Yes, I think that is a good idea.. what do we call them? Wikifairies and Wikigardeners.
Wayne, could you coordinate a volunteer base for a specified period, say 1 month. For 1 month we would have a number of volunteers who would tend to a list of pages nominated for fancying up. How we generate that list could be in a number of ways, but maybe we should consider the benefits this volunteer group bring in this short space of time... Imagine Randy's contact in Hawaii. She puts up a couple of pages and within an hour of doing so someone comes in and edits something for the better. Randy's contact would no doubt be impressed. I know, I have seen the impression on a teacher when Brent and Wayne have come in with the odd edit and improvement. But we need to coordinate the interventions on Randy's contact's page so that it is sustained and helpful all the way through. I would be certain after that, that the person would be so impressed by the help that they would be running down the corridors banging on faculty doors to come and see :) So how do we sustain it? Paying people to do this obviously works.. but I wonder how many people would be willing to volunteer for a month. I reckon we would need about 5 people each month to make a suitable impression across the whole community. But what's in it for the volunteers? Perhaps they get status? Perhaps we could portfolio their volunteer efforts and then list them as guns for hire? I think that would be a good reward. People who have done their time as volunteers get listed somewhere where people with money can browse their work and contact them with offers of paid work helping to get their wiki pages right... we have about 3 designers here who are starting to get familiar with MediaWiki, and who might be willing to do some volunteer time in return for promotion of their commercial services in WIkieducator On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:07 AM, mackiwg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi David, > > I know exactly what you mean -- tweaking the layout so that it looks > presentable. With me, I spend too much time trying to get that perfect > look and feel -- then I pop over to a colleague who one of the newer > wide screen displays -- and then things don't quite look the same :-). > > It comes with the territory of social networking. The upside is that > faculty and lecturers who struggle a little with the syntax and layout > acquire a new life skill to participate more fully in our connected > world. That said, its a tall ask for educators who are already > overloaded. > > In addition to some of the solutions and ideas we've already > discussed, I wondering whether it would be possible to trial a > division of labour strategy for the layout and tidying up of content. > This is something DE institutions have done very successfully. The > idea is to assign the visual layout and fixing of syntax to someone > who has better skills in this area, saving time for lecturers to focus > on their content expertise. > > Would it be possible to trial using student help for the layout etc on > a small pilot to assess whether this is a cost effective strategy? > > Any solutions Otago come up with will be solutions of the rest of the > world starting out on this bold path. > > Just a thought ... > Wayne > > > > > > > On Apr 30, 1:06 am, "David McQuillan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Isn't it your job to "live in a dream world"? > > And also most of ours I guess. > > The trick is to make the dreams concrete. :-) > > > > I like the idea of offline editing mainly because of lag-times. The NZ > network is not the fastest. > > > > One of the other reasons I'm keen on a WYSIWYG interface is that I find > that when I'm editing a page in WikiEd, I commonly think that I've got the > editing all sorted out in wiki-media-text, but then when I have a look at > how it displays it's clear that I need to make some changes. It usually > takes me a few saves before it's formatted in the way that I'd like it to > be. Maybe that's just me? > > > > D > > > > >>> mackiwg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 04/30/08 4:59 PM >>> > > > > Hi David -- > > > > I agree the current OO implementation is not perfect, and whatever > > improvements we can figure out will still need some training support > > at the local level. > > > > What I have in mind is a more of a future solution -- that is adapting > > and refining OO so that we don't need much tweaking after the copy & > > paste. WE have a unique advantage -- first hand experience in working > > with lecturers who may not be well versed in these emerging > > technologies. In many respects we are global pioneers -- so I'm > > relying on your experiences -- good and bad to help us build the > > future. > > > > I would love to see an offline editing solution for WE -- perhaps we > > can kill two birds with one stone ... > > > > I suppose I'm living in a dream world --- but always willing to try > > and make the future happen :-) > > > > So I'd like to test and pilot alternatives the OO route and the FCK > > editor route. Lets take an informed decision on what we learn from our > > action research approach. > > > > Cheers > > Wayne > > > -- -- Leigh Blackall +64(0)21736539 skype - leigh_blackall SL - Leroy Goalpost http://learnonline.wordpress.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. 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