Funding proposals/Reusable and portable content for New Zealand schools/Reporting/August09

Reporting Portal for NZ schools OER Content Project

Visit the nz OER portal for information and to join the community - NZ Portal

Home  |  Capability and community development  |  Tools development stream  |  OER content development stream

Stream 1: Capability and community development

Year 1

• Anticipated budget: NZ$70,000
• Key outputs
  • 20 Trainers trained
  • 20 WikiEducator Taster sessions (Face-to-face)
  • 5 Online training workshops
  • 145 Early adopters trained in collaborative wiki authoring
  • NZ teacher community node established and supported
    • 150 OER Ambassadors selected and appointed
    • Web journalism node established and 4 Newsletters published

Capability development

Aim: To identify and train "early adopters" in collaborative authoring of OER to form the foundation for scaling-up a national OER collaboration for New Zealand schools in year 2.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Capability development	Train-the trainer workshops Plan train-the-trainer workshop Collaboratively determine selection criteria for L4C trainers (champions/early adopters) Select participants for train-the-trainer workshop Wikieducator taster sessions Trainers organise face-to-face introduction sessions at their schools Online training workshops Schedule and implement online L4C workshops Advertise and recruit teachers for training workshops	One trainer workshop (face-to-face) Train 20 New Zealand teachers to become wiki facilitators Schedule and deliver online training workshop every 2nd month, with the first workshop to start within 2 months of commencement of this project. Trainers to schedule 20 WikiEducator taster sessions (face-to-face) Train 145 teachers in basic wiki authoring (online workshops)	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2010 Train-the-trainer workshop completed: 31 August 2009 2 Online L4C workshops 10 WikiEducator Taster sessions 70 teachers trained Second 6 months ending 31 Jul 2010 3 Online L4C workshops 10 WikiEductor Taster sessions 75 teachers trained

Community development

Aim: To establish initiatives and support resources to foster the development of a sustainable and scalable community of New Zealand teachers empowered to transform teaching through OER

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Community development and support	Establish NZ OER Ambassadors initiative Collaboratively determine selection criteria for school-based Ambassadors Collaboratively determine roles, and support mechanisms for Ambassadors Advertise and recruit Ambassadors for each school Establish a web journalism node Produce a quarterly newsletter that will reach a wide audience including those educators who are not actively participating in the collaboration Introduce community kudos incentives like featured teachers and featured resources Develop and maintain a FAQ resource for New Zealand teachers Build a NZ community node on WikiEducator and corresponding support resources Develop "Best practices" documents guiding effective wiki use	Selection criteria for Ambassadors published Roles and responsibilities of OER Ambassadors determined Recruit and select 150 OER Ambassadors Collaborative development of a NZ community node on WikiEducator completed Needs analysis of additional tutorials and support resources completed 4 quarterly news letters published targeting a distribution of 2000 copies NZ teacher collaboration forum established and moderated Design and implement online survey for monitoring and evaluation.	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2010 NZ Teacher collaboration forum established - Commencement of project August 2009 Community node on WikiEducator established - 31 August 2009 Ambassadors recruited - 30 September 2009 Needs analysis for additional support resources completed - 30 September 2009 Monitoring and evaluation survey completed - 30 September 2009 Baseline survey administered - 31 October 2009 Newsletter 1 - 31 October 2009 Newsletter 2 - 31 January 2010 Additional support resources/tutorials completed - 31 December 2009 Second 6 months ending 31 Jul 2010 Newsletter 3 - 30 April 2010 Ongoing Teacher collaboration forum activities Ongoing monitoring and evaluation M&E Survey results published - 31 July 2010 Newsletter 4 - 31 Jul 2010

Year 2

• Anticipated budget: NZ$62,000
• Key outputs
  • 20 WikiEducator Taster sessions (Face-to-face)
  • 12 Online training workshops
  • 300 Teachers trained in collaborative wiki authoring
  • 100 additional OER Ambassadors selected and appointed
  • Web journalism node continued and 4 Newsletters published

Capability development

Aim: To build a core cadre of teachers with the capability to participate in collaborative authoring of OER in support of the national curriculum.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Capability development	Reconfigure training materials Produce revised materials for shorter workshop now possible as a result of the usability enhancements in the technology Wikieducator taster Sessions Trainers organise face-to-face introduction sessions at their schools Online training workshops Schedule and implement new online L4C workshops Advertise and recruit teachers for training workshops	Commission development of new training materials Schedule and deliver online training workshop every month, with the first revised and shortened workshop to start October 2010. Trainers to schedule 20 WikiEducator taster sessions (face-to-face) Train 300 teachers in basic wiki authoring (online workshops)	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2011 6 Online L4C workshops 10 WikiEducator Taster Sessions 150 teachers trained Second 6 months ending 31 Aug 2011 6 Online L4C workshops 10 WikiEducator Taster Sessions 150 teachers trained

Community development

Aim: To establish initiatives and support resources to foster the development of a sustainable and scalable community of New Zealand teachers empowered to transform teaching through OER

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Community development and support	Establish NZ OER Ambassadors initiative Collaboratively determine selection criteria for school-based Ambassadors Collaboratively determine roles, and support mechanisms for Ambassadors Advertise and recruit Ambassadors for each school Establish a web journalism node Produce a quarterly newsletter that will reach a wide audience including those educators who are not actively participating in the collaboration Introduce community kudos incentives like featured teachers and featured resources Develop and maintain a FAQ resource for New Zealand teachers Build a NZ community node on WikiEducator and corresponding support resources Develop "Best practices" documents guiding effective wiki use	Selection criteria for Ambassadors published Roles and responsibilities of OER Ambassadors determined Recruit and select 150 OER Ambassadors Collaborative development of a NZ community node on WikiEducator completed Needs analysis of additional tutorials and support resources completed 4 quarterly news letters published targeting a distribution of 2000 copies Bureau service established and ongoing help provided NZ teacher collaboration forum established and moderated Design and implement online survey for monitoring and evaluation.	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2011 Newsletter 5 - 31 October 2011 Ongoing Teacher collaboration forum activities Ongoing monitoring and evaluation Newsletter 6 - 31 Jan 2011 M&E Survey results published - 31 Jan 2011 Second 6 months ending 31 Aug 2011 Newsletter 7 - 30 April 2011 Ongoing monitoring and evaluation Newsletter 8 - 31 July 2011 M&E Survey results published - 31 Aug 2011

Stream 2: Tools development

Year 1

• Anticipated budget:
• Key outputs:
  • Distinctive NZ landing page established
  • Research and requirements specification for rich text editing solution
  • Explain existing API for LMS vendors
  • Implement rich text editing solution incorporating option lists for pedagogical templates
  • Implement solution for taging and mapping NZ content to national curriculum.

Phase 1: Technology foundations

Aim: To establish a unique New Zealand identity for the national OER collaboration and to research technical refinements for the next phases of tool development.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Technology foundations	Setup WikiEducator for a national OER collaboration Research solutions to refine and improve usability for teachers Publish relevant technical information for content portability for LMS vendors	develop a distinctive NZ landing page and project (curriculum) pages implement categories that identify NZ content by curriculum tag preliminary investigation of the installation of a rich text editor for some users of WikiEducator provide a way to easily manage user lists review the existing set of templates for consistency, ease of use, and structure encouraging reuse explain existing API so that programmers can pull, reuse, and possibly even push content	Target date for this activity: 31 Jan 2010 ensure basic technical foundations are sound establish best practices for content reuse

Phase 2: Improve usability through rich text editing and educational specific refinements

Aim: To make the wiki easier to use for all teachers for authoring, searching, and reusing OER content.

The instructional device templates serve two important functions within WikiEducator:

• encourage authors to consider the pedagogical structure of each page of their resource
• provides a small amount of structure within a page which tools can exploit for reusing the content in different ways

With that in mind, it is important that any rich text editor facilitate building this structure into resources and not clutter them with inconsistent presentation-oriented markup.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Improve ease of use and reuse	facilitate online editing, including support for iDevices encourage consistent metadata for all resources	enhance the online rich text editor support a wider set of templates (iDevices) add option lists in templates to make it easier for users to select from a range of valid choices add a metadata solution (eg tab or template solution) add tools allowing individual page tagging, with display of most popular existing tags add tools for supporting formative assessment	Target date for this activity: 31 Jul 2010 WikiEducator made a convenient to use collaboration and sharing point for a rapidly growing cadre of NZ educators resource-based metadata available to facilitate searching and reuse

Year 2

• Anticipated budget:
• Key outputs:
  • authors are provided offline editing alternatives using standard office software
  • facilitate peer review of contributed resources

Phase 3: Offline editing and peer review

Aims: Attempt to blur the distinction between the repository technology and a desktop application.

OpenOffice provides a comfortable suite of tools for authors that prefer to work offline. Similar to the work done embedding a rich text editor into WikiEducator, care must be taken to provide all of the features authors expect without unduly cluttering the resulting resources making them difficult to reuse. iDevices should be easy to use. Using an existing wiki page as a starting point should be possible. Publishing to the wiki should be straightforward, with clear messages if a conflict takes place because of a simultaneous edit by a collaborator. Embedded images (or other media) should be checked for uniqueness and share existing files where possible.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Provide easy-to-use offline authoring alternative	provide offline editing alternative content peer review	research support for offline editing using OpenOffice template support one-click publishing import from wiki implement a technique allowing peer review of resources globally within a school or cluster	Target date for this activity: 31 Jan 2011 an offline, near WYSIWYG authoring alternative available schools allowed to impose their own quality review processes atop WikiEducator framework

Phase 4: Tools development - Extending offline editing

Aims: (: Need to refine the aim)

Further adapt WikiEducator to teacher authoring habits, adding at least minimal support for offline editing using Microsoft Office tools.

Microsoft Office's proprietary nature makes this difficult to do in a robust, future-proof way. The solution investigated here may range from a droplet that post processes and uploads pages to an add-in that attempts to add a wikitext output filter.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Extend offline editing solutions to Microsoft Word.	additional offline editing options	editing connection for Microsoft Office	Target date for this activity: 31 Jul 2011

Phase 5 - Federated wiki instances

One major piece of work that we envision is the ability to synchronise multiple instances of MediaWiki. For example, this would allow a school or cluster to run their own local instance if they had the need and the IT support to do it. Or it could allow a national instance of WikiEducator separate from the global instance hosted offshore. Achieving this in a robust way will require significant resources outside the scope of this proposal.

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
Allow federating multiple WikiEducator instances.	synchronise multiple instances national instance institution-specific instance	robust synchronisation and conflict resolution scheme ability to produce offline copies and subsets may also be possible from this research	Target date for this activity: ?? (contingent on funding sources and development resources)

Stream 3: OER content development

Aim: Develop a critical mass of OER exemplars to serve as examples for teachers to create, share and reuse digital content.

Year 1

• Anticipated budget: NZ$68,500
• Key outputs
  • 145 OER exemplars commissioned
  • 100 Existing resources digitised or converted into wiki format.
  • Wiki bureau Service:
  • Online support services for teachers developing OER
  • Limited support for digitising or wikifying existing resources

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
OER Content development	Develop OER content examples Co-develop criteria for selection of OER exemplars for development Co-develop ideas and classification system for different types of OER (eg lesson plans, handouts for learners, interactive multi-media simulations etc.) Co-design incentive and honorarium system for OER exemplars Support teachers in developing OER examples Establish and maintain a basic bureau service for technical wiki support Provide basic online help services for wiki syntax questions Provide limited digitisation services to wikify donations from teachers as OER	Develop 145 OER examples Basic bureau service established and maintained Source 100 donations from existing resources for digitisation in the wiki.	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2010 70 OER examples developed 50 OER donations digitised/wikified Bureau service established - 31 August 2009 Ongoing Bureau service support Second 6 months ending 31 Jul 2010 75 OER examples developed 50 OER donations digitised/wikified Ongoing Bureau service support

Year 2

• Anticipated budget: NZ$68,500
• Key outputs
  • 145 OER exemplars commissioned
  • 100 Existing resources digitised or converted into wiki format.
  • Wiki bureau Service:
  • Online support services for teachers developing OER
  • Limited support for digitising or wikifying existing resources

Main Activity	Sub activities	Outputs	Target Date
OER Content development	Develop OER content examples Support teachers in developing OER examples Maintain a basic bureau service for technical wiki support Provide basic online help services for wiki syntax questions Provide limited digitisation services to wikify donations from teachers as OER	Develop 145 OER examples Source 100 donations from existing resources for digitisation in the wiki.	First 6 months ending 31 Jan 2011 70 OER examples developed 50 OER donations digitised/wikified Ongoing Bureau service support Second 6 months ending 31 Aug 2011 70 OER examples developed 50 OER donations digitised/wikified Ongoing Bureau service support