User:Mackiwg/Working papers/IATE
From WikiEducator
Wikieducator: Turning the digital divide into digital dividends through free content and open networks
Wayne Mackintosh, Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy, Commonwealth of Learning.
Plenary paper for the IATE International Conference, Dehli 26 -29 February 2007.
Abstract
The Web is changing in fundamental ways. For most people the web used to be a "search and find" information resource, connecting people through hyper-linked content. Today's read-write web is a new incarnation of this resource. We all are potentially co-creators of the content and interactions of this networked world. The invention of the printing press and universal postal services spawned the development of large-scale distance education, resulting in unprecedented advances in widening access to quality education at significantly lower costs. How will contemporary advances in the read-write web transform learning for development?
The advent of social software has resulted in social phenomena previously not imagined. Consider for example:
- Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia created by "citizens" of the world now has more than 1.6 million English articles of free content making it the largest encyclopedia in our history;
- Youtube, which lets users upload, view, and share video clips founded in February 2005, was acquired was acquired by Google twenty months later for the sum of $1.65 billion;
- Flikr, the photo sharing, website attracts in the region of 20 million visitors a month;
Wikipedia and Youtube are regularly within the top ten most visited Websites on the planet. Social software combined with the burgeoning field of Open Education Resources shows huge and untapped potential for educational futures.
Sadly, the vision of education for all has not materialised for the vast majority of people -- notwithstanding the digital potential of social software for education. Citizens of the developing world are largely limited to being net consumers of foreign content rather than equal co-creaters of the world's knowledge.
In the education sphere, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) aims to change the balance in favour of learning for development. We will harness the power of social software through WikiEducator, collaborating with members of the freedom culture to develop a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. This will start from the foundations of an intimate understanding of the connectivity and access challenges we all know so well. In this paper, COL will report on our achievements to date and highlight potential solutions that will assist in achieving our collective vision for widening access to education through smart and sustainable use of technology. We hope that you can help us.
Brief Biography
Dr Wayne Mackintosh is Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy at the Commonwealth of Learning based in Vancouver. He is a committed advocate of the free software and free cultural works movement. He was the founding project leader of New Zealand's eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) project (www.exelearning.org) and responsible for establishing the Commonwealth of Learning's (COL) WikiEducator (www.WikiEducator.org) - a website that provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use. He is also a Member of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Formerly, he was Associate Professor and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and before this spent eleven years working at the University of South Africa (UNISA), a distance learning institution and one of the world's mega-universities. He is member of the Editorial Board of Open Learning and has participated in a range of international consultancies and projects including work the International Monetary Fund, UNESCO and the World Bank.
