[Wikiversity-l] [WikiEducator] Re: wikiversity/wikieducator

[Cormac Lawler]

Hi, I would like to clear up a few of what I see as misunderstandings in
this thread (and absolutely not necessarily in the mail I'm replying to
:-))...

There is a perception that Wikiversity is more oriented around the developed
than the developing world. This is completely untrue. The fact that a
majority of the people in Wikiversity right now are from developed countries
is because it does not have the same exposure, connections, and
organisational background that Wikieducator has. It is true that
Wikieducator is in large part oriented towards the developing world - but
that does not mean that Wikiversity is somehow the opposite. On the contrary
- a large (and core) part of the Wikimedia community have spent years
actively searching for ways to service the developing world, and to increase
participation from the developing world (for one example see <
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikipedia_Academies>).

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is *not* a US-centric organisation - in its
goals, in its operation (though it is based in the US), nor in its funding -
what Brent pointed out is that *Wikieducator* has had funding from a US body
(as well as the CoL), and so there is, again, no clear distinction on a
US/developed/ing world level. *Both* organisations have a variety of modes
of funding - though Wikimedia is predominantly reliant on public donations,
meaning that it is in a continual struggle for funds. I would say this is
much more the reason behind the WMF not appearing to some people (including
Brent) to do a lot for Wikiversity - it is absolutely not the case that the
WMF doesn't "give a toss" - again, quite the opposite. That things don't get
done very quickly is quite simply because the WMF is still evolving into a
structured organisation, and having inevitable teething problems along the
way (as Brent points out). But the fact that Wikieducator has had funding
from UNESCO does not mean that it is somehow more international - it is down
to it having a better evolved organisational  context (even if that is
simply "Wayne" :-) - in other words, I don't know exactly how Wikieducator
is organised). And more organisational (as opposed to community) oversight
of the technology is also why Wikieducator has been more free to experiment
with the technical extrensions than Wikiversity has (though this is
something I wonder about from a WMF perspective, I must admit).

Oh yes - Wikiversity is for content too! I know some people have argued
against this (for various reasons), but Wikiversity is absolutely set up to
develop a repository of educational content - as well as trying to develop a
wiki-based learning space. This latter agenda much more reflects the
interests of a few core Wikiversity people - including myself, Brent,
JWSchmidt, and others - than the whole Wikiversity/Wikimedia community.

That's more or less the parts of this discussion that I was worried about. I
think Leigh asked good questions, but I fear that some of the responses have
tended to polarise some of the issues more than needs doing. I'm also
frustrated and perplexed by some of the same things that Leigh mentions -
mainly, for me, more than anything else, the lack of sharing *experiences*.
I think we should be doing this much more but aren't - for example, this
thread started between both mailing lists, but has now been channelled into
just one, leaving out the Wikiversity community who haven't joined this list
:-( (ie the vast majority) - which is why I'm replying to both lists.

Just on one more technical extension, James asked if there was a way of
adding commons images into other wikis - yes, there's a proposed feature
called InstantCommons <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/InstantCommons>, which
will work on all mediawiki wikis, though I don't know how close to
implementation it is. In fact, it strikes me that this is another really
great thing to be working on as *joint projects* - develop technical
wishlists and write proposals to fund their development. (This is what has
happened with the PediaPress initiative, btw.)

So, that's about it for the moment. Maybe my clarifications went beyond what
was actually said in this thread, but I felt it might be useful to say them
anyway. :-)

Cheers,

Cormac


On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:47 PM, James Neill <lists at wilderdom.com> wrote:

>
> thanks for these thoughts everyone (brent, leigh, etc.) - i remain open
> and persuadable
>
> perhaps the answer for me is to use/try both
>
> can i (automatically) use wiki commons stuff in wikieducator - that was
> one of my main considerations - if i go under a bus tomorrow i would
> like to have left my material is the most readily accessible and
> re-usable location
>
> will wiki commons ALLOW non-WM foundation wikis to be able to
> automatically use content? i.e., is this just a matter of wikieducator
> setting up to do so - or is it a matter of wiki commons being set up to
> do so? easy inter-wiki sharing/use from an author's POV is most attractive
>
> in teaching a university course, i can see a basic structure which i
> could replicate and teach colleagues to use:
> - open textbook on wikibooks
> - course-related structure and learning activities on wikiversity
> (again, the inter-wikiness here is attractive)
>
> i haven't yet quite been able to visualise such a separation of
> materials on wikieducator
>
> maybe i can get over my allergic sense of post-colonialism in
> wikieducator - since other's i respect suggest its a non-issue (and
> correctly brent points out the potential for WM's US-centric funding) -
> it's just that i kind of thought the commonwealth was dead in the new
> world order - e.g. is there a wikieducator type model being pursued at a
> UN level?
>
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