A group of Otago Polytechnic teachers who have been exploring wikieducator met today.

  1. Helen
  2. William
  3. Phil
  4. Wendy
  5. Kim
  6. Hillary
  7. James
  8. Tony
  9. Thanasi

and myself… did I miss anyone.

Here’s a central record of work done by this group so far…

Helen initiated the meeting through the email list and was hoping to get more coordination among staff who are exploring the platform. For most it is very early days in their look at wikieducator, and many had not met before. We spent a little while looking at Helen’s start with her Peer Tutoring resource. We wondered if it was tending to more like a Wikibook which would means it would be considered more like an item listed in a resource page… I showed the structure I am proposing we use. There was some talk around this, especially the idea that students will likely only interface with the learning activity sheets, and the content of these sheets might not even be viewed on the wiki! Instead they may be viewed through a blog, an email, a PDF print out or what ever communication context is suitable. The wiki is the development platform in other words… This idea arose out of concerns that the wiki was very text heavy and not all that stimulating. I wrote something along the lines of re-contextualising wiki content in my “wish list” to wikieducator… namely the ability to embed content from the wiki into say, a blog.. The Print to PDF button could be a very handy feature to explore (see the bottom of the left navigation menu on Wikieducator)…

We then talked a bit about the use of blogs in courses and specifically Tony’s use of a blog with embedded media to support his face to face classes. We discussed the possibilities of this and how it could go further.

Phil brought up concerns of creating content in the wiki and then having difficulties within the institution with others that may not yet appreciate the value of open resources. This is a concern, but we do have the endorsement from senior management at least to be exploring this platform. Hopefully this will be enough to ward off any troubles with middle managers reacting to something that is not yet fully understood.

Thanks to Helen for calling the meeting, and to everyone who made it. I hope we can all make good progress and that others will organise little meetings like this so we can ideas and actions flowing together.