Wiki founder to build open access site for UK research

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“The British government has enlisted the services of Wikipedia in a push to make all taxpayer-funded academic research from the UK freely available online – regardless of whether it is also published in a subscription-only journal…”

“Leading members of Australia’s open access movement have applauded the UK initiative, but are less than optimistic about the prospect that Canberra will follow suit.”

See on theconversation.edu.au

via Tumblr Wiki founder to build open access site for UK research

WikiEducator Teacher Education Portal

Just recently there was another step forward in the OER movement. The new WikiEducator Teacher Education Portal which was launched on April 4, 2009 received a very encouraging response in the Commonwealth and beyond. Within 36 hours, over 312 educators in over 26 countries registered to be part of this collaborative effort. Additional teachers/countries are expected to come on board in the coming days and weeks.




Comments from the Ministry of Education in Trinidad & Tobago such as "...once again COL has provided a forum for collaboration...we can recall Trinidad and Tobago has benefited from WikiEducator training courtesy of COL over the past few years.....as a Ministry we take advantage of this opportunity to have our teachers collaborate to develop content, lesson plans....We have more than 100 teachers who participated in WIKI training last year...how can we build on this" and...the National University of Samoa commented that "this is a very useful and important resource and forum....It welcomed their staff to take relevant information to support their own work but also to make contributions to WikiEducator".

The WikiEducator Teacher Education Portal aims to provide teachers with a platform to share knowledge, to develop content specific to their needs, to benefit their teaching experience and/or to use in their classrooms, share ideas, collaborate on projects, and hold professional development workshops.

Educators are invited to join this Portal/forum in this major collaboration campaign, to create open educational resources that not only benefit themselves but also their own environment as well as others, by moving closer together and collaborating in subject areas of mutual interest, to develop open educational resources (OERs) on Wikieducator directly.

The Participative Web: Policies and best practices

Using an expanding array of intelligent Web 2.0 services and applications, a rapidly increasing number of people and organisations are creating, distributing and exploiting user-created content (UCC) and being part of the wider participative web. What are the policy implications and what are the best practices for NGOs wishing to participate?

The book "Participative Web and User-Created Content: Web 2.0, Wikis and Social Networking" describes the rapid growth of UCC and its increasing role in worldwide communication, and draws out implications for policy. Questions addressed include: What is user-created content? What are its key drivers, its scope and different forms? What are the new value chains and business models? What are the extent and form of social, cultural and economic opportunities and impacts? What are the associated challenges? Is there a government role, and what form could it take?

You can access this PDF e-book free online.

In his post to Social Signal, Alexandra Samuel lists six "Best practices for non-profits using web 2.0":

1. Focus your site on a particular goal or conversation, rather than a general topic.
2. Invite your community to make contributions other than money, e.g., asking them to share their personal experiences.
3. Succeeding in an internetworked environment means working effectively with others, collaborating, and interacting, e.g., engaging with conversations and ideas on other blogs.
4. Don't feel that Web 2.0 means building your own online community - use existing web tools, e.g, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube.
5. Remember that for organizations that have been all about the message, it is a frightening adventure to bring your audience into the conversation in public.
6. Stay current with how other non-profits are using Web 2.0, and learn from their experiences.

More on Web 2.0 and participation

Web 2.0: New ways of being free

What's the future of the internet? Blogging, MySpace,Wikipedia, we, the internet users, are taking over. This video shows how Web 2.0 enables internet users to have a voice.




More on social media.

Social Software

The social software of Web 2.0 allows users to interact, share, and meet other users. This computer-mediated communication has become very popular with sites like MySpace and YouTube. There is a wide range of social software tools, including:

* Blogs: Short for weblog. Users post informal journals of their thoughts, comments, and philosophies and reflecting their views.
* Chats: Places on the Internet where people with similar interests "meet" and communicate together by typing instant messages.
* Email: Electronic mail system that can be used to send plain text or text with attachments.
* Discussion boards or forums: Online discussion groups, where participants with common interests exchange open messages.
* Instant messages: Programs that instantly send messages from one computer to another.
* Podcasts: Derived from Apple’s iPod, it is a method of publishing audio and video files to the Internet.
* Wikis: Allows users to freely create and edit Web page content and hyperlinks using a web browser. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word ‘wiki wiki’ meaning fast. The most famous wiki is wikipedia.

Here is a YouTube video - "Web 2.0 - Catch the Wave" - in which Percy Parakh talks about some of the social software tools mentioned above.

More on Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Here is an entertaining and informative video: "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, in which he touches on the various types of social software that will be covered later in this blog.

More on Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 for education and development

Tim O'Reilly - the person who first coined the expression "Web 2.0" - gives an explanation of it in his article "What Is Web 2.0". Here is a brief interview of Tim talking about Web 2.0.



Essentially, Web 2.0 is a more socially interactive way of using the Internet. Thus, using appropriate "social software", users can share videos, music, photos, ideas and knowledge. Many users and networks use Web 2.0 technology for entertainment purposes, but there are many serious applications as well. The importance of social software for education and development is that it gives individuals and communities the ability to self-publish and also collaborate in social learning and social action projects.

More on Web 2.0.