WikiEducator:Community Council/Meetings/Third/Progress report

Vital Statistics and community workgroup project

 * WikiEducator has registered users (compared with approximately 11,000 at the time of our previous Council meeting in September 2009.) Growth trends remain positive, representing a linear growth curve.
 * Server statistics show an average of +10,000 visits per day approximating between 9 and 10 million hits per month. Detailed analysis of WikiEducator activity is updated monthly and published on the wiki.
 * Based on Alexa's three-month average, WikiEducator is currently ranked as a top 89K website. Our rankings in the United States have also improved since WikiEducator become an independent project. Quantcast estimate WikiEducator rankings in the United States around 61K.
 * The OER Foundation, with generous funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, continues our work with the ground breaking Learning4Content project providing free wiki skills training for educators around the world. We have continued to provide at least one online free workshop each calendar month as an independent project, WE have enrolled +900 participants for the period under consideration. Learning4Content is the world's largest free wiki training initiative in the formal education sector. I would like to acknowledge the work of our lead facilitators, Gladys Gahona, Nellie Deutsch, Rob Kruhlak and Patricia Schlicht who have inspired numerous innovations for our workshops since becoming an independent project. There are numerous WikiEducators who donate their time freely to assist with co-facilitation and other tasks -- too many to mention here -- but WE acknowledge your gift of knowledge. Thank you!
 * The UPE team continue their work in searching and finding WikiEducators with exemplary User pages -- this is a great feature of our family -- thanks to the team for their continued support of this community initiative.
 * The Workgroup tasked to consider amendments to our Open Community Governance Policy has successfully completed its work. I would like to extend an official note of appreciation and thanks for the leadership and tireless work of Kim Tucker who ensured completion of this task for our 3rd Community Council Meeting.

OER Foundation

 * The OER Foundation has completed the consultative development of its strategy and operational plans. We will now commence with active recruitement of institutional members and launch our first public donation campaign. The strategy was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors of the OER Foundation.
 * The OER Foundation appointed Jim Tittsler as Lead Software Engineer. WikiEducator is very fortunate to have the calibre and experiece of Jim's expertise leading our technolgy infrastructures.
 * We succesfully completed the migration of the WIkiEducator servers including the implementation of much needed upgrades to our software.
 * WIth funding support from the New Zealand Ministry of Education, the OER Foundation has implemented a rich (WYSIWYG) editor for WikiEducator. We have also developed a revised set of tutorials for using the rich text editor. Special thanks go to Rob Kruhlak  and  Alison Snieckus for their sterling contributions in completing this project for the benefit of future WikiEducators.
 * A special word of thanks goes to WikiRandy for the countless hours he has donated to the OER Foundation in assisting with the development of our strategy and community building initiatives.
 * The Board of Directors of the OER Foundation has recently approved the Donor and contributing member privacy policy which will enable us to commence with a public donation campaign and the recruitment of institutional members to raise funds to continue support of the WikiEducator technical infrastructure.
 * On behalf of the OER Foundation and the WIkiEducator community, I extend my thanks to each member of the WikiEducator Community Council who donate of their time freely for our meetings because they believe in making the world a better place through open education. Thank you.