Wikiotics Monthly Update
Jim Garrison
This is the first of what I plan to be a monthly update on progress
and happenings in the Wikiotics project. Hopefully it will help keep
everyone involved aware of the work that others are doing. If you
have anything to add, just reply-to-all on this email. Or, in the
future, send me an email by the end of any given month and I will
include it in the next update.
Audio in lessons
================
January marked the arrival of audio in picture-choice lessons. Ian
has added audio phrases to half the frames in the introductory English
lesson at <http://alpha.wikiotics.org/en/Introduction>. You will
only hear audio if you are using a browser that supports the HTML5
<audio> element. Also, if you wish to add audio to lessons, it must
be recorded in Ogg vorbis format, and you must be using a browser that
supports the File API (such as Firefox 3.6+ or Chromium 8+).
Lesson building
===============
We still need more lessons, both in English and in other languages.
(I particularly advocate the building of English lessons, as this
allows people to translate to other languages easily, since most
people building lessons on Wikiotics at this point will know at least
some English. Indeed, I was very happy to wake up one day late in
December to realize that a user named 'rouklia' had translated all of
the existing English lessons to Greek :).) My plan lately has been to
start with one goal the picture-choice lesson format is specifically
good at: helping to build vocabulary of nouns that are easily
visualized. Inspired by the page at
<http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Basic_English_picture_wordlist>,
I have been working on building a lesson that incorporates many
'picturable' English nouns. My work (in progress) is available at
<http://alpha.wikiotics.org/user/garrison/english_words>. Feel free
to fork and improve this lesson if you wish.
SCALE
=====
Ian and I will be exhibiting at SCALE 9x in Los Angeles, which takes
place on February 26 and 27 this year. We will have a machine or two
set up to demo the language lessons we have built so far, and we hope
to try to raise awareness about the project. If you are around,
please stop by. More information is available at
<http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale9x/>.
Development
===========
The main goal for development in the near future is to improve the
experience of editing lessons. Hopefully some of this work will be
ready by the time we exhibit at SCALE.
Building community
==================
Our of our major challenges is to build a community of volunteers who
will help us build lessons and the software that supports the site.
With this in mind, I pass on an excellent article recently discussed
on the FLOSS-Foundations mailing list, which includes much good
advice. Although it focuses on software contributors, I think the
points mentioned hold true for any contributors to a project:
<http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/open-source-community-simplified/>
$2 billion available for CC-licensed education resources
========================================================
Creative Commons recently announced that the U.S. government will
grant $2 billion toward the development of career training programs in
community colleges. The government is also requiring all new learning
materials made under the grants to be available under CC-BY. There's
probably no /direct/ way we can get involved in this action, but it is
a good thing to be aware of, particularly if we can get involved with
language teachers at eligible institutions. I have not had much time
to look into the details of the program myself, but more information
is available in a blog post from CC at
<http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/26100>.
Keeping in touch
================
The best way to keep in touch with us is the visit the #wikiotics room
on the FreeNode chat network. To join, point any modern web browser
to <http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikiotics>. Recent changes
to the wiki (including lessons) are listed at
<http://alpha.wikiotics.org/special/recent_changes>. The software
development timeline is located at <http://code.ductus.us/timeline>.
-- garrison
Matthew Curinga
I want to update this list on some plans for Wikiotics that we are
undertaking here in New York this spring. I have been working with Ian
to find partners to develop and test Wikiotics in real language learning
settings.
To this end, my university (Adelphi) has given us a small grant to
support this research. The goal of the research, broadly, is to see if
Wikiotics helps people learn a new language. More specifically, we will
be studying the circumstances where Wikiotics works well, and looking
for things to improve.
The grant will support two research assistants, one will be working on
software development and technical support for the project and the other
will have a background in teaching and language instruction. The
language RA will be creating content on Wikiotics, developing a
curriculum with it, and working with language learners so they can
author Wikiotics content as well.
The learners in the trials are Spanish-speaking adults who are recent
immigrants to the New York area. We are partnering with a local
community center that already offers language instruction and computer
classes.
At the end of the project, we should have:
1) list of bug reports
2) field support for new features and priorities
3) initial research to support larger grant applications
4) data to present at conferences so that we can spread the word about
Wikiotics
5) high quality content on Wikiotics
If you are interested in finding out more, or helping out, give me a
shout. I'll try to be in #wikiotics when I'm working on the project.
Best.
Matt
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Matthew X. Curinga, Ed.D
Assistant Professor Educational Technology
Ruth S. Ammon School of Education
Adelphi University
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
mcur...@adelphi.edu
http://matt.curinga.com
Jim Garrison
with me. I can probably make their lives easier and more productive,
whether they are building software or building lessons.
- Jim