I'm happy to answer what I can about the extension.
(If your language isn't fully translated, you can
translated it at translatewiki.)
The extension has some fundamental technical shortcomings
related to the way MediaWiki handles the content of course
pages, and we're recommending that other wikis not start using
it until after those get fixed. For those interested in the
details, here is the tracking bug for that set of problems:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43975
. All the "Depends on" bugs are the issues that we're going to
fix within the next few months.
The look of the extension will also be upgraded in the next
few months. You can see a rough partial roadmap for what we
plan to work on here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Education_Program/Roadmap
(If you have ideas for it, please talk with me, post to this
mailing list, or add things to the ideas list at the bottom of
the roadmap.)
Even though we're suggesting the extension not be used for
more education programs until around August, you can--and
probably should--start the process soon if you think you'll
want it on your home wikis. The basic requirement before it
can be deployed is to demonstrate consensus on your wiki that
it is wanted. I did that on English Wikipedia with this
Request for Comment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Education_Program_extension
(You don't need to have an RfC as complicated as that one; a
simple "yes/no" discussion would suffice if you want the
default configuration.) If you begin this process, please let
me or LiAnna know (or better yet, post to this list) so we can
keep an eye on it and document how it goes so that others can
learn from it.
This page documents how we're using it on English
Wikipedia, including the "course page wizard" template I built
to make it easier to create decent course pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Course_pages
(The "course page wizard" is sort of a hack; later on, I hope
to build something more user-friendly into the extension
itself.)
Cheers,
Sage