Talk:Metawikieducator/Learning4Content/Proposal outlines/Archive

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Learning contract

Research - 10 March 2007

Bookmarks

I'll attempt to meet this deadline (March 10) though I'm on the road from now until then. Here's my preliminary findings based on my del.icio.us bookmarks over the years. http://del.icio.us/leighblackall/colresearch

Gee! It would be nice if these mediawikis could paste in hypertext straight out, so I could simply copy the list from del.icio.us (or any other list of hypertext links for that matter) and paste it in without having to fix it all up... I haven't been watching the progress of mediawiki development, but the richness of features in other wiki platforms (such as wikispaces and its free removal of ads in spaces for educational purposes) makes it even more of a challenge to draw newbies into Wikieducator... even though the simplicity of mediawiki makes it work far more reliably - this is not so evident to the first time users...

Anyway, I'll try and find some time to look for more links and comments on the training in the use of wikis for education and add them to that del.icio.us link above... --Leighblackall 23:12, 3 March 2007 (CET)

From the West African experience - what's different in New Zealand

Note - this discusion is also posted on the FLOSS4Edu WestAfricaReport discussion page.

Have just read the FLOSS4Edu WestAfricaReport and note the encouraging success. I have run similar workshops here in New Zealand with similar success, but with one notable difference - the teachers see it as alternative work practice, not a solution. I would like to see a change in practice where working in wikieducator or similar became a primary process in resource development, but at the moment it is seen as quite an alternative / almost subversive way of working. Concerns raised have been "how can we control the content?", "how can we be sure of accuracy?", "what do you mean anyone can edit!?". These are typical questions coming from teachers who are very used to publishers providing text books and assured resources. The report does not mention any such concern in West Africa. Does this mean it isn't present, or are they simply not seen as important concerns?... --Leighblackall 22:44, 18 February 2007 (CET)

It would be fascinating to find out whether there actually are some particular cultural differencea at play here in regards to 'quality', 'accuracy', 'anyone', and the issues that we regularly face when introducing people to working this way down here? We know that we have particularly ego-centric views of knowledge, more focused on individual contributions than on group ones. Perhaps Nicolas can shed some more light in his view on how people in West Africa approached the idea of authoring on the wiki. brent 23:28, 18 February 2007 (CET)

Here, these issues should be more intense because, of course, of the economic situation. However, it a surprise they do not prevent the spread of open content production. As I have discussed above, this is being handled effectively at the individual level. The individual is getting skills that he/she can use for his personal recognition through contribution and also for the benefit of the institution he/she is working for. So this becomes a win-win situation for both the individual and the institution.It is very clear that content that has been published for their respective Universities/Institutions should not be put on wikieducator and what should go there should be their personal content. Of course there are those personal benefits affiliated with developing content in a community.This is what we highlight and this is what we are looking for.There are other factors that are making our ways easier:

  1. There is no African content out there. There is pride in being the first to take this initiative and to begin the process of "putting Africa" out there.
  2. In Africa, we do not have a problem of sharing and it is natural to many people to share as it is certainly in our upbringing.
  3. There is alot of regional co-operation between educational institutions especially in the area of elearning and ODL. Most of the proprietary solutions adopted (say by AVU) have been costly and have prevented many Universities from participating in this. The Universities and other educational institutions are seeking for low cost solutions. Fortunately this look promising as it also involves collaboration with other institutions therefore "costs" are bound to go lower.

So in light of the above, it is easier for us to adopt this approach as it favors both the community, the person and the big boss - "The University/Employer".

Nicholas 21:58, 27 February 2007 (CET)

Comunity status and recognition - The way to go?

Leigh, Nicholas

I sense that community recognition and community status approach is the way to go. This is a community project driven by individuals - organisational sanction is not a prerequisite for participation. I think we should aim for a situation where institutions will respect and recognize community members who have acquired some level of recognition within the Community. For example - five years down the track, a teacher who has earned a particular level of recognition within the WikiEducator community would be a better appointment than someone who hasn't. Examples would be that such individuals

  • would have demonstrated their worth as educators and their mastery of contemporary Web 2.0 technologies.
  • would have demonstrated their skills as team-players within a large democratic system and will be able to show it by virtue of the logs in the system.
  • would have demonstrated their commitment to developing quality learning resources
  • bring with them the ability to save organisational time and cost through the smart implementation of free content in the classroom - freeing up time to do what educators should be doing - i.e facilitating learning and providing support.

This is why I like the INGOT's approach - there is a status hierarchy within the community - but this earned by differing levels of participation in the community. It would also be worth exploring the Debian community - a package manager in the Debian community has guru geek status. I'm not sure how we replicate this in education - that's why experts like yourselves need to think about this <smile>. Ingots has a hierarchy ranging from bronze to platinum - each level linked to certain contributions in the community. A tentative hierachy for Learning4Content might be:

  • Level 1 - Completed training in basic wiki editing skills, signed a learning contract and developed one lesson on WikiEducator. There is no requirement to actually undergo face-to-face or eLearning training - but a requirement to demonstrate proficiency by the lesson you have developed. (We can specify requirements for the lesson - eg use of formatting features, inclusion of iDevices, use of images etc.)
  • Level 2 - The development of 5 lessons including evidence of how these content resources where used in a real teaching-learning situation. Perhaps a mini-portfolio documenting this on the User:page is required.
  • Level 3 - Quality assurer of WikiEducator material. For example keeping a log book documenting the quality improvements of 10 lessons on Wikieducator with bullet points explaining improvements - this can be validated by examining user contributions. Level 3 can also help with validating Level 1 and Level 2 applicants.
  • Level 4 - WikiEducator trainer - Running a training workshop or eLearning session for at least 10 Level 1 wannabes. These trainers use the OER workshop materials provided on WikiEducator
  • Level 5 - Quality control - this is where candidates are given bureaucrat status within the Wiki with privileges to delete pages, manage users etc.
  • Level 6 - WikiEducator Innovator - Demonstrable innovations within the community taking the technology and processes to a next level.

Just a few thoughts to think about - how communicate and implement this is up to experts like yourselves.

The strategic challenge is to move the Wiki from a play pen for content development to real implementation in the classroom. We get this right - then we're making a difference to education. Chat to you soon. --Mackiwg 08:11, 4 March 2007 (CET)

After thought - if you can think of a few ideas for a graphic icon representing these levels, let us know and our graphic designer can work on a concept that could be included on the User:page. --Mackiwg 08:16, 4 March 2007 (CET)


Hi Nicholas. Wayne. Regarding the status symbols, first thing that comes to mind are the status symbols some bloggers wear from time to time. It is usually a little badge graphic they put on their blog templates, "I'm an A-Lister", "I'm a B-Lister", "Top 100 Edublogger". These things have done the rounds already, and some people are quite critical of them, pointing to the effect it has on long tial development and diversity of thought.. but I kinda see it as inevitable. So if Wikieducator was to consider a 'wearable' status symbol for blogs, we should consider the criticisms carefully. But that would only be one way to promote a wikieducator status.. I'll have to think about others..
I'm attending the TALO SwapMeet in Adelaide in 2 days. I was planning to focus on this milestone there, by interviewing people and gathering ideas and impressions from a large group of web2 teachers and critical thinkers. This puts me a little beind the deadline, but I see it as a good opportunity to get the best info within the timeframe.

--Leighblackall 01:06, 7 March 2007 (CET)

Leigh apology for the delay - I'm still on international mission, and have not been able to respond until now. I see that your intereactions at TALO SwapMeet have resulted in one or two folk registering accounts on WikiEducator. This kind of expertise will be invaluable in helping the community along the right path. I share your reservations about criticisms of a wearable status- and am not sure how well this will go down with the teacher community. Regarding status - I was thinking along the lines of skills aquired and put to use within the WikiEducator community. See my initial thoughts on the levels above. I'm not sure what typology would suit (bronze, silver, gold etc is universal - but perhaps we can come up with something more exciting.) Not to worry about the slippage on this first milestone - your work at TALO SwapMeet is more important! Off to catch a plane ... --Mackiwg 08:22, 10 March 2007 (CET)

Flexibility and reusability needed

There are many things I need to comment on regarding these apparent differences between our regions. Safe to say that to succeed in this project brief, we are going to have to find the similarities if we are going to develop a system that can be implemented in both regions.

I've just returned from the TALOSwapMeet07 in which there were several people there who have an interest in developing education, nationally and internationally. The participants were from Australia, with online participation via skypecast from the USA and Canada. On several occasions I brought up free content and the wikieducator platform. There is a general aversion to being asked to move to a new platform when the contemporary Internet (in Australia, the US and Canada at least) is in content aggregation.

What this means is that individuals continue to work in their preferred platforms and formats - like blogs, video blogs, audio blogs, slideshows, other wikis etc, and so long as they use an appropriate copyright license, initiatives like wikieducator should look towards aggregating free content from all the other areas. This gives individuals a lot of freedom and makes wikieducator a more dynamic platform.

Clearly this is a significant challenge to wikieducator, but I think at the very least it is well worth some discussion. Aggregation does not necessarily exclude content creation in wikieducator - it would compliment it actually - but it does suggest a change in how content creation is approached, and how we consider content.

Aggregation needs to be two way. The wikieducator platform should not only try to make it possible to embed as much media as possible from other sources (see the success in the wikispaces.com platform for ideas), and to draw in content via XML, RSS and HTML, but it should make its content available for export/import in this way as well. What this means in practical terms is that people won't have to choose between one way or another. The flexibility offered in two way content aggregation means people can continue working in other formats and platforms (such as blogs), but quickly present the same content in another platform such as wikieducator (to name but one free content initiative).

Take this message I am typing for an example. Personally, I would prefer to be writing it in my blog. Apart from the obvious ownership, distribution and wider readership benefits this message gets by writing to my blog, if this media wiki could import from my blog quickly and easily, then it could appear here as well. Or even the other way around! The wider the message is the better for both wikieducator AND me.

But I can think of a better example. A teacher decides to build a page in wikieducator. Why? because they need a quick place to make a 'handout' for their lesson. They have a collection of flickr pictures, brief blog posts, a slideshare.net item, and even a couple of youtube movies. Now this teacher is thinking. Even though they are going to build a very multi media page, they have print and low bandwidth in mind and will design to meet that need as well. (80% of rural NZ is on slow dial up). Wikieducator easily embeds media just as well as wikispaces.com can - but wikieducator offers more than wikispaces. No adds, wikimedia development, wider community facilitated by COL to assist in maintaining the page. But there is one other thing wikieducator offers - a line of embed code that makes it very easy to display the resulting wiki page in another site, such as a course blog.

So in short, I think we need:

  1. to be able to embed more media. Images from other sites (I think this can already be done), youtube videos etc, and text content via RSS and XML.
  2. to offer single pages out with a simple copy paste line of code that will display the page in another location and be always up to date as the wikipage gets edits.
  3. Oh, and while I'm at it.. the IRC channel is an excellent development. Unfortunately, IRC clients are blocked in most schools over here, but let's ignore that for now. Its probably already being developed, but a chat facility for every page and/or collection of pages would be good too.

--Leighblackall 11:09, 11 March 2007 (CET)

Leigh: just a few quick thoughts before more detailed response later. Blogged a little about something that I think fits into the scope of what you're getting at, and possibly a new way of looking at the aggregation/reuse of content, here: Ceci n'est pas une pipe but also see this post by Scott Wilson: http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=20070226132022 .The Web chat on WikiEducator although it technically is IRC should be fine for most schools etc because it's actually just cgi, ie. a refreshing web page. It uses the same kind of web protocol as this wiki does, so should work fine for most people. More later... it's late. by the way had a great time listening in via skype on the swapmeet, definately want to make the next one in person though. brent 11:09, 12 March 2007 (CET)
Leigh - the point about content aggregation is a good one. We're having a strategic think tank session soon to plot out the road map features that will be required of MW software in the future and we'll add these ideas onto the discussion agenda. The wiki must become more attuned to the availability of other Web 2.0 technologies and how we can incorporate these when creating learning resources for the classroom. --Mackiwg 18:06, 12 March 2007 (CET)

Workshop activities - 15 March 2007

Ideas for learning contract - 31 March 2007

It occurs to me that there needs to be more (and there IS more) to offer teachers than wiki training. The problem here in New Zealand is that there is not yet big enough awareness of wikis and their usefulness to the teaching and learning context, so offering wiki training in return for 'free content' may not be a good enough offer - initially. But Wikieducator offers much more that would be of interest in a possible contract. For example and to start ideas:

  1. Wiki workshop
  2. Open formats workshop
  3. Free, reliable and unlimited online storage, mirroring and serving of content with URLs (in other words - a fully functioning digital content repository, which is what you have already, but sounds nice in the offer)
  4. Support and assisted coordination of translation of content
  5. Wikieducator facilitated content writing collaboration (much the same as what happening here and now)
  6. 24/7 resource moderation to help ensure quality and accuracy
  7. Opportunities for face to face meetings with collaborators, short term teaching work in Wikieducator countries
  8. Certificate saying "I support free and open learning all over the world by contributing teaching materials to Wikieducator" (will add this one to a comment on the Certificate section)
  9. Copyright management (in other words - Creative Commons Attribution. Would be even better if Wikieducator could offer a tracking service for use of content as well)

--Leighblackall 22:28, 18 February 2007 (CET)

Leigh - these are excellent ideas. You're right - there IS more. That's why I like the INGOTs approach. They have levels of achievement using an approach of recognition through community esteem. I would love to see a spectrum of workshops and tutorials that take educators through phases until they acquire some form of "Guru" status by the community. Almost like acquiring the status of a Debian developer with the rights to maintain packages. In the Debian world if you get to this level - you've arrived! Now I'm not sure how this translates for teachers and education - and is why we have experts like yourselves helping us ...;-).
I see the first Workshops (the morning and 3 day alternative) as the starting point in a range of capacity building initiatives. This first workshop is - Hey teacher! (reminds me of Pink Floyd and an age give away!) - let me introduce you to this amazing world of wikis! There is a whole bunch of other neat stuff out there which will tell you about later, but for now lets start with the wiki. To let you in on this secret of wikis - you must promise to develop one lesson of free content for us. If you don't - sorry this secret is not for you. Sure - the numbers will be reduced, but this is a self selecting mechanism that promotes sustainability. Its the approach used by tuxlabs. Thing is - we don't want to waste time and money with the free riders - we're looking for commitment. I have no idea how this will work among the teacher community - but hypothesise that this is one of the successes of Wikipedia. While wiki skills are easily acquired - getting over the stumbling block of that first edit, is a major hurdle. But then you can do something that others haven't achieved yet. In the early phases we've got to focus limited resources on the champions - those that will go out and convert the world. --Mackiwg 00:20, 19 February 2007 (CET)
"Self selecting mechanism", yes I see it, and see that it is so much in the way we put it forward. Up until now I have been going for maximum exposure on the hope that the more that see, the more that will... but now I think I can see a better way. Thanks. Am thinking more about it... --Leighblackall 01:32, 19 February 2007 (CET)
I think self section is best for this phase of the development - I could be wrong, so don't take my suggestion as gospel - Once we have a core self-sustaining group, then a maximime exposure strategy can follow. Were in the innovation phase, early adopters will follow - then crossing the chasim into early majority will need the mass exposure approach. That said open to ideas. Fortunately the resources developed are easily migrated into the mass approach - but I think we need a community of champions to carry the mass phase. --Mackiwg 02:40, 19 February 2007 (CET)

Interesting discussion going on here. From my experiences, I know it will work where you combine an initial training to selected educators with already some incline towards digital education/elearning. These may constitute of groups from:

  1. National Open Universities and other higher educational institutions
  2. Private sector and Government organizations keen on educating their people through elearning and thus have already an inclination towards digital content production.

The challenge for me would be how do we attract and retain these kind of people to produce content in WikiEducator and not in "something else". How do we get them to become part of the initial group of "preachers" and early change adopters?. We have to educate them on IP and how a license like CC-BY-SA would be a better approach to proprietary content at the level of an individual. We must also highlight the benefits of developing content in open format rather than closed proprietary formats? We need to come up with very clear and simple responses to this very common questions. The advantage is that, at a personal level, people dont mind producing and "giving away" content. There is a problem with institutional contributions.

I have been thinking of an approach - Tested both in Nairobi and Accra.

  1. You select a group of people with the characteristics I have mentioned above. You give them an initial training and you ask them to form a community bound to produce content in wikieducator.
  2. You introduce the model for Learn4Content and say that for you to participate in this initially you need to show that you have the skills to be able to train other in wiki. The only way to do this is to develop an extra lesson on wikieducator on your own within X amount of days.
  3. Once you develop a lesson within X amount of days, you can organise a workshop to train X number of people in your country/speciality/ etc. COL/WikiEducator/FLOSS4Edu will provide a small token to you as a facilitator and therefore you must work with your institution to support you in any other logistic arrangement.After this you will be a "certified wiki educator trainer" and you can train as many people as you like and they can also be certified after they meet the criteria above. For you personally to continue remaining certified you will need to produce X amount of articles/lessons in WikiEducator per year.

Now, the problem may be that we do not have the funds for the "retainer" and we will need to sustain this. An idea of sustainability would be to include in this contract, a disclaimer that says we can use the content so developed for fund raising purposes. Like a club will offer some services for the benefit of its members. We are NOT selling the content at all but we want to use it to negotiate support for funds, to support more content developers and establish "open digital villages" where people can have free internet access as long as they are producing x number of articles/lessons in WikiEducator per week. This will have the effect of generating more content on WikiEducator which we can use again and again to raise funds to sustain continuous content production. We produce more content, we fund raise more, we establish more open digital villages, we produce more content....and the circle goes on and on.

At least I know here in Africa this can work as I have discussed it with a number of people.By doing this we will tap into a group of people who can participate in content production although they are currently excluded due to the high costs of access. e.g the University Student - A University Student can produce content for a "Primary School Pupil" yet right now the average University Student may not afford internet connectivity costs. How do we include such a person- With knowledge that can be translated to content and yet because of financial constraints cannot participate?

Nicholas Kimolo 21:09, 27 February 2007 (CET)

Hi Nicholas, your responses here and below have really helped me to get a better perspective on this. Where-as before I was thinking of teachers from all disciplines getting involved in this contract, I now see that I should be targeting community more - where the motivations maybe more in line with social justice primarily. Here we have several people employed in "Community Learning Centres". They are on the whole a very different people to the teachers. Their attitude and approach to things like this is from more of a social equity perspective - where as teachers are generally more concerned with student numbers in their course. This is a product of our education system having to pay its own way in many respects.
I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to bring the two together more - but perhaps you are right to say that we need to spend more time at the grass routes and social justice agencies, and let the top end come to that when things are better under way.
So from here I will think primarily about the Community Learning Centre facilitators and their unique motivations, and save the other incentives that are targeting general teachers for later. If other community agencies come my way, I will be sure to ask for their prespective on wikis and a wiki trainer token.--Leighblackall 01:25, 28 February 2007 (CET)

Refinements to incorporate - 15 April 2007

Draft learning contract - 20 April 2007

http://wikieducator.org/Metawikieducator/Learning4Content/Contract

Wiki OER Workshop toolkit

Workshop checklist, agenda and ideas - 10 March 2007

Feedback incorporated - 17 March 2007

Workshop resources - 20 April 2007

Pilot test - 31 May 2007

Refine resources, develop facilitators guide - 31 May 2007

Refine tutorials

At the first instance, I think we should get the self paced Wikieducator tutorial as good as possible. Once the self paced tutorials are clear and efficient to use (as they mostly are already), we can assume that likely facilitators will be able to easily orientate themselves into the resources and quickly think about ways to adopt them into teaching strategies in their local contexts. If the tutorials are too taxing to orientate and understand, then we can't expect good use of them in non self paced settings. Already they are excellent but what follows here are stream of conciousness notes as I go through the tutorials, looking for confusing elements or things that are perhaps not needed - efficiencies. Please note that I am not familiar with the original intention of the tutorials, and am thinking of a broad number of possible users in this. I have added these notes in the discussion pages of each tutorial. Please delete if you see that as unhelpful.

  • 2.1: Now that the COL pilot dates have passed, can we take off the specific references to COL staff and pilot testing? In short: no more 2.1
  • 2.2: I don't see why the LMS is needed. Or as the primary vehicle for elearning... I can certainly see the use of a communication channel to support socially constructed learning, but I don't think that the use of Moodle helps with that. At the most, I think the Moodle platform should be an optional extra if people who are self pacing through the tutorial need interaction. At the moment, Moodle is presented up front as the first step to take before getting into the content, where as self paced is a poor cousin. Perhaps Moodle should be one of a few options at the end of each tutorial. EG "do you want more on this? Try the Instant Message channel where you can talk with others instantly, or join login to the elearning platform and learn more about this topic there..." or something like that. This is a soft suggestion and I could swing around on it. My main thinking is that the self paced nature of the resources should be stand alone, and not to risk confusion in another environment agian like an LMS.
  • 2.3: Is it OK to add external video links? There is a really good screencast by Jon Udel looking at the evolution of a particular wikipedia page. Perhaps we could take key frames out of the video and transcribe Jon's audio for those who are not on Broadband let alone the Internet.
  • 2.4: Would be great to have a transcript of Wayne's audio avalable.

Should the activity in step 2 and 3 be combined as they are almost the same? I see the value of breaking up the tutorial into multiple sections, linked by the green arrows, but is there another way to present smaller chunks of information without having to load another subpage each time (very frustrating on low bandwidth and risks creating navigational problems). Is there a way to have all the sections on the one page, but with the option to only shows sections at a time? A bit like a CSS drop down that exposes the content in the next step - rather than a whole new page? That way there could be the option to display all of the content at once (for more efficient PDF printing purposes, and easier reuse on other systems) or just reveal sections at a time without needing to wait for the new data to pass.

  • 2.5: Great audio! Transcript? A good tutorial in my view. Comments regarding green arrows same as above.
  • 2.6: Load the "Creat Sandbox" activity on to the first page where it is referenced. Linking to the second page as well as through the green arrow creates a small amount of navigational stress. Over all a great tutorial though. However the FAQ remain unanswered... I dunno the answers myself.
  • 2.7: A graphic that depicts the structured web and the wiki-same-level would be helpful to go withthe audio. Needs a final green arrow to return to the main menu for the tutorials.
  • 2.8: Woops! No attribution on the Creative Commons image.. needed because the original image is not by me. Without the linked attribution, the follow through attribution is lost. There is reference to a "podcast" as though it was an audio file.. a podcast is a type of feed.. and a linked audio file is a linked audio file - not a podcast.
  • 2.11: Yikes, ramping up the difficulty here. Very technical language being used in the intro. Not a problem accept that I'm not sure that it needs to be expressed so technically, as it is quite simple. Does it need to refer so heavily to eXe? I think it is important to point out that the templates are only available in wikis that have loaded the tempates.
  • 2.12: I think this section would be affected by my suggestion in 2.4 not to use sub pages. Its a good section, but I think my suggestion makes sense, so would require a slight rewrite here...

I'm ready to go with setting up workshops now if need be. I need these tutorials in an all-in-one pdf, and a discussion-action about the changes I propose. As far as the steps beyond, such as a credit system and status etc.. still stewing on that one.. I find it hard to think about because I haven't seen it in action in the context of my own work.

As you know, I am thinking of ways to use these wikitutorials in existing teacher training. I also intend to take the workshops to our Communinity Learning Centres, but reckon they will get more use in teacher training... --Leighblackall 08:50, 26 March 2007 (CEST)

Leigh, i've been working thru the Tutorials today and am about half-way through. Have removed the references to the pilots and joined the two activities in 2.4. brent 09:16, 26 March 2007 (CEST)

Certificate

As mentioned in a suggested point for the contract, a certificate issued that recognises the individual or Institutional contribution would be nice. But if Wikieducator could work with a group like UNESCO or similar and negotiate recognition from internationally recognised certificate in say - Open and Distance Learning / wikis that a teacher could use towards their qualifications, then that would be a big offer. Not only would Wikieducator be helping to solve a global problem of teacher qualification and skills, but would be offering certification that often goes towards pay rises and the like here in New Zealand. --Leighblackall 22:28, 18 February 2007 (CET)

Certification is not easy - It helps if the country has a Qualifications Framework, but still not easy. Getting certification will involve working with the Ministry in moving this forward. UNESCO is coming out with a publication pretty soon on the ICT skills requirements for educators. Let's wait for this - which should be ready in March I understand. Then we can follow up with UNESCO and national education Ministries on this. The difficulty is that agencies like UNESCO and COL have no authority to certify - but we can lobby with governments to move forward in this direction. I think the best strategy is to get some groundswell around free content development. Something concrete that you can show decision makers. Then the next steps around certification become easier. --Mackiwg 00:56, 19 February 2007 (CET)
I contacted UNESCO when they announced their ICTs for teachers project. I wanted to help out, but received no reply. Bad sign hey... but an internationally recognised certificate is needed more and more these days. But recognising the need is all I'm good at. Wouldn't really know where to start in getting there. I think your ground swell objective is the only place to start, though an Int Cert would certainly help with ground swell.. --Leighblackall 01:35, 19 February 2007 (CET)
Unesco is a big organisation - so don't feel bad if you didn't get a reply. I know a couple of good folk in the organisation and will establish links to see how we could potentially move this forward. --Mackiwg 02:58, 19 February 2007 (CET)

I think if we try this approach of "formally" receiving external support(UNESCO/Government Ministries etc) for our certificates we will err as this will prove such a big and challenging task and beyond our control. We need to reach out for quick wins. Remember our strengths are at an individual/grass root level and not very strong at the corporate level. I know for sure very few "corporates" - Universities, Colleges etc will support this form of initiative at a corporate level because it is in their interest to "withhold and charge for content", at least for now. It is the wikieducator community that will create their own certification. It is them who will build respect into that certification and this will be achievable through peer recognition on content produced and authored. This is how other groups like the Information System Auditor and Control Association(ISACA) and other professional bodies have build their certifications. What I am saying is that, the wikieducator community has the ability to build or break their certification. Endorsements from "external" parties will come as we progress along. It should be clear that this Certification is not from COL or Government Institution but it is a general recognition from the "largest" community of educators producing open content that "I possess very good skills as a content producer and trainer".

As a way forward, I would think we should be able to devise a way of community recognition that will:

  1. Promote continuous content production and peer review
  2. Encourage growth and returns to good content developers within our community.

If we meet the requirements above I suggest we move forward full steam on certification. The Certification should not be permanent but one should be able to "loose" it. Its like the way a token works in token ring networks.

Nicholas 21:41, 27 February 2007 (CET)

Alignment with existing courses

In Australia, every tertiary teacher must complete the Training And Assessment certificate to practice. In this course are 2 units of interest: Develop and evaluate e-learning resources and Research and design e-learning resources (note: at the bottom of each of these pages is the option to lift these training units in mediawiki text). It was discussed at the TALOswapmeet07 that if the wikieducator courses were designed to compliment these units, with the right promotion they would be used in the training of all Australian tertiary teachers. It would be more difficult to do this in New Zealand as it does not commonly use a training standard like Australia does. Dunno about other countries. --Leighblackall 10:12, 13 March 2007 (CET)

Digital villages

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