Wikiflexion/Intro
Welcome to Wikiflexion
AbstractThis article presents a collaborative reflection on wikieducator. The aim here is to examine the strategies applied by this community, how it invests in creating ways to encourage development of free knowledge and relevant content that would help people on a large scale. The concepts of wikieducator,the motivations of this community and the constraints that inadvertently crop up are explored in a methodological and technical point of view. The report relates some of the theoretical avenues – connectivism, constructivism, collectivism –to the approach adopted by the wikieducator family. Personal reflective opinions are addressed by the collaborators of the article, by sharing their personal experiences of the wikieducator workshop within the platform. Eventually, the findings lead to some recommendations to enhance the use of the wikieducator, enrich its content and extend the dynamic wikieducator family. |
IntroductionRecent years have seen an overwhelming increase in the demand for higher education. A few years ago, figures for full time students had crossed the 100 million mark and since then,these have kept on increasing steadily and alarmingly. These statistics speak for themselves and have started awaking people to the importance of finding alternative ways of imparting knowledge rather than within the four walls of a closed institution. A possible remedy to this issue may lie in the Open educational resources movement, a culture of sharing which aims at increasing access to knowledge via information and communication technologies. The term Open Educational Resources first came to use in 2002 at a conference hosted by UNESCO. Since then more and more institutions and individuals are sharing their digital learning resources over the Internet openly and for free, as Open Educational materials. The development of social communities such as wikis that build up around common projects and ideas encourage the donation and use of open content data. Information on wikis can be easily accessed, modified, shared and used by any individuals, ranging from amateurs to professionals. Hence this movement comes to us with its set of advantages and some constraints that also need to be taken into consideration One of these prominent wikis which is gaining more and more participation and recognition each day is wikieducator. Wikieducators’ competent team works in collaboration with the free culture movement and aims at the production of open content information covering the whole education curriculum by 2015. Some may say this is not a very feasible project while others may vouch for the challenge. So far, this small team from the university of Mauritius firmly believes it to be ambitious yet realizable. Following the quote, which says, “believe you can and you will”, participants should all work hand in hand every step of the way towards the realization of this most noble collaborative project which will soon provide a broad and in-depth resource well from which people around the world will dig information from. This work will focus on the analysis of individual experiences of the wikieducator workshop by a group of students from the university of mauritius from various theoretical perspectives
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