Author: dave

Well…

well well…

The worldbridges server died. Long live the worldbridges server. We lost everything. No backups. All 125 websites, all the blog posts, content, forum posts, audio… everything. We just had the stuff we had scattered on our computers. I spent that whole of Monday morning mourning all the work we’ve done over the last few years… thinking about the nine years of work for Jeff. And every twenty minutes or so i thought of another person, someone with a course on the server, or with their personal website, a band or whatever, and i felt worse. So much good stuff gone.

One of the most personal losses for me was this blog. I was devastated. The only consistent writing i’ve ever done. The last six months of my practice recorded and lost. All the incoming links everything gone. And then i found the wonder of google cache.

First – back up your system. right now. i’m not kidding. go back it up. you can lose everything too. back it up!

Second – after ignoring my advice and losing (or being close to it, Ewan you know who you are) go to google and put in site:davecormier.com and click on the little cache buttons underneath the entries.

Third – spend a very long time copy and pasting.

voila – a blog ressurected.

I’m sorry if some of you just got 43 posts from the feed. I am incredibly sorry to any and all of our people who lost work, i wish there was more i could do. I wish you all good luck with your stuff…

cheers.

February 19th, 2006 It’s been a tough year for blogging. I’ll spare you fine people the details, suffice it to say, that i’ve got a few things that i’m trying to get to. I’ll try and do a wrap up of a few projects this week, and get some help to a few long suffering members, but for today, i wanna talk about my working conference.

A half-hundred times over the last eight months that i’ve been priveledged enough to be a member of the edtechtalk team, the conversation of how we would teach a new media course to educators has come up… i mean, not just to educators, but to anyone really. What would you focus on? Learning objectives? style, format… you name it. The thought of how to collect all this valuable information from some 100 hours of audio crossed my mind for about two seconds before i realized that there was no way i would do it.

WHO HAS THE TIME?

And that’s the point. Each member of this community, given a couple of weeks, could put together a reasonable, if not awesome, new media curriculum. The problem is that each one of us is involved in our family lives, our projects, day jobs, blogs… whatever. So what I’m proposing is that we all get together and write a starting point. Not just one single position, but a conglomerate of positions on what a new media curriculum for training teachers would look like. I propose that we all get together for as much time as we have to spare, say at least an hour and up to several hours, on one day, and put together a starting point that everyone can work from.

This is my little intro from the prep-wiki on edtechtalk.

March 12th –> Online at Edtechtalk.

This is a plan for a mass curriculum project. Dave is going to post his work as a starting point, but everyone else is free to take part or all of the curriculum and create their own version or strand. What we’re hoping to get is not one curriculum, where we’ve all had to concede things that are important to us in order to find consensus, but MANY different curricula that are all better for having been made alongside the others.

The plan… hmmm… yes we need one of these. i have some ideas, and have gotten some pretty good advice so far. i’ll try and distill it and put it in. Feel free to drop your own ideas in here as well… it is a wiki.

So, if you’re interested, go on over and add your name, and add your thoughts on the idea. Whatever gets created will be offered up to the community free of anything. It really will be a community project. I want to come out with something that someone could use, even the next day. Given enough people, and the right organization, we could make something really cool happen. Maybe, if we’re lucky, create a seminal document that people could work from… Sounds like a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon…

oh. and the other reason i want to do an online conference… I was jealous of the people at the Northern Voice Conference… that just sounded too cool.

wow. what a week. I’ve been talking to all kinds of cool people over the last week, and have been spending pretty much every waking hour working on either the wikitext project or on the project at my university. The time has come, I think, for a model of where the wikitextbook project could go. There are several different threads at the moment, but I’m just going to focus on the one that answers our original question, and that is, “can a wikitextbook replace textbooks in K-12 classrooms?” This isn’t meant to be a business plan… but a blog post on where I think we should go, it will range far and wide… which might not surprise those who’ve been here before

Thus far the project has been an excellent experience in connective learning. We’ve talked to many different people across different fields and have identified some needs, worked through some guidelines and posited a variety of solutions. The main commentary that i’ve been hearing since the last episode is ‘now it’s time for a plan.’ So, here is a draft proposal.

Ensuring a need – Checking the field
The plan that we are following over the next few weeks is to bring in as much experience as possible to make sure that the wikitextbook project isn’t already being done somewhere else. We have not interest in recreating the wheel. I think that we are doing something different than the two other major instances of wiki textbook projects; wikibooks and wikitextbooks.

building a team – a business and a leader
There are two key members of a preliminary team that are needed in order to get the project started. A person experienced in starting open source projects to write a solid business plan, and a project leader with experience with the software and the community, and, most importantly, considers themselves an educator.

A need for real curriculum – finding starting content
According to bud the thing we really need to do is get some curriculum together. I, to some degree, agree. It could take several months to write the necessary curriculum to fill a wikitextbook, even if the intent were only to create a proof of concept. There are several half-full wiki projects out there, and one of the main criticism that mainstream educators have of them is that they are incomplete.

The kind of group I would like to approach would be the people that Sean is working with. Take a look at Sean’s situation. He has curriculum, needs to constantly update it, and runs into problems with paper publishing. He, and I’m sure many people like him, have an established curriculum and need some expertise and a plan to allow them to deal with their issues. I think that this would be an excellent avenue to go down in order to put together a proof of concept.

Setting up the wiki – structural design
While it is necessary to adapt any curriculum to a wiki environment, having something to work with at the beginning would make it much easier to structure the wiki-environment. Some initial thoughts. There needs to be at least two levels (probably more) of accessibility for the wikitextbook. The core, built from the initial curriculum and the shell, developed by the users of the textbook, and would be the flavour added to the basic curriculum. There needs to be an interactive linking system between the state standards and the curriculum itself. At any time, someone should be able to find curriculum goals and then find the curriculum that that is designed to achieve those goals. A solution for delivering media (audio and video) in terms of hosting would be necessary.

Delivery plan – with teacher planning
The limitations of text force me to put this after the others, but it should be a constant development through the other sections. A way to deliver in classrooms (projectors etc…) would need to be discussed. (for which i will make a crazy suggestion see this link. these are great, bulbs last ten times longer, and they cost 20 bucks. Just need someone to build them.) A way to bring the teachers along in terms of giving them the necessary literacies to be able to teach using this stuff in the classroom. This is the most essential step, and should be followed throughout the project. Teacher buy in is essential.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 2:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Wikitextbooks – Moving Forward.”

1. john Mullaney Says:
   February 2nd, 2006 at 6:26 pm Dave this is an interesting sketch of a plan. Why not post it to the educationbridges site?
2. Steve Margetts Says:
   February 5th, 2006 at 10:49 pm A fascinating post that replicates the debate I have been having with many people over the past year since I started www.wikitextbook.co.uk. I agree with your excellent post.

   Steve

3. dave Says:
   February 12th, 2006 at 10:59 pm i like cocomment.

3 Responses to “Wikibooks – Notes on the project”

1. ‘Wiki’ Textbooks » mrbelshaw.co.uk/teaching Says:
   January 23rd, 2006 at 10:13 pm […] Edit: I’ve just come across Dave Cormier’s (one of the hosts of EdTechTalk) blog entry about wikibooks. […]
2. sean lancaster Says:
   January 25th, 2006 at 8:54 pm from what i’ve seen of wikis, i have trouble conceptualizing a textbook that would be useful to other instructors. a wiki tends to have a “page” that is edited and perfected by the community for each individual topic. so, i want to have a unit where my ed tech class places our attention on distance learning in the k-12 classroom. a wiki would be set up to have a page devoted to each specific category, but not the whole chapter that i currently can assign to my students.

   so, with a wikitext, would i just go through the various pages and try and pull together all that apply to the unit i am teaching and just provide my students with a whole list of related, but not connected wiki entries for them to read to help understand the topic? that seems discombobulated to me.

   on the other hand, finding a way to have “chapters” instead of individual “pages” might work, if that is possible with a wiki. then again, the more we decide what those chapters are, the less appealing we make the text. for example, i might want to teach a chapter on issues in educational technology. another person might have a different conceptualization of the issues that i include and might add many others. so now, i am assigning only parts of the chapter to my students, but maybe i want some of those other issues included in another chapter.

   i guess i need to see some examples of a wikitext before i can jump on board. i coordinate an undergraduate ed tech course for future teachers. we have about 20 sections of the course each semester and 4 instructors wrote the textbook we use. i get paid 50 cents a copy, so this was really done to provide our students with a very affordable textbook that meets all of our teaching objectives. i could easy give the textbook up and shift to a wikitext with the same 4 authors. unfortunately, we’d have to start over because our publisher owns what we’ve already written. i am still intrigued with giving this a try for our program. i just wonder how it translates nationally or internationally.

3. Josh Loewen Says:
   February 10th, 2006 at 2:26 am Hi Dave, I just came across your site. There are few Math teachers here in BC who are in the process of starting up a wiki site similar to what you are discussing. I haven’t read all your entries here yet (I have a class in 20 minutes), but I will be reading further soon. We aren’t so much focused on the business model just yet, nor on replacing existing textbooks, but are hoping that collaboration will create a reliable source of supplementary information for our high school Math students.

One Response to “On Another Note – Projects, thoughts and snippets”

1. Bud Hunt Says:
   January 9th, 2006 at 11:09 am Dave,

   Looks like a pretty good list. You’ve been up to some pretty amazing stuff over the last several months, so I’m sure no one will be disappointed if you don’t get everything done. (Except your nephew, of course. Make that your top priority.)

4 Responses to “Wikibooks – a project suggestion”

1. Sarah Chauncey Says:
   January 3rd, 2006 at 5:15 am I love the idea. What I would want to see is the same information written for different grade (reading) levels. For example, if my students are doing research on whales, they could click on a link which would take the content from quite simple Kindergarten Level right up to College Level. This would help in the early years when children in the same grade are reading and comprehending above and below grade level. As with everything else, if the big guys feel that such a project could take off — they will become involved in a big way!
2. Lee Baber Says:
   January 5th, 2006 at 3:14 pm I think this would be a fanatastic alternative to books. There are plenty of negatives to hard copies so we don’t need to discuss that just yet. The good side of the electronic version of a textbook forever updated goes on and on. I am especially excited about this because I love to produce visuals… I would love to spend all my time creating photos, drawings, animations, videos, and eventually virtual realities to add to the wikibooks. What better way to learn a subject than incredible audio and visual. Of course the content laid in a text version is the foundation for the “book” but adding all the media will appeal to all learning styles.
3. Mark Hemphill Says:
   January 11th, 2006 at 7:16 pm Great idea Dave! Welcome to UPEI.
4. Knowledge2Go » Blog Archive » Textbooks as wikis Says:
   January 31st, 2006 at 5:55 pm […] The idea of producing school and university textbooks as wikis (i.e. as free and editable online texts) is slowly starting to gain momentum. Dave Cornier lists some pros and cons. The great thing about publishing a textbook as a wiki is that users (e.g. students and lecturers) can contribute to the text and so help to improve it and keep it current. Direct editing of the text need not be completely open (as is the case with wikipedia) – there could be different types of contributors, such as editors, chapter authors, box authors, and people who are allowed to comment or add margin notes. One way for textbook authors to make some money out of this form of publishing would be to sell printed copies of the book to those who don’t have good internet access, or who prefer to use a hard copy. Filed under: Publishers, Participation, Students […]

December 13th, 2005 Are wikis showing us that truth is inherently flawed?

Interesting post noted by downes called Are wikis inherently flawed? There is a fine list of good wiki behavious listed at the end of the site that I encourage anyone starting a wiki to look at, and at least address if not follow. My concern though, lies more in the middle of the argument. Thalheimer says

Wikis, blogs, websites (indeed, all forms of communication) carry with them the possibility that the information conveyed is not true. The more widely some information is dispersed, the bigger the potential problems. The more our communication channels have validators who correct inaccuracies, the more we tend to move toward the truth. For example, the press has traditionally played a role in holding public officials to account and conveying the news to people. Competition, as between political parties, can surface truths sometimes. Peer policing, as academic researchers do through research referring mechanisms, offer a correcting mechanism. Credentialling standards or agencies control who gets into a field or who advances.

Take a look at the bolded sentence. If we have ‘validators’ we get closer to ‘the truth’. Validating agents have a tendency to support ‘dominant narratives’ or the truth that already exists, or more specifically, the truth that keeps the powerful, powerful and the rich, rich. The example of the press is an ideal one, here in Canada several editors have been fired for saying things that were not inline with the dominant narrative (they have argued, essentially, against those funding the paper). The validators, in the case of the newspaper, were the censors. The people telling you what you can and can’t write.

There are certainly some kinds of truth that lend themselves more to validating than others. If the math is wrong, then it’s usually wrong. But this is not the same kind of truth. Most kinds of work that will be done in wikis will not be this kind of ‘right or wrong’ truth. It will be subtle issues of context. Things where different persepectives will be important. Where a ‘validator’ might tell you that your idea is foolish, or worthless, (”Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance will never sell” is one of my favorite examples of the ‘validator’ not really knowing what is going on).

Wikis don’t ‘create’ truth anymore than anything else does. They allow for a special kind of presentation of a truth, a truth that comes together through many people working together. Truth is created where people invest their trust. If we invest our trust in commercials, then we believe that we need three glasses of milk a day to stay healthy. If we believe the American government, the war in Iraq has been won… twice. If we believe that wikipedia matters, then it does. The ‘JFK involvement’ story is an growing pain that we must all go through, the man who did it said ‘he didn’t realize that wikipedia was a serious thing, and therefore treated it like a bar bathroom stall.

Wikis allow for dissent. They allow for group-think. The violent group-think that leads to mob mentality usually happens when people are ‘trying’ to find a voice and can’t. Wikis give them that voice. Is it the final word on group work… certainly not. New and better will be on the way. But I’ll put my trust in the truths of wikipedia, that can come from different cultures, and different perspectives, and trust to the new research methodologies of the current era that allow me to assess people’s perspective, rather than trusting to the single, top-down perspective of brittanica. (who’s name is so colonial it’s kinda funny)

And these research methodologies ‘many truths, loosely joined’, is where i think we need to be going.

December 10th, 2005 This is from about 70 minutes into this week’s brainstorm… just to give you an idea of some of the conversations that happen. This one has me sounding a little more proselytizing than i really feel about the issue… just a little. This is the sound file. Check it out, join the debate.

I’ve set up a del.icio.us account with all (i hope) the links for all the nominees for The Edublog Awards 2005. If i missed any, please comment here. I did it pretty quickly. cheers. del.icio.us name – http://del.icio.us/edublogawards2005