricia Schlicht" <PSchli...@col.org> wrote:
> Good Morning!
>
> I would like to add a point to the discussions while we are at it and
> add another point of for discussion, which is the promotion of
> WikiEducator offsite
>
> 1.       How does the community feel about setting up working groups for
> the discussion of the establishment of social network accounts such as
> Facebook, Twitter etc.

Patricia, could we hold of for just a little longer on setting up a
social network site. In no way am I trying to hold anyone back from
doing what they feel must be done. It's just that there is a lot of
discussion coming to a head in various NREN's now and I'm hoping WE
can, as one of the most progressive global communities, lend our
passions and skills to helping their National centric engineers
understand how a global "peer commons" environment might look and
operate, so they can reconfigure their networks to support us.edu (or
us.ac.uk or us.edu.nz, etc) and other communities who use a different
tool as a starting point (i,e, not a wiki)

There's a little conference over in Australia next week which has a
virtual version.http://www.questnet.net.au/questnet2009/
If anyone would like to participate, it would really help give some
direction to that 'experiment' I mentioned before. That said, I always
promote WE as example of where teachers/facilitators with a "forward
looking disposition" are congregating (as quietly as possible). If you
log in over at questnet, you'll see what i mean.

This is all to do with (from an engineering perspective) trying to
figure out the difference between clouds and grids and how they be
made sustainable, which I don't want to bore WE's community members
with. But the aim of it is moving to a new (global) institution for
learning, as wayne writes about so well. For that to be acheivable we
just need to share a little understanding of each profession's
perspective, and find out what their communities have in common.

>
> 2.       Now that we will shortly arrive at a new stage of promoting
> WikiEducator, how should this be done.

I'd really be interested in what other communties WE members are
registered with, and which initiatives give them the greatest hope.
For me its edna as an australian.edu community, 'taking it global' as
one for my younger global soul and me.edu.au as the initiative where i
can see some sense being made of things.

Promotion is something which communities used to do before the web was
invented and we all became overloaded with info and tools. "Inclusion"
is the description I'd use.

>
> 3.       Is it necessary and if yes, why or why not
>
> 4.        
>
> Any thoughts appreciated.

I think you're wonderful.
simon
>
> Cheers,
>
> Patricia
>

[Patricia Schlicht]

Dear Simon,

Thank you for your comments. I would like to clarify something. I wasn't asking the community if we should establish a working group for promoting WikiEducator. What I asked was if we should create a working group for the establishment of social network accounts. There is a difference. In the freedom movement, anybody can go and create an account using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, to name only two and the purpose is again to share and exchange information, be this for a specific purpose or just as friends. The choice is up to each one of us.

If you meant our online workshop that is forthcoming on July 3, at 6 pm, GMT (link on the main WE page) by asking "to hold on" than the answer unfortunately is that we cannot put the event on hold but there will be more opportunities for your group to see the WikiEducator community in action on several levels in the future.

If we can help you locally in any way, let me know by writing to Wayne or me directly.

Warmest,
Patricia

[Chris Harvey]

Hi Patricia,

I think that this is a good idea and use some of those services to
raise awareness of things I'm passionate about and things that I think
are important, sometimes it also helps promote my own site.

This may seem odd but a while ago I was looking on twitter/identi.ca
and noticed there was no wikieducator account so I registered accounts
on both those sites, pretty much to reserve the name.

To be honest I was surprised that it didn't already exist and worried
that account name would get taken by someone else. Some people will
stay up all night to get a name they like, just look at downes with
facebook.

I'm not sure if wikieducator is trademarked or not, that might be
another way to get the name you want.

In a way Ive been waiting for someone to bring this up so I should
probably try to help out.

Warm Regards
Chris Harvey
http://twitter.com/gnuchris

[Jim Tittsler]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 16:37, Chris Harvey<gnuc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This may seem odd but a while ago I was looking on twitter/identi.ca
> and noticed there was no wikieducator account so I registered accounts
> on both those sites, pretty much to reserve the name.

I also created a WikiEducator group on identi.ca about a week ago:
http://identi.ca/group/wikieducator

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Chris,
I was going to start a WikiEducator twitter name for the community but found someone had already taken the name. I presumed it was Wayne. Twitter is an excellent way to communicate. I would love to see it activated.
Thank you.
Warm wishes,

Nellie Deutsch
http://www.nelliemuller.com
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction

Get ready for CO10: http://connecting-online.ning.com/

Share your teaching experiences: http://www.wikieducator.org/Etnirag_Online_Journal

[Patricia Schlicht]

Hi there,

This is exactly one of the reasons why we decided to raise the question, if we should look at a working group for the establishment of social network sites for WikiEducator. You want to avoid creating too many of the same clusters. Thank you both very much for helping with this.

We have two WikiEducator accounts on Facebook and are looking to combine these two into one account. One was established as Group by Wayne and has 290+ members and the second was established by me recently with 33+ members. Wayne and I were discussing it a while ago and I am yet to find out how to do this. Currently I am maintaining and posting on both

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5373599268&ref=mf

http://www.facebook.com/pages/WikiEducator/84274419299?ref=ts

Wayne liked the second link because it has WikiEducator in its name, which brought up the issue of perhaps moving the first list to the second one.

How do people feel about this? Comments appreciated

Cheers,

Patricia

-----Original Message-----
From: wikied...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wikied...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jim Tittsler
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 9:46 PM
To: wikied...@googlegroups.com

[Patricia Schlicht]

Hi there,

 

Wayne has an established account on Twitter as OER Foundation. Maybe we ought to discuss how we are going to combine WikiEducator with the OER Foundation or if we should leave it separately?

 

Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg

 

Cheers,

Patricia

 

---

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Nellie --

This time I'm not the guilty party ;-) and didn't set up the WikiEducator username on Twitter. Somebody else has registered the account and I don't know who this is.  I've written to the Twitter support team asking whether they can follow up on this but obviously a challenge as user accounts are confidential.

However -- they must have some protocol in place where users set up accounts using the names legal entities.

Cheers
Wayne

2009/7/7 NELLIE DEUTSCH <nellie.mul...@gmail.com>

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Wayne,
I believe Jim Tittsler created a twitter account for WikiEducator.

Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
http://www.nelliemuller.com
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
Get ready for CO10: http://connecting-online.ning.com/
Share your teaching experiences: http://www.wikieducator.org/Etnirag_Online_Journal

[Barbara Dieu]

Hi Nellie and Wayne,
You can always open an account for Wikieducator at Identica, which is
less crowded (so less noise) and open source. It retweets to Twitter.
http://identi.ca/
Warm regards from Brazil,
Bee

--
Barbara Dieu
http://barbaradieu.com
http://beespace.net

[Gladys Gahona]

Hello,

I propose to create a WE page cointaining a list of WikiEducator registration info in social networks and other instances; any member or the Council can manage it.

Cheers

2009/7/7 NELLIE DEUTSCH <nellie.mul...@gmail.com>

--
Gladys Gahona
Private Teacher (Math, Physics, Chemistry) Secondary & Tertiary grades.
http://www.gladysgahona.com
http://storytelling-cultures.ning.com
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Chela5808
Skype:chela5808

[NELLIE DEUTSCH]

Hi Bee,
Great advice, but I believe that's been done by Jim.

Warm wishes,
Nellie Deutsch
http://www.nelliemuller.com
Doctoral Student
Educational Leadership
Curriculum and Instruction
Get ready for CO10: http://connecting-online.ning.com/
Share your teaching experiences: http://www.wikieducator.org/Etnirag_Online_Journal

[Patricia Schlicht]

Great suggestion, Gladys

 

Here it is

 

http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Social_Networks

 

Cheers

 

---

[Chris Harvey]

Maybe I wasnt clear enough.

I made accounts using name wikieducator on twitter and identi.ca.

As you can imagine they are popular key words.

Is Wikieducator trademaked? If the term is trademarked you can force
people to give up the username, I think thats what scobilizer did on
identi.ca.

Warm Regards
Chris Harvey