WikiEducator

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WikiEducator
Website	www.wikieducator.org
Mission Statement	"Working collaboratively towards a free version of the education curriculum by 2015"
Commercial?	No
Type of project	Free, Open and Online Distance Learning
Location	Vancouver, Canada
Owner	Owned by community & Supported by Commonwealth of Learning
Founder	Dr. Wayne Mackintosh
Established	May 2006
Funding	Funding from Commonwealth of Learning and [1] from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the leading proponents of the open educational resources (OER) movement. The project also has programmatic support from UNESCO[2].

[edit] Introduction

WikiEducator is an online community project founded by Dr. Wayne Mackintosh ^{[3] [4] [5] [6]} for working collaboratively towards a free version of the education curriculum. It was launched in 2006. WikiEducator aims to build a thriving and sustainable global community dedicated to the design, development and delivery of free content for learning in realization of a free version of the education curriculum by 2015.

The project has adopted a community governance model and hence it is owned by the community represented by a Community Council. The WikiEducator community has so far networked thousands of Educators and many Academic bodies to realize its vision of open and free educational Curriculum.

[edit] Focus areas

The main focus areas of WikiEducator are:

• building capacity in the use of Mediawiki and related free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring of free content;
• developing free content for use in schools, polytechnics, universities, vocational education institutions and informal education settings;
• facilitating the establishment of community networks and collaboration with existing free content initiatives in education;
• fostering new technologies that will widen access, improve quality and reduce the cost associated with providing education, primarily through the use of free content.^[7]

[edit] Strategy

WikiEducator aims to build a thriving and sustainable global community dedicated to the design, development and delivery of free content for learning in realisation of a free version of the education curriculum by 2015. ^{[8] [9]}.

There are 3 main development phases planned.

• Phase 1: Establishing foundations (May 2006 - Dec 2007)
• Phase 2: Scaling up free content development (Jan 2008 - Dec 2008)
• Phase 3: Sustainable implementation of free content in education (Jan 2009 - )

[edit] History

[edit] From a desktop machine to www

Dr. Wayne Mackintosh has set up the prototype of WikiEducator in a desktop machine and the very first edit was made on the desktop prototype on 13 February 2006 ^[10]. He has registered the WikiEducator domain name on 12 February 2006 in New Zealand, which was not put into production until April 2006. In April 2006, before his entry as Education Specialist in COL on 1st May, the prototype was moved onto a hosted server with the financial assistance of COL.

Since its launching the WikiEducator has acquired a firm user base (and is expanding)^[11] especially among the educators from different parts of the globe, who now own the project. WikiEducator is committed to an open community governance model, and established an Interim International Advisory Group to serve as a means of involving the community until the project had grown large enough to establish a governance structure through democratic processes. Subsequently a Community Council was ellected to office during Septemebr, 2008 ^[12].

[edit] Country Pages

WikiEducator project envisages development of Country Pages ^[13] by Educators participating from each country. Country pages help in enlisting, coordinating and reporting the WikiEducator related activities in each participating country. So far 62 Country Pagess have been created by Volunteer Educators.

India has gone a further step ahead by establishing India Chapter of WikiEducator^[14][15] with a 6 member Interim Advisory Board. The India chapter was inaugurated by Dr. M.S Swaminathan, eminent Agricultural Scientist and Member of Parliament on 15/11/2008 in a national event held at India International Centre, New Delhi ^[16].

[edit] Technical specifications

• Mediawiki
• Kaltura
• Print to PDF
• Collections
• Web Chat
• Liquid Threads
• RSS Extension

[edit] See also

• Wikiversity

[edit] External links

1. WikiEducator
2. Transnational Qualification Framework node in WikiEducator
3. Commonwealth of Learning
4. Commonwealth Computer Navigator's Certificate

[edit] Notes