Hi Maria, Really appreciate your reflections on the initial barriers (real or perceived) relating to WYSIWYG editing. I suspect that once we implement Rich Text Editing in WikiEducator we'll see our community grow even more :-). In my view technology should not be a barrier to collaboration.
The data we have with reference to wiki skills and training is interesting: - 45% of all educators who register for voluntary training through the Learning4Content training initiative achieve a wiki certification. - 62% of these educators achieve the levels of competence required for developing OER in the Mediawiki environment. - 64% of our users confirm that WikiEducator is the first wiki account they have created - 70% of our users confirm that they have joined wikieducator to learn wiki skills and to develop OER. You can read the full report on the L4C project here: http://wikieducator.org/images/a/ac/L4C_Report_Aug09.pdf When thinking about community and OER productivity, the website stats are also interesting. In the case of Curriki the three month average on Alexa records 2.14 page views per users spending 2.9 minutes on the site. In the case of WikiEducator we have recorded a three month average of 8 page views per user and an average of 21.8 minutes on the site. I suppose you could argue that the wiki syntax requires users to spend more time on WE :-). I'm not sure whether I agree with the analysis that projects involving large numbers of people for quick (wiki-wiki?) collaboration would be more successful using other platforms. Wikipedia is a case in point. Again, this suggests that community is the foundation which contributes to the success of open colloborative projects. Members care about their neighbourhood and go out of their way to help new members. The good news is that we know that the wiki model scales rather well for community support. As the community grows -- the more people available to help support the neighbourhood :-) Cheers Wayne 2009/9/6 Maria Droujkova <[email protected]> > I mostly work with homeschooled parents and teachers from private or > charter schools in the US. My hypothesis is that because this crowd is > already spending a lot of energy on content and pedagogy innovations, they > want their technology to be invisible and super-easy. I have not tried to > reach out and recruit tech geeks specifically, but my population is already > only 5-7% of the general, so multiplying that by another 5% of early > adopters will leave me with a vanishing minority. > > Recently I recommended one of the most tech-savvy and adventurous of my > local homeschool group to take a WE course. Well, I sent it to the group, > the lady asked me about it and I confirmed the recommendation. She said the > amount of technical content, rather than pedagogy, was something she did not > expect and did not like. In her words: "I thought we would talk about > particular interesting ways to teach with wikis, student projects and the > like. But we talked about editing itself most of the time." She did begin > using a wiki for her next project with students, so overall the goal of > capacity increase can be said to be reached; but her pick was a WYSIWYG > platform, I believe. > > I recently had to choose a wiki for two of my math content development > projects, since my earlier platform development efforts are on hold. I would > love to do it on WE, because I love the community. But I tried WikiSpaces > and now Curriki, and the copy-paste embed of widgets plus WYSIWIG made the > decision for me. I don't see much community support on WikiSpaces (maybe I > don't know where to look). Both WikiEducator and Curriki offer individual > support for project organizers. What would happen if several hundred of > people I plan to invite all needed individual technical support at once? > This is the scenario I anticipate with any wiki syntax involved. > > My conclusion: WE is great for small, organic, person-by-person growth at > the moment. A project involving large numbers of people together for a quick > (wiki-wiki?) collaboration may find other platforms more inviting, unless > they are specifically here for the wiki syntax training. For my part, I > would like more potential group project leaders to focus on the growth of > WE, and that's why I am working on organizing a WE presentation for the Math > 2.0 interest group. > > Cheers, > Maria Droujkova > http://www.naturalmath.com > > Make math your own, to make your own math. > > > > > On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 5:23 AM, NELLIE DEUTSCH < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Paul, >> I have been working with K-12 teachers for over 30 years. I am always >> amazed by the ability of the Ministry of Education (Israel) to enforce >> innovations (including technology) irrespective of teachers' resistance, >> unions and other political groups. Educational policies and mandates seem to >> work. You may ask if this is a democratic way of doing things, but even the >> NCLB policy of 2001 was mandated in the US and is enforced in very >> undemocratic means. >> Warm wishes, >> Nellie Deutsch >> Sharing is Caring! >> >> > > > > -- 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 [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
