On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 07:49 -0500, Maria Droujkova wrote: > Wayne, what does "becoming an independent project" mean? Independent > from what? Maybe a brief WE history lesson would help me understand > what you just announced!
Hi Maria, Founded in 2006, WikiEducator has been funded as an official project of the Commonwealth of Learning (http://www.col.org/resources/knowServices/Pages/wikieducator.aspx ) as one of its activities in the eLearning portfolio in the current three-year plan. Due to our phenomenal growth and success, WE has outgrown its founding home and will become an independent and autonomous project. This holds numerous advantages for our community including, for example, the ability to extend language localisations beyond the official languages of the Commonwealth and to invest in strategic software developments that are necessary for educational projects of this nature. The official announcement was made on 24 September 2008, and I include a copy of the Communique in the text of this email below for convenience. The Commonwealth of Learning has agreed to contribute to the funding of our technical infrastructure (servers, hosting services etc.) subject to the establishment of an appropriate institution. To this end the OER Foundation, a non-profit entity is being registered to administer funding for the project. Lots of exciting things to talk about and look forward to community participation in planning our collective futures so that we can turn tomorrow's promise for OER into today's reality! On a personal level, I will be continuing with my role in the project with the added advantage that I can now dedicate ALL of my time to the WE community :-) Cheers Wayne Community Communique: Wednesday 24 September, PST Wayne Mackintosh, founder of the WikiEducator project and recently elected member of the WikiEducator Community Council will deliver the opening keynote entitled: WikiEducator: Delivering on the OER Promise at this year's Open Education conference in Logan, Utah. The WikiEducator Community has become an international exemplar for sustainable OER futures demonstrating the power of open communities collaborating at the heart of the educational endeavour: sharing knowledge freely. Wayne will report on the phenomenal growth and international success of the open-source WikiEducator project, and highlight the organizational dynamics and workings of our vibrant and growing WE Community. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary celebrations of "Open Content", Wayne will announce plans for the WE project to expand its collaborative open education activities, and achieve greater scalability and sustainability in the international arena A New Era of Growth and Opportunity As of May 1, 2009, WikiEducator will be headquarterd at the new International Centre for Open Education, at Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, New Zealand. Dr. Wayne Mackintosh will assume an executive role as the Founding Director of the International Centre for Open Education, and continue his groundbreaking work in leading the WikiEducator project, on a full-time basis. As a result, WikiEducator will be able to expand its focus beyond the Commonwealth countries to support multiple language wiki installations. It will also be able to secure the funding necessary to invest in strategic software development features including, for example, the implementation of rich text editing and improving technical interoperability among different OER projects. WikiEducator is deeply grateful for the commitment, resources and support of the Commonwealth of Learning, in establishing and incubating the WE project to its current level of success. About Otago Polytechnic As a global leader in the OER movement, Otago Polytechnic was the first tertiary education institution in the world to implement an OER-friendly intellectual property policy which defaults to a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). All open education content on WikiEducator is CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. About the Commonwealth of Learning The Commonwealth of Learning (COL), headquarterd in Vancouver, Canada is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. Contact: Dr Wayne Mackintosh Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy Commonwealth of Learning 1055 West Hastings Street, Suite 1200 Vancouver, BC V6E2E9 Canada Tel: +1 604 775 8261 www.wikieducator.org www.col.org --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
