My apologies to all for coming into this so late; my inbox this week looks like someone set off an email bomb!
On the whole, I agree that some measure must be taken to inform readers and members of the authors' intent for collaboration. It gets me frustrated when I see that, despite the myriad possibilities of the wiki, we still seem to come so short of what it is we want to do. I almost think it requires a staff PHP/MySQL programmer to really attain. :P And then I get even more frustrated when I see how much there really is yet to do! If anybody has seen my to do list, well, it's already a year's worth of work on it, and I'm sure to add more by the end of that year. Anyway, my first question is whether the use of namespaces has been taken into consideration. Namespaces are used to inform the reader of many things, including how the page is meant to be used, who wrote the page, and what the page may be involved with. The Mediawiki namespace is for pages that control the behaviour of the wiki software, and are transcluded into the basic wiki structure. The WikiEducator namespace is for describing the purpose of the wiki and the way in which it achieves that purpose (about, guidelines, policies...). The Help namespace is for pages that assist readers and members in using and understanding the wiki (tutorials, glossary...). The User namespace identifies pages that are written by the user under which they are filed and suggests that only the author is invited to edit them. Do you think there is a way we could say the things we are talking about in this topic by using namespaces? Jesse http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Jesse_Groppi skype: jesse.groppi On 20/10/2009 02:16, Wayne Mackintosh wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > WE is a unique educational wiki project in many respects. We are > different, for example, from Wikipedia in the sense that our > collaboration is not focused on developing an objective encyclopedia > entry resulting from the micro-contributions of a large number of > editors. At the same time, we benefit from the advantages associated > with mass collaboration, for example shared training materials. > > Moreover, WE has organised itself as a community of educators working > on a wide range of different OER artifacts, for example: open > textbooks, OER courses for online teaching, learning activities based > on external resources, lessons, articles and research papers, > handouts, glossary projects for use as a reference resource, the > establishment of project or community nodes, the development of > funding proposals as free content etc. Other wiki projects within the > OER landscape have organised themselves around the nature of the > objects being produced, for instance: Encyclopedia articles in the > case of Wikipedia <http://www.en.wikipedia.org/> or books in the case > of Wikibooks <http://www.en.wikibooks.org/> . > > Therefore we need to think creatively about how our community develops > procedures to support the attainment of our individual and collective > aims, while respecting the intent of the original creators. For example: > > * There are institutions which develop courses on WikiEducator > which are not intended for collaborative authoring due to local > curriculum requirements. > * There are individuals who develop materials on WikiEducator > which they would like to make available for others to create > derivative works, but would prefer not to have other educators > edit their materials. > * There are many projects in WikiEducator which are seeking wide > collaboration and contributions from the community. > > So the question is: How do we support and respect educator > contributions in WE given the different intentions of our individual > contributions? > > Valerie has alerted my attention to this important topic (see: > http://wikieducator.org/Thread:Ownership,_status,_granularity_and_category_(3) > > <http://wikieducator.org/Thread:Ownership,_status,_granularity_and_category_%283%29> > > ) -- Thanks Valerie. So what is the best way to signify intent and > "ownership" of OER materials in WikiEducator. How do we communicate > and respect a contributor's intention where they do not want > collaborative authoring and participation on their OER resources? If > an educator finds a valuable resource they want to use and improve -- > can they edit and change the resource without creating problems for > the original authors resulting from their modifications? > > Clearly we need a mechanism to visually communicate the intent of the > creator to prospective editors. We need a messaging system which says, > for instance: > > * I need help and welcome WikiEducators to collaborate, edit and > improve this resource, or > * I have no problems if you copy this resource and modify for your > own purposes -- but will appreciate if you don't make changes > because I'm using this in my course, or > * I don't mind editorial improvements but don't want editors to > make substantive changes to my OER --- suggestions and comments > are welcome on the corresponding talk page. > > It seems to me that we need a template or content infobox which > clearly communicates the intent of the original OER creator in terms > of "permissible" contributions and/or restrictions with regard to > community edits. > > Thoughts? Are there any other intents than those listed above? > > You gotta love the WikiEducator project -- we're figuring out > solutions that work for education. We're pioneering the future that > has already happened :-). > > 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 <http://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] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
