IUT 2009 MediaWiki Workshop/Activities/What is a wiki/About wikieducator

The WikiEducator family
Wikis are about communities -- not the technology that enables them. Social communities develop around projects and ideas. For instance, the Wikipedia community is working together to build a free online encyclopedia. These communities are drawn together by a common set of values.

WikiEducator was launched by the Commonwealth of Learning in 2006. It provides free eLearning content that anyone can edit and use. WikiEducator was introduced at the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC) course developers' meeting in Mauritius in August 2006. It is now being used extensively for the development of free educational resources around the world.

Many wiki communities believe that content should be free. The slogan of the Mediawiki software, which runs WikiEducator and all the projects of the Wikimedia foundation, encapsulates this spirit rather well: Ideas want to be free. This is why Wiki software is often cited as an example of social software because of the ease with which users can work together on content. This combined with the communication features of wikis enables people to connect with each other and to build a real sense of community.

The values of our WikiEducator community
It is important to recognise and respect the core values of the different wiki communities. The WikiEducator community believes in the following values:


 * The social inclusion and participation of all people in our networked society (Access to ICTs is a fundamental right of knowledge citizens - not an excuse for using old technologies).
 * The freedoms of all educators to teach with the technologies and contents of their choice, hence our commitment to Free/Libre and Open Source technology tools and free content.
 * That educational content is unique - and by working together we can improve the technologies we use as well as the reusability of digital learning resources.
 * In a forward-looking disposition working together to find appropriate and sustainable solutions for e-learning futures.

WikiEducators strive to be friendly and neighbourly. Our mantra is: "Just try it! Our community will support you".

WikiEducator's learning content
The WikiEducator community is working together to develop free educational content that incorporates the educational features associated with well designed distance education materials. Therefore, you will find that content in WikiEducator typically includes educational elements like learning objectives, activities and case studies. In the tutorials which follow, you will learn how to include these elements into the content you author.

Types of content on WikiEducator
There are four distinctive types of content you will find on Wikieducator:


 * 1) Pages used for planning of WikiEducator projects;
 * 2) Content pages -- our free educational materials;
 * 3) Resources on how to create open education resources (OERs)
 * 4) Funding proposals developed as free content.