EduGlu Sandbox

In a comment to my recent ill-considered ramblings on OpenCourseWare, Leigh Blackall advocated 'truly OPEN source and not just "free"' approaches to open education. Point taken -- if there is one additional point I wish I had made in that original post, it is that open education takes many forms... I, for one, think that John Willinsky's wiki combining authentic teacher training and a database of useful lesson plans is every bit as much a contribution to open education as a collection of PDF'ed lecture notes assembled as a course.

One of the sites Leigh cited as a natural platform for open educators is WikiEducator, which is a very impressive project with lots on the go.

One, via Stephen Downes, I learn that WikiEducator is piloting a collaborative video project that may eventually benefit Wikipedia and other MediaWiki-powered environments. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I have never heard of Kaltura, especially since they have gathered some buzz previously...

Two, WikiEducator will be leading a very cool ongoing web seminar as part of the Learning4Content project which looks like a great opportunity to hone MediaWiki authoring skills and also to get a sense of a novel pedagogical model. Gotta love the Learner Contract: in return for your training, you deliver an open educational resource. I'm signing up.

Finally, WikiEducator will be hosting the ongoing development of the OER Handbook. (Here's the blog.)