Hi Leigh, I would like to respond here, with comments embedded in your email - maybe the conversation here is about technology, and maybe still there are some process issues that we may have overlooked. Comments beginning in CAPS.
On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 1:20 AM, Leigh Blackall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think the difficulties I face have already been covered by David > McQuillin. > > You see, from CoL and WikiEd admin perspective, they only need 10% of the > world's teachers to engage for it to be sustainable. But, for Otago > Polytech, we need at least 10% of OUR teachers engaged for our efforts in > Wikied to be sustainable. THIS is an excellent point, which I value. From a strategic point of view, for WikiEd to achieve the critical mass it is looking for, it has to engage people in general, and the people at specific institutions so that they can use it for their own educational development purposes. When we have a partner on board, such as Otago, which is making such an 'investment' of its own people, time and resources....perhaps we ought to be thinking about how we can help Otago, and other institutions coming onboard, as to how to attract and engage that 10%. It is in our mutual interest....Your thoughts? > > > As yet, we have seen very little collaboration on Wikied. Neither the > wider network or our own local network has collaborated on resource > development or sharing to any siginificant measure. We have several > individual teachers using Wikied, but the promise of reduced workloads > through collaboration has not yet come. This is because we don't yet have > enough local or global people ready or willing to use the platform who are > also willing to work with our topics. If we did have more local people > working on Wikied then we know that collaboration on a local scale would be > effective. HOW many local people are we talking about here.....5, 10, 25? Is there a way to be strategic about this? In terms of reducing workload, where do you think the easiest 'wins' are....or the lowest-hanging fruit? If we can be supportive of Otago's situation, then perhaps that particular engagement solution can be leveraged in support of other institutions coming on board too... > > > Sadly, I am seeing a number of people I teach about Bogs and wikis > electing to use Wikispaces because they perceive it as easier for them AND > for the colleagues they need to convince to work the wiki way. RECENTLY, I used Wikispaces for a project in my Master's level course (we were a team in search of a solution). I used Wikispaces because I thought my team members wouldn't get the wiki thing....How wrong I was....and in fact, Wikispaces proved to be a dog, and we had trouble saving...at the end of the day, it was WikiEd that saved all of our work, where Wikispaces and my computer did not. As a teacher and learning designer, I know that when I give my colleagues and students a stretch goal, they rise to the challenge - when I expect less, I get less. WikiEd is about collaborative educational development and dynamic and energetic collaboration that you just can't get anywhere else. I've experienced it, and my thought is that maybe there's another way, or several ways for that matter to get this point across.... > > > If Wikied was as easy as Wikispaces, this drain would not be happening. > Wikied offers add free, peer sustained, educational focus. But, as Dave has > said, the difficulty to edit is too bigger barrier. Open Office might be a > solution, but then I would have to ask our IT Support to use and support > Open Office. As it is now, those who use OO have to install it themselves - > most don't use OO. > > It must be web based, it must be as easy as possible. > > I love the trad editing in MediaWiki. The fact that I know it means I can > easily participate on many many other MediaWiki projects. But, we can't > ignore that Wikispaces enjoys the biggest participation from teachers (for > better or for worse). We could, if we dropped our barrier, help bring those > teachers into MediaWiki and then pass them into Wikipedia et al. I AM not a techie, so I won't wade into the techie talk - I am interested in your replies, and of course anyone else who wants to weigh in about this...And yes, WikiEd is as much about building our Community as it is about getting better enabling technology. - Randy > > > Hope that explains our local situation. > > > On Wed, Apr 30, 2008 at 12:19 PM, mackiwg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > Leigh and (other RTE friends) > > > > Late May early June we will start with the implementation of a major > > overall of our current server infrastructure. > > > > Basically the thinking is to set-up two servers (with failover > > capability) and have the third server helping out with processing > > power on the generation of pdfs but also a test bed for things like > > the FCK editor. What I'm saying is that we will certainly test the > > technology and see if it works for us -- but may take a little time. > > > > Given the large distance education community that uses WE -- dropping > > the pedagogical templates is like taking one step forward to make > > initial editing easier, and two steps back on pedagogy for > > asynchronous learning. > > > > I'm also thinking about a left brain solution -- We may be able to do > > a few smart tricks using Open Office and have the best of two worlds. > > The ability to work in a word processing environment and easily upload > > content to WE, including the pedagogical templates plus the ability to > > work off line. That said -- this is speculative at this stage -- but > > have been playing with a few tweaks using Open Office macros and Jim's > > wizardry in customising the mediawiki XML filter that OO uses for the > > export. It should be too hard to have a "save as WE" option that does > > an ftp thing to the server, > > > > Leigh -- for a moment, lets play pretend. Assuming rich text editing > > is sorted, for example, in the next month. How would your life and > > work be different? > > > > Lets see how best to solve the challenges -- understanding the > > difficulties you face will help us choose the right strategy for the > > long term. > > > > Cheers > > Wayne > > > > > > > > On Apr 29, 4:26 pm, "Randy Fisher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > What seems to be clear here, is that it's only a matter of time before > > an > > > easier-to-use GUI becomes available to WikiEd. And, yes, it will help > > grow > > > our community. > > > > > > It seems to me though, better and more useable technology is only part > > of > > > the equation - reaching out to others in other communities (the survey > > > results give an indication of appopriate folks) is just as important > > to > > > making the WE value proposition scalable and sustainable. > > > > > > - Randy > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM, mackiwg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > I had a chat with Erik a week or three ago -- I understand that FCK > > > > have really made excellent progress. > > > > > > > I think that there are still issues on how best to integrate our > > > > pedagogical templates -- but we should certainly watch the space. > > > > > > > Cheers > > > > W > > > > > > > On Apr 29, 3:52 pm, "Leigh Blackall" <leighblack...@'gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > > > Apparently the new version of FCK works well on MediaWiki.. anyone > > know > > > > > better? > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > -- > > > > > Leigh Blackall > > > > > +64(0)21736539 > > > > > skype - leigh_blackall > > > > > SL - Leroy Goalposthttp://learnonline.wordpress.com > > > > > > -- > > > ________________ > > > Randy Fisher - Improving Performance in Ecosystems - with Measurable > > Resultshttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Wikirandy > > > > > > + 1 604.684.2275 > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > Skype: wikirandy > > > > > > > -- > -- > Leigh Blackall > +64(0)21736539 > skype - leigh_blackall > SL - Leroy Goalpost > http://learnonline.wordpress.com > > > -- ________________ Randy Fisher - Improving Performance in Ecosystems - with Measurable Results http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Wikirandy + 1 604.684.2275 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.hirerandy.com Skype: wikirandy --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. 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