[seul-edu] group vs individual: wiki and sourceforge concepts: was: Our Strengths --develop a course & teach it

["David M. Bucknell" <david@members.iteachnet.com>]

I applaud what Jeff is doing at el Camino.

What do people think of the Wiki concept vs the sourceforge concept?

Every time I've mentioned building schoolforge to someone s/he has come back 
with the wiki idea, but I have not personally seen how that could arrive at 
what I want to see (I know the el camino idea was about computers only): an 
entire curriculum.

Curricula are not "choose your own adventures," although good ones have some 
of the flexibility of those games.  They must balance encouraging students to 
explore with leading them in a certain direction. No matter what your 
philosophy of education, these two things must be balanced. 

I don't see this balance in the wiki, but there's another reason I'd prefer to 
stay away from it. It is a group project only in that the product is a 
borg-like accumulation of individual contributions. The sourceforge concept is 
more than this. It encourages the formation of groups of people who wish to 
work on the same project. It follows the open source model as I admire it 
while the wiki encourages speed and individual contributions. Obviously the 
wiki is exciting and attractive; however, I prefer the group model for 
curriculum development; it supports what I believe schools are about.

What do others think?

David
  Jeff Nelson <jtnelson@emirates.net.ae> said:

> Les, I think that's a great idea.  I think this challenge has two parts--1. 
> develop a free curriculum and materials; 2. teach it.
> 
> To do that, we need a person who is good at curriculum development to 
> shepherd a project.  We also need some sort of collaborative environment 
> set up.  (I think wikis are great, but what do I know?)
> 
> They're working on doing both of these things in Colombia.  There's a 
project 
> to develop public-domain curriculum and they have offered free short courses 
> in Linux usage and system administration for technically literate teachers. 
 
> 
> Links to the projects in Colombia are at:
> 	 http://itp.innoved.org/wiki/freecourse/Links
> 
> They've made a substantial effort to generate a curriculum in Spanish, which 
> can be found on one of those links.  
> 
> I think we need to do something similar, but in English.  
> 
> I've been trying to develop a public-domain curriculum and lesson plans for 
> end-users, not sysadmins, at http://itp.innoved.org/wiki/freecourse.  
> However, I've only been teaching (English) for 6 years and I have never 
> developed an entire curriculum from scratch.  It's a much bigger project 
than 
> I thought at first, and I'm not sure I have the experience and training to 
do 
> it properly.  
> 
> So we need someone who has this kind of experience to manage and guide the 
> project.  
> 
> We also need people to contribute lessons and materials.  
> 
> It would be excellent if we could produce a series of training videos.  Then 
> we could teach without actually being there, and the videos could multiply 
> like rabbits, if they are GPL'ed or public domain.  
> 
> There needs to be some fairly high-profile leadership, or else it will have 
> trouble getting off the ground.  
> 
> Jeff Nelson
> itp.innoved.org
> 
> On Wednesday 28 November 2001 21:14, you wrote:
> > One important goal that has been recognized is the importance of
> > administrative talent to install and manage these systems.
> >
> > Ok, what are we good at?
> >
> > Education, right? So why don't we deliver the "education" to train
> > administrators.
> >
> > Are we in competition with others in this task? Yes.
> >
> > Can we do it better than others? Undoubtedly.
> >
> > Do we already have all the tools? Yes.
> >
> > What's holding us back? <grin>
> 



-- 
David M. Bucknell
http://members.iteachnet.org/~david
http://www.OpenSourceSchools.org
http://members.iteachnet.org/webzine/
Fax: (US) 775-244-0803