[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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? -=Steve=- -- Stephen H. Foerster http://wikieducator.org/steve --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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 -- 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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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 On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Steve Foerster st...@hiresteve.comwrote: 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 -- 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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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=- --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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 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, 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 --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
[WikiEducator] Re: WikiEducator needs to keep the focus
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: --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ 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 wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
