Hi everyone, For sometime our Community has requested that we implement a WYSIWYG editor in WikiEducator. Many teachers and educators say that wiki text is a barrier to participation. WikiEducator is keen to respond to these requests.
To date, we've been holding back on implementing rich text editing for two reasons: - Maturity of the WYSIWYG technology (Most notably issues with templates and large content pages) - A reliable funding source to implement the refinements that will be necessary for an educational wiki The MediaWiki+FCKeditor project has matured considerably over the last 2 years and we believe that it is now feasible to install WYSIWYG editing for WikiEducator. Also, with funding support from the New Zealand Ministry of Education we are now in a position to start work on the implementation of refinements that will be required for educators (for example, pull down menus for our pedagogical templates incorporating text boxes for the different parameters for these templates). We need to cater for two kinds of users: 1) Those (like myself ;-) ) who prefer wiki syntax to rich text editing and (2) those users who would prefer using a WYSIWYG environment. Fortunately -- the FCKeditor enables users to make the choice. Even within the FCKeditor -- there is an option to edit using wiki text. NOTE: Experienced WikiEducators can continue to edit in the usual way -- They will NOT be required to switch over to Rich Text Editing. I propose that we use a phased approach: - *Phase 1*: Install the FCKeditor WYSIWYG editor as an optional user preference. The editor works well for the majority of editing functions, however the implementation for templates is not ideal and could be confusing for newbies. That said, newbies do not typically start using templates until they are more experienced and experienced editor will know how to use templates should they choose to use the RTE option. Therefore, I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in holding back on the implementation until we get a better user interface for editing templates. There will be a few pages in WikiEducator where the rich text editor will not work effectively -- for example pages which are largely rendered through templates. On these pages we will turn-off RTE editing. These pages are maintained by experienced editors -- so there shouldn't be any issues in maintaining these pages. During Phase 1, there is a possibility that we will not have WYSIWYG capability for talk pages or the template namespace. - *Phase 2*: Continue with development work regarding the refinements we need for an educational wiki. These enhancements will be released once tested and reliable at a later stage during the project. WikiEducators can test how WYSIWYG editing works using the MediaWiki+FCKeditor project. Create an account and test the editor using the sandbox on this wiki: http://mediawiki.fckeditor.net/Sandbox Please try this out and let us know what you think. Thoughts and suggestions are welcome! I think that this is an important and valuable step for WikiEducator and that we should be bold and move forward with the suggestion. Cheers Wayne -- 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] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
