Hi Leo, 2010/1/21 Wong Leo <[email protected]>
> > Can we think of this question from another perspective , what is the > diffeernce between wikipedia and wikieducator ? > A very relevant question -- particularly with reference to thinking about what distinguishes educational materials from other digital resources. I'd like to add a few additional reflections which I think are important. WikiEducator was not established in competition to any of the WikiMedia foundation or other open content projects (eg Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Connexions, OCW etc). Rather, I see our community working and collaborating with the free culture movement in widening and diversifying access to open content for the benefit of society. WikiEducator is first and foremost a community of educators. More than 70% of our members are teachers, lecturers or trainers working in the formal education sector --- as a result, -- WE have established a distinctive niche in the international open content arena. With reference to your question on the difference between WikiEducator and other projects, when developing the strategic plans for the OER Foundation we took a careful look at what distinguishes the WE project. See for example: http://www.wikieducator.org/OERF:Strategy#Product_differentiation Their are distinctive differences most notably: 1) how our project is organised (that is we are a community of educators developing a wide range of different content objects rather than structuring our project in terms of the types of content produced, eg encyclopaedia articles, books etc) and 2) Our community, i.e. the profile of the internet population our site attracts when compared to other projects. Also, a very good example highlighting that there are many types of content (eg photos, News paper articles, fictional books etc.), that were not primary developed for education purposes -- however, when used in the context of an educational situation they do become educational resources. So for example, a teacher could re-contextualise and re-use a wikipedia article for a lesson by adapting the resource for the age level of the students or selecting those components of an encyclopaedia article which map to the particular curriculum. It would be great to see WikiEducators experimenting with the adaptation and remix of Wikipedia articles as lesson plans or teaching materials for specific curricula. We're keen to try this under the OERNZ project here in New Zealand. 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 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg 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]
