Community Journalism/Correspondence

Intro Letter

Hi ,

I've been referred to you by XXXX, because s/he thought you might be interested in.....

I'm very involved with WikiEducator (think Wikipedia for educators) - our focus is to develop a free and open version of the world's education curriculum, by 2015, in line with the UN's Millennium Development Goals. We're 12,000+ educators from 115 countries. http://www.wikieducator.org I'm on the governing council. http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Randyfisher

I've started working on a project focused on community journalism - think the Long Tail of Journalism - http://www.wikieducator.org/Community_Journalism. We're looking to leverage the success of WikiEducator and distributed learning and delivery models (i.e., Learning4Content project funded by the Commonwealth of Learning and the Hewlett Foundation - http://www.wikieducator.org/Learning4Content}, to collaborate with partners, and on projects in many locales such as:

• online community journalism courses - about how to use newly-available databases and resources - available locally, nationally and globally;
• online course work using social media (including WikiEducator);
• development of participative learning communities to support new and experienced community journalist;
• innovative models for citizen engagement and news / feature writing and reporting
• interdisciplinary, intergenerational and cross-border collaboration
• virtual internships and co-op opportunities (i.e., news reporting on WikiEducator's community; sectoral reporting in agriculture, supporting NGO's in Africa, such as Regional AIDS Network in Kenya, Community Media in South Africa and Tanzania, etc.

Regarding the last point, i was instrumental in facilitating and building a Community Media / Community Radio community of practice on WikiEducator. http://www.wikieducator.org/Community_Media. It is an active community of media practitioners who share, remix and adapt open education resources (OERs) to local conditions and cultures in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Supported by the Commonwealth of Learning and its Media for Learning Programme, learning programmes have been developed for airing in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South Africa

Would you be open to a chat - I'd be happy to answer your questions, and I'd be interested if you had some ideas, for who we might talk to, potential collaborations, and how we might proceed...

Best regards,

- Randy

PS. I was originally trained as a journalist in Canada working with CBC Radio, The Globe and the Financial Post. I did my degree at University of King's College in 1987. These days, I'm a senior consultant with the Intersol Group in Ottawa - while I am no longer write for journalism outlets, I would like to see what's possible in marrying journalism with my interests in social media, open education; communities / networks and change management.