Well, to the Wikieduacator vs. Wikiversity issue I should say, that even it
looks, they are having same aims, the way to fulfill these aims is much
different. When on Wikieducator, they have started with the
presentation/advertising of different schools, projects and learning groups,
then continued with some educational resources for a real time education.
On the other side in Wikiversity, participants build up some courses and
research projects. In the recent year or two English Wikiversity seems to
me, that it hosting learning communities, to organize them a real time
education, something like Moodle does.
I would say, that Wikiversity is still the experimental project, where
schollars go to the depth and to the principals of e-learning and/or
e-learning in the MediaWiki context or Wikimedia environment. So it is like
a pilot project to this kind e-learning, while Wikieducator is more like
based on known methods and ways of e-lerning. And of course, Wikieducater
might in the future adopt, the Wikiversity way, as it has kind of small
headquarters, while the headquarters for whole Wikiversity, is whole
Wikiversity community - so this adoption or its velocity, will not be so
fast in Wikiversity.
And of course it is a small project, so the technical development of
Wikieduactor is much faster. When they realize they want to save pages to
collection in PDF format, they go and implement the extension, while here on
Wikiversity as part of a larger group or projects, we have to wait for
global implementation or to the time, when developer do it. So that is one
factor, which may slowdown the development of Wikiversity. And in general I
would not suspect Wayne nor Eric to pay less attention to Wikiversity,
because they are not taking care just of Wikiversity, but hundreds of other
projects.
Just one interesting point from me to the end, doesn't to have to do nothing
with all of that what was said before. Wikieducator was founded at the same
time as Wikiversity was, while Wikiversity was in discussion for previous 3
years. So it may be possible that Mr. Mackintosh was inspired by
Wikiversity.
Regards,
Juan de Vojníkov
2009/12/1 Leigh Blackall <leighblackall(a)gmail.com>
It would be good to have a page that attempts to
answer the question and
document some history. I have tried to keep abreast of the issues seeing
some very interesting exchanges and debates with the questions largely
remaining unanswered by those who should answer... a small part of me
worries, given the amount of time Eric and Wayne have to give their
projects, that WMF attentions and resources will want to go to
wikieducator.. and that to me would be a disappointment. Most of us here
work in WV with very little backing, so its even more remarkable to see
where WV is on that note.
On 01/12/2009 8:04 PM, "Cormac Lawler" <cormaggio(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2009/12/1 Leigh Blackall <leighblackall(a)gmail.com>
> Can anyone here clarify what the
relationship between the Wikimedia
Foundation and Wikieducator...
Hi Leigh,
Wikieducator is independent of the Wikimedia Foundation - though there are
close personal links. Wayne Mackintosh (Wikieducator founder) is on the
advisory board of the WMF, and Erik Moeller (WMF deputy director) gives
technical support (or something like that) to Wikieducator.
Wikiversity is a WMF project, and therefore hosted on its servers, and
bound to its licensing conditions. Apart from that, the relationship between
the Wikimedia Foundation and individual projects is slightly ambiguous - in
general, the WMF does not intervene in project-level issues, and will
support project initiatives on a case-by-case basis (and according to
community support).
The article you linked to was associating Wikieducator with the Mediawiki
software platform, rather than the Wikimedia Foundation. (These two often
get confused!) However, as implied above, the lines here are often blurry;
and, of course, many people are active on both sites ;-), and both sites
have similar missions/scope. Furthermore, high profile collaborations
between Wikieducator and WMF (such as successful funding bids) make their
links more visible - whereas Wikiversity is within the WMF family, and is
therefore implied in any funding that WMF receives.
(Do we need an educational resource on this issue? :-))
Cormac
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