Hi Leigh, On Jan 9, 4:59 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Yes, I think it is reasonable to ask for contributions.. but some > institutions will have difficulty with anything that looks like a donation.. > simply because their accounts may not have a field that makes that possible.
COL funds the hosting of WE -- no problems here and we're not chasing funding for the hosting of WikiEducator. Just to be clear here <smile>. Just a little open strategic thinking about the future -- that is creative ways in which our community can do more in working towards becoming a strong sustainable project. No harm in us targeting to become the best educational wiki on the planet! Funding for future software developments or urgent refinements needed for educational wikis is unlikely to be funded by COL -- its not our core business. Also, wouldn't it be great to have one or two full time techies dedicated to the WE project? I wasn't thinking about a donation system -- but rather a way for institutions to take ownership and push the wiki development agenda forward in education. Say for example a non-profit entity or foundation where the members are education institutions, international agencies etc. They form a governing body of sorts and determine priorities, needs etc on how the collective pool of funding is spent. Not unlike the OpenCourseware Consortium or the Sakai Partners initiative where institutions become members of the foundation on the basis of an annual fee. Let's call this the WE Foundation. I'm not sure that a WE fee for service model is appropriate for the main site or core of the project. That said -- I think that corporate services around free content should be encouraged and promoted -- for example a wikieducator.com site where for example, publishers could offer to publish books from free content on WE, trainers and learning designers could offer professional development services using WE content, Mediawiki code developers could offer their services, Authors who donate books as free content could potentially earn royalities if the books are published (like lulu.com) etc. This could operate on the lines of the Moodle partners initiative. There could be a small fee, eg 10% or 15% of revenue generated from wikieducator.com listed services -- which go back costs of technical infrastructure. However -- I think the commercial services model is a separate function from the WE Foundation idea. Personally - I think that its important to keep the "intellectual commons" free. It's the heart of the project -- constrain the heart -- and the body starts to deteriorate. Any thoughts? Wayne --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
