We’ve been working on a couple of projects over the last couple of weeks. It’s been a wild ride, trying to balance the live work and encourage the asynchronous work… Live wiki building is, well, pretty busy work. There has been some confusion regarding the separation between the two projects… so i figure i’ll write a little review of both, sketch out some lessons learned and talk a little about where, from my own point of view, i’d like to see them go.(All opinions are those of the author alone and are not meant to reprensent the views of educationbridges, or worldbridges inc. 🙂 )
Wikitextbook Project at Educationbridges.
The wikitextbook project, or at least the live construction of it can be seen over at educationbridges. We had two main goals in trying to construct a wiki over there… We wanted to give some of our crew some experience working inside the wiki, and we wanted a working space to test out some of our speculative policy ideas.
We’ve done two shows around that space so far, and while there is not a terribly large amount of ‘content’ in the space, it was not entirely meant to ever house that content. The idea was to play around with some of the essential issues are wikitextbooks;
- How will validation be organized in practice?
- How will teachers work together in order to create content?
- How can content be displayed in ways that avoids the ‘text to screen’ problem?
- Who will the audience be and how will we reach them?
- What wiki building policies will we need?
- What would the template of a ‘good page’ look like?
There are more I suppose, but these are some of the issues that have come up over the course of the two episodes. The most compelling issue for me, and the one upon which i believe i have changed my mind concerns the audience. I went into this process believing that we were going to need to appease the administrators in given locals in order to be able to reach our initial goals of creating a wikitextbook that can be used in areas where the purchase of up-to-date textbooks is financially restrictive. On the last show… my mind was changed by the excellent arguments of the many.
I now believe that a core group of the willing will be needed for a successful wikitextbook project. We need to find three or four schools (cyber or otherwise) that have a willingness to work with us to create the first pilots of a project that will work. Only after success has been proved are we going to be able to convince more traditionally minded administrators that this can be a long term solution. Now, we need the schools and the money… and a clear delineated plan.
Edtech Barnraising – Building a New Media Curriculum.
The edtech barnraising and its accompanying wiki is was, and is, a very different beast. The intention of the barnraising is to get a bunch of different, talented edtechish educators together to create a foundation for new media education. A baseline of basic skills and knowledge available to anyone, to give them an idea of what can be done, and how to go about it.
The audience for the wiki is ‘the teacher on a Saturday night, who wants to teach something on Monday morning’ . There are five basic modules that are in the process of being built by some very smart people, and we hope that everyone will come and contribute to the process.
What have we learned about live wiki-ing in general?
We learned a bunch of stuff.
- Many, many people said that they needed voice chat in order to plan, as this would facilitate the interaction, as well as leave the fingers free for content creation.
- A system for navigation for the wiki absolutely needs to be worked out before you start.
- Allow for pauses in the development for people to catch their breath.
- Follow everything else you know that applies to other disciplines, be organized, do a nice introductory exercise, be encouraging, give people clear defined tasks etc…
I enjoyed your post and have bookmarked your site. ~ Nancy