Hi Valerie & Nellie, Excellent and very timely suggestions!
As we speak, we're planning a national co-ordinated community effort to develop reusable and portable content for New Zealand schools ( http://wikieducator.org/OERNZ ) we think carefully through the steps to save time in getting resource started. Teachers are busy folk. For example -- if a teacher wanted to donate a lesson plan -- we should try to make this as easy as possible. I'm experimenting with the concept of a lesson plan template which will preload the main headings, formating and structure. It will automatically insert the relevant categories and provide limited guidance and ideas for filling in the template. Recognising that there is not an ideal or optimal template given different approaches to teaching, unique demands of the subject area, student background etc. We will need to have a small selection of different templates. I have been working on two prototypes: 1. A standard lesson template (http://tinyurl.com/ybt4g6t ) 2. The "St Cuthberts College" template -- which is an example of a template used by a local school ( http://tinyurl.com/ydjgjza ) With thanks to Nellie for a donation of one of her lesson plans (The Last Spin webquest) -- I'm now piloting the template (still work in progress) to provide an example which teachers can see. With this sort of thing its good to have an example -- plus a short help resource to show folk how this works. Once we implement a WYSIWYG editor -- we will remove more barriers. I also think that its important to form teams that focus on specific areas and tasks in the wiki -- see for example: http://wikieducator.org/New_Zealand_Schools_OER_Portal/Roles . These teams form mini communities which can provide help and support to folk who want to get started with specific tasks. While this project has a strong New Zealand focus -- being OER, all the content resources, templates and approaches can easily be replicated and refined for other countries and communities. For example, in the last week Uganda (http://wikieducator.org/OERUG) and Israel ( http://wikieducator.org/Israel_Schools_OER_Portal) have started their national school portals :-). Hopefully many more will follow :-) Good thinking -- lets make this happen! Cheers Wayne 2009/9/29 valerie <vtay...@gmail.com> > > Hi Nellie > > Thanks for suggesting a brainstorming. WE need to do this regularly > about lots of topics, including community engagement. > > Engagement through contributing - I looked through the WE community > portal to see if there was a home for this sort of thing. > > http://www.wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:Community_Portal > http://www.wikieducator.org/Wishlist > > These sort of address the idea of community participation, but most > are too complex or need too much prior knowledge to encourage newer WE > member to provide help. > > I would like to see more, easy to participate projects, so that if > someone has a couple of hours, they can contribute something > meaningful to the WE community. This might be a dynamic "job jar" with > instructions for each item, rated by WE knowledge level / skills and > time commitment. > > Perhaps some of the template gurus can come up with some "forms" that > present work, and the WE members can do some thing like categorization > through a "read, select, save" interface. > > Project Gutenberg has lots of jobs like this. The volunteers are happy > to help because they know that they are just one part of the process. > Once their small but important part is done, other more qualified > volunteers will be doing follow-on steps in some bigger process. This > generates great publicity and community engagement for the project. > > Having contribution process/forms help direct the work, making the > specific contribution more manageable form the WE community > contributor perspective as well as getting needed WE work done quickly > and reliably. Lots of small contributions from lots of WE members > turns into really great results. > > ..Valerie > > > > On Sep 26, 10:46 pm, NELLIE DEUTSCH <nellie.muller.deut...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hello Everyone, > > > > Well, since my interest lies in active learning and engaging learners, I > > would like invite those with common interests to join me in brainstorming > to > > find ways to engage members of the community. > > > > -- 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. 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