Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C43/Workshop schedule

Getting started (Pre-workshop) Hi everybody, My name is Moola Belinda Mangolwa. I am currently working at the Commonwealth Youth Programme as a programme Intern. I am excited to be part of the training because I take pleasure in expanding my knowledge through learning from other people and consequently sharing my knowledge with others. Looking forward to interacting with all of you

Day 1: Monday, 06 September 2010
Hi everyone, Cheelo Kopakopa is my name and I work for the ILO Country Office. I am so delighted to be part of this learning experience. Stay blessed.

Instructions for Day 1b
For the rest of the day, we'll learn a little more about what wiki's are and how they work. You will also have an opportunity join our wiki discussion on the quality of open authoring approaches.


 * 1) If you haven't had a chance yet, watch the short video called Wikis in plain English hosted on YouTube -- a great resource which explains the features of a wiki.
 * 2) Read through WikiEducator's tutorial on What is a wiki?
 * 3) Post your thoughts, ideas and feedback on the quality of open authoring approaches here.
 * 4) If you didn't get a chance earlier in the day, please introduce yourself to the group by posting to our wiki forum. Don't be noticed by your absence!
 * 5) If you have any questions or need a little help, just ask us. Or email your facilitators for support. Remember the WikiEducator motto: Just try it. Our community will support you!

Day 2: Tuesday, 07 September 2010
Now we're going to start having fun and you could achieve your first WikiEducator certification! If you’re a little behind, don’t worry….just take it one step at a time as it's easy enough to catch up on the first 3 day's work. We know that you are busy with other competing demands -- but WE are here to help!

Editing on WikiEducator

Have you managed to complete your first edit on your User page? It’s the page that has your User Name – it’s always on the top right of your screen, with a little icon which appears after you have logged in. For some folks, WikiEducator may be 1st website where you have published on the Internet -- celebrate your achievement!

Instructions for Day 2
Today we are moving onto the basics of wiki editing, that is formatting text (bold, italics, lists etc). We are also interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas for the content resource you are planning to develop under your learning contract. This will be our discussion activity for today.


 * 1) Create a sandbox and practice your skills: Read through the activity to create your Sandbox. You can also view the screen cast movie which will show you how to do this. If you get stuck -- let us know by posting your question in the general discussion forum. We are here to help.
 * 2) Work through the Tutorial using your sandbox to practice text formatting.
 * 3) Go to your User page start filling out your page. Your wiki certification is determined by demonstrating your skills on your user page and/or sandbox. Be sure to include bold, italics, subheadings and lists on your page so you can qualify for your first WikiEducator community certification :-).
 * 4) Discuss ideas for your wiki project and sign your online Learning Contract which you will find on your user page.

Ideas for a learning contract project
The purpose of the learning contract is to identify a wiki project to practice your skills and give the gift of knowledge. In short there are four things you can do:


 * 1) Create a new resource for sharing with the WikiEducator community.
 * 2) Donate an existing teaching resource you have created and own by converting this into wiki format for sharing under an open content license.
 * 3) Join an existing WikiEducator project.
 * 4) Establish and support a community node in the wiki.

Below we provide a few ideas and examples to help you identify a suitable project -- the choice is yours.


 * If you are a lecturer, you could design an OER assignment for your students as part of the official requirements for your course. The Biology in Elementary Schools project hosted by St Michael's college in Vermont, USA is an excellent example where student teachers work in teams to develop lessons, try these out in the classroom and improve them based on the experience. Students are graded on their work as part of their course requirements and the lessons are gifted to the WikiEducator community. You are most welcome to invite your students to join one of our monthly free Learning4Content workshops so you don't have to worry about teaching wiki skills in your course.
 * You could collaborate with participants in this workshop to establish a national, state or provincial OER node on WikiEducator or join one of the existing national initiatives. See for example the OERNZ project which is building a national OER commons for the New Zealand School sector, or the Indian chapter of WikiEducator for ideas.
 * You could establish an OER portal page for your institution to coordinate and collaborate on OER projects. See for example the DEHub in Australia or Otago Polytechnic's OER projects, or Warrington School. It's easy to set up a free portal page in WikiEducator using our pre-designed template which you can customise to suite your needs.
 * If you teach postgraduate qualifications in Education, you may consider joining the Open Course Collaboratory project which will develop a post graduate elective in OER which your own institution could teach.
 * If you're more ambitious, you may want to develop an OER course on WikiEducator, see for example: Flexible Learning Guidebook or Facilitating Online (Note these courses may be live so best not to edit them ;-)).
 * If you're a school teacher, you could develop a lesson plan, student worksheet or project. Take a look at what Albany Senior High School are doing for ideas.
 * You can start an open textbook project. The OER Handbook is a good example of a open textbook developed on WikiEducator and available for purchase as a bound textbook through Lulu.com in black and white or colour versions. The text is also available as a free download both on WikiEducator and Lulu.com.
 * If you are into language learning, start a beginner's language course. Example: A Beginners Guide to Oshikwanyama. This language's community page has some ideas for enhancements. Localise the idioms and share some insights into your culture too :-).

online survey

Instructions for Day 3

 * 1) Work through Tutorial 5 on New pages and Links
 * 2) Be sure to check out the requirements for community certification under our WikiMaster typology. You're on track to achieving the status of Wikibuddy in our community!

Instructions for Day 4
After completing the tutorial on images, you will have all the skills you need to develop an impressive user page as well as achieving the certification of a Level 2 WikiApprentice! You should also spend a little time refining the text and layout on your user page. Be sure to include the layout features you have learned so far. That is bold, italics, headings, lists, internal and external links with descriptive names. (Tutorials 2, 4 & 5).

''Let's see who will develop the best User page over today and tomorrow. Perhaps one of the participants in this group will become a future recipient of the WikiEducator User Page Expo''.

Instructions


 * 1) Important -- Read this summary on general copyright issues relating to digital images.
 * 2) Work through Tutorial 6 on images.
 * 3) Practice manipulating the placement, size and using captions for your images in your sandbox.
 * 4) Work on improving your User page -- don't forget to include a photograph of yourself using your new skills on inserting images!
 * 5) Optional: View the following screencast videos:
 * 6) * Screencast A: How to source and link images on Wikimedia Commons
 * 7) * Screencast B: Searching for free content images on Flickr
 * 8) * Screencast C: Uploading images sourced from Flickr

Day 5: Friday 10 September 2010
A side note for anyone who may have fallen a little behind, don't give up, the finishing line is in sight! Besides, today is a little more relaxed so use this time to catch up on images. To be fair, images are perhaps the most complicated aspect in the wiki because it involves uploading files to the WikiEducator server. Once you have mastered images you are well on your way to achieving success!

Instructions for Day 5

 * 1) Today, you should work through Tutorial 7 on collaborative editing where you will learn a few neat tricks on how to monitor activity in the wiki;
 * 2) You will also learn how to revert an edit which you should practise on your user page.

We're looking forward to our next assignment where we will use one of our communication tools in the wiki. Please do your best to update your user page today as we will ask participants from this group to provide feedback and suggestions on our respective user pages in the wiki using these communication tools.

Suggestion

Several of the learning contract projects listed in the discussion on ideas for Learning Contract projects are open to collaborative edits by course participants. Take a look and join in!

Day 6 and 7: 13-14 September 2010
Now the weekend is over and we hope you enjoyed every bit of it. The instructions for the next two days are to allow us build up on the previous sessions especially on collaborative editing/authoring. Especially for facilitators at the IPYET, these two days are the crust of what you need to enable you effectively moderate the online sessions.

Instructions for Day 6

 * 1) Work through Tutorial 8 on Communication and Interaction Tools (see link below)
 * 2) Test the feature of adding a discussion item which relates to a content page in the wiki. See the discussion activity linked to the talk page of our course schedule (this page). You can also access the corresponding talk page by clicking on the "Discussion" tab you see at the top the page in your browser.
 * 3) Leave a personal message on the User page of at least three different participants who have started working on their user pages. To do this -- you need to go to the respective User Page by clicking on a blue coloured link under the surname of our participant list. Then click on the "Discussion" tab of the User page concerned (top of the page). Comment on something positive you have seen on User Page, particularly if you have some ideas for improvement. If you're do receive a message from one of the participants -- send a reply to by clicking on their User Name which is displayed in the automatic signature below the message.
 * 4) This best way to keep in touch with the WikiEducator family is to join our main WikiEducator mailing list on Google groups -- Join today to keep up to date with what's happening in our community.

Have fun -- this is a great way to communicate with your fellow WikiEducators!

Instructions for Day 7
The Lead facilitator will moderate a session on this day. All participants are expected to make contributions and "interact" with each other.

Day 8: Wednesday 15 September 2010
Today is the last day for the online session of this L4C workshop. You must be nearly exhausted now but sure feeling happy for your emernse accomplishments. Wait!!! We are not done yet, 17 and 18 September will be the cap icing on the cake. Get ready.

Now, let us finish of today with a lovely piece of tutorial and related discussions. Today's tutorials will set you apart as trainers/educators from those who can just use wikis. Enjoy ...

In cases where you do not have a reliable or fast Internet connection you may decide to work offline. You may also have a number of lesson plans and teaching materials which you want to convert into wiki format for sharing with other teachers. Today we will test two alternatives for converting and uploading existing documents on WikiEducator.

INSTRUCTIONS

Converting an existing document
 * Under the toolbox on the left hand side of your screen, click on the link called OOConvertor
 * Follow the instructions on screen to upload a file from your machine, eg .doc or .odt. (Note: that you should save Microsoft .docx files in the older .doc format.)
 * Select the appropriate license (for example CC-BY or CC-BY-SA) to confirm the permissions for teachers to reuse, adapt, modify and share teaching materials.
 * This web service will convert the file into wiki format and create a new page as a subpage of your Username. You will also receive an email notification when the document is converted. You will now be able to copy this text to any page in the wiki.
 * Note that you will need to upload images separately.
 * It is good practice to use styles for specifying different heading levels in the source document.