- I’ve spoken to Moodle partners and I believe we’ll be able to get funding to scope and hopefully develop repository integration between Moodle and the Medawiki api for Moodle 2.0. I’d like to see federated search across multiple Mediawiki’s, open and closed.

- Looking at new repository functionality can be turned on in Moodle 2.0 to bring in Flickr, Youtube Twitter api’s and other open tools. We’ll be planning ahead with Moodle 2.0 beta release.

- Moving ‘How To’ resources and training for Web 2.0 tools and VLE to the open Mediawiki and negotiating and advocating for collaboration between Institutes to tie into their workflow.

- Looking at a Permeable Mediawiki with open for access TO ALL, students and teachers within TAFE NSW (Read the posts and comments in this post for an explanation). Any skills developed in this space automatically translate into the ability of an individual to participate in the open MediaWiki projects.

- Looking at workflow for value adding in taking the stuff from the authenticated spaces (i.e. LRR) and open internet and contextualising to training packages in Mediawiki

Enabling teacher sharing between Moodle courses using sharing cart in consultation with developers, looking at openshare block to make parts of Moodle courses open.

- Looking at Eye fi wireless sd cards, I think that this wifi (wow) technology has good scope for managing workflow to post videos to youtube flickr and eporfolios from the multiple devices being used across TAFE NSW i.e. POV cameras, laptop cameras. Etc (Will do a blog post).

- Advocating for integration (with Mediawiki) of the Learning Reference Repository and TAFE repository i.e Equella

- Engaging the TAFE networks for sharing and collaboration – i.e this post

On re-reading, to summarise the items brought up in response to the original post ‘The benefits of a closed Mediawiki for collaboration” the issues that I see that need to be addressed under the banner of change management and enabling cross Institute sharing and collaboration in general are:

- technological adaptation
- information design
- cultural consideration
- training
- and WORKFLOW (alluded to but deserves much more attention).

Big issues! What are the design solutions, how can we collaborate , that’s what I want to know?

Note: I hope you don’t “exit the conversation” Leigh, perhaps you can present on the benefits of the open Mediawiki projects down the track. Sharing and collaboration will come down to individual people’s motivation and getting their buy in, “Products of a different age” to quote Robyn, the “20%” as I like to call them. It’s all about nutting out a shared vision, both open and closed.

One design we worked on when facing this same issue of unwillingness/inability on the part of staff to go open (for the reasons you cite) was to create a “permeable” Moodle. We encourage staff to source free content, and were possible to place their content externally as well, and to use Moodle thinly for schedule, discussion, quizzes, and copies of otherwise restricted content. (But you’re probably going to need to review your institution’s IP and copyright policies for that to fly).

That way we thought we would be making a baby step towards more open and networked practices, and mitigating the risk of more content than necessary getting locked away were no one can see or perhaps build on. It was a compromise between having an LMS and not having an LMS. Nice idea, but like I said – the simple availability of a system that reinforces old habits makes it oh so slow/impossible to properly test the alternative proposal.

Perhaps your wiki could be used very lightly in the same way. Course schedules and lesson plans (ripe for copy pasting into your LMS or where ever), lists of links and resources for those librarians and teachers still unsure about social bookmarking, and the creation of other wise restricted content. I think this is what you originally meant isn’t it?

I suppose it is the case where your staff can’t see each other’s Moodle courses or whatever, they will at least be able to see the source of some of that in the DET shared MediaWIki. And it will be easier for your staff to copy content from the bigger and open mediawikis like Wikiversity, books and Pedia (because we know they’ll ignore copyrights in the false security of their DET login wiki) and use it in there as well.

At this point I think I’ll exit the conversation. Quite a difference has developed between our willingness in approaches it seems. Good luck with it.

With regards to TAFE policy the scope and breath of options and tools that TAFE teachers now have access to (and are being trained in) is vast in comparison to the constraints imposed on many educators working for organisations within a firewall. It’s a misnomer that constant censorship and blockages persists across the board in TAFE Leigh. Cultural change is the issue here, the changes I am seeing in terms of policy and increases in digital literacy on the ground is apparent to me. Early adopters and have suffered frustration no doubt I think the classic uptake of technology on the S curve applies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation#Diffusion_of_innovations

I’m just leaving but going back to my invite for design suggestions,I’d really like to see some collaboration and brainstorming to evolve from this post with synthesis of approaches between the open (Fostering individual digital literacy for students and teachers ) and closed (Fostering cross institute collabaration within the current constraints identified).

I think that the usefulness of a permeable cross Institute mediawiki should not be understated..

Planning the open/ permeable mediawiki project with these criteria in mind will be interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation#Failure_of_innovation

Over the coming months working with TLI (And hopefully other Institutes ) the issues raised in this post will be considered further in the context of open and closed mediawiki spaces (and utilising other open mediawiki projects). Design ideas are welcome.

If after 5 years of pretty high profile exposure to the Internet, more than that on Learnscope, and all the popular things like Facebook, Wikipedia and Youtube, 100% of TAFE teachers (if we go by SParkers survey) aren’t ready to even contemplate a practice on the open Internet when we can point to very compelling reasons to do just that, then at what point do we ask ourselves, “what are the things we are doing that cause this remarkably slow uptake”?

While I agree our evangelism is one factor for some, I think there are significant elephants in the room we have ignored for too long. I’ve always said that things like LMS, intranets, repositories and even things like Toolbox developments are a major cause. Not only has it lead to a rather entrenched legacy of development and process that seems impossible to move, it has perpetuated a culture that put it there in teh first place. What SParker describes is just another version of those projects – reinforcing status quo, taking the edge off the real challenge for another year or so.

Evidently 100% of Illawara TAFE teachers are entirely dependent on being provided for and sheltered by their institutions, and I’m nowhere near satisfied that anything remotely like change agency has even begiin to be employed by those institutions. Nothing to remove the fanciful competativeness brought on by rationalism and performance measures. No rethink of their copyright policies. No real investment in network literacy (certainly not compared with the investments in all the things that work against it). Constant censorship and blockages, and very muddle headed implementations.

You say things are starting to happen.. Please show. Show me one TAFE NSW policy that supports open education, one research project in it, one IT unit on board with it, a single catalistic event that might help spark it, any training and support in place for an over arching approach, any measure of investigation, let alone implimentation..

We and our colleagues work in a professional and personal area where we utilise open resources, software and social networking tools prolifically – not everyone is as techy. We cannot impose our practice and our culture on others who are not ready for it. In fact, they will be scared away by this – as Steven discovered in questioning some of our teachers.

Teachers are our clients – we are here to provide them with the service they need. As we do that we can gradually build their confidence and awareness of the value of open education and open resources. We hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will come to us and say ‘we want our resources on the open internet because we can see the value in others seeing and contributing to our material’.

I also think there is a paradox in the arguments presented and the emotion that it has generated. If the ‘content is not king’ – and that is mostly what we are talking about in terms of the material in our mediawiki – then why get so riled up about it. The key thing is that we are using some open and web2.0 tools for collaboration and facilitating learning – that’s where the value lies. That’s where we are developing the capability and culture of our teachers, where we are encouraging them to make connections with experts and colleagues around the world. This is starting to happen and its exciting!! Who cares about content that, frankly, no-one else is that interested in (as shown in Cecile’s comments).

So let’s stop this argument and get back to doing the exciting stuff!

The CLI trial on Wikieducator, IMO doesn’t trial open education or collaboration. It trials raw text data about brick laying instruction using Wikieducator. There’s a difference. Having been someone who tried to engage NZ lecturers in that project, it was plain to see that collaboration was not thought through enough. Knowing that WIkieducator is a duplication to larger projects like Wikiversity, and that is takes time to forge use and reuse, perhaps the end point for this trial should never have been Wikieducator.

A more genuine trial of open education, collaboration and reuse would be to trial all social media platforms with a range of subject areas – particularly those subjects that have some online education established in their traditions already. Business, tourism, design… measuring which ones give a greater return on investment, and assessing how they interrelate as content and platforms. The UNSW video is a great sell for such an idea. Where’s the TAFE ad of the same idea?

It is quite likely, given the right work flow, that it is not the teachers at all who benefit initially from things like WIkieducator, nore the students, but the publishers! Who, saving bundles in writer costs, use the raw and open content to then go on to produce richer resources in salable formats, publishing openly, packaging for sale. We did it for 1 text book, sourced from Wikibooks, printed and bound for sale to students, makes around $1000 per year for the department, is a cheaper text book than the alternative, and the source of the book is open, we help edit it!

I’m only hinting at ideas and methods we have tested and are beginning to evaluate here at Otago Polytechnic, the detail is in the 3 years blogging the trial. It is frustrating to be back here suggesting and arguing these points to Sparker who inspired some of these ideas 3 years ago. It seems the Australian network has been weakened. The conservative response is “baby steps” as though there was even a follow-on step planned after the first “step”. This post and supporting comments aren’t baby steps, these are shuffles to and fro, knowing cultural and organisational change is needed, but not willing to take a real step because you haven’t worked out that TAFE teachers are a minor stake holder.

There are so many angles to approach this opportunity! I’ve mentioned publishers as a broadening of scope in the idea of collaboration. There’s industry of course (that famous word used in TAFE like all other rhetoric). But focusing on those teachers, perhaps you could account for an incentive beyond what they fear and imagine. How’s this?.. in initial evaluations we are finding that one teacher engaging in open educational practices using popular social media platforms annually generates $5011 worth of savings and gains to their supporting organisation. It costs $3000 to adequately train and equip such a person to a suitable level so as to be able to generate this sort of return. Perhaps you can find some opportunity for incentives and support in there? We haven’t even started the ethnography looking at how the complete change in thinking has effected these teacher’s sense of work satisfaction and importance (among other things)… but anecdotally we know the answer.. as do you.. the evidence is found on teh Internet – not the TAFE internet.

What I am trying to nut out with colleagues are design solutions on how to:

1- Foster sharing and collaboration (and openness) between teachers from different Institutes in TAFE NSW – what works what doesn’t work.
2 – Enable the VLE systems to enable end users to choose between making their work open, closed, accessible with authentication to free up content sharing.

In my previous comment on the micro poll of teachers the most interesting part of their response was not that they didn’t want to publish to the open internet but that THEY WANTED TO BE ABLE TO SHARE (WOO HOO!!!!) and collaborate on developing courseware with colleagues across Institutes in a authenticated space. It’s really good there is a cross Institute project underway (building upon the bricklaying course CLI developed in Wikieducator) in which we can test the assumption that the Resource Mediawiki can be used for cross Institute use and collaboration.

Ironically having the closed Mediawiki also affords the opportunity to also try a proof of concept with Creative Commons Share and Share alike licence to enable grabbing and contextualisation of stuff from the open internet. I still want to see some design posts from you all on how to make it work with useful Mediawiki training, extensions and configuration suggestions. At a basic level I’m thinking interwiki lining and a mirrored categorisation and theme format will mean TAFE users won’t notice much difference transitioning between the open and closed spaces. Currently I am looking for a permaculture course to trial in the open Mediawiki space.

Over all Robyn I get the points you make though I am interested as to how you’ll manage the fully open systems you’re pushing across the uni? The good news is the cultural shift to utilising the open content and tools is rife in TAFE, the digital literacy of many teachers is developing noticeably. Ripples from all of your pioneering work in Learnscope advocating openness and embedding Web 2.0 tools and practices within TAFE has no doubt played a significant role in getting the Institutes to where they are. That is only going to grow.

It seems to me that a reasonable reading of Stephen’s initial post would see he has a nuanced appreciation of what is possible, what his users want, and how to serve them best, while trying to push out the boundaries at the same time. (It was also pretty clear the writer had not set out to hide their identity, as if they were some kind of troll.)

Its no good being an revolutionary in the TAFE environment if you look around and find you’ve converted noone. I think the flamers need to realise they are preaching to the converted, to someone who understands quite well the advantages of openness. But I guess working through the problems day to day is less fun than taking the high moral ground.

Depite what TAFE decides around this, I will continue to share my knowledge and experience and connect/converse with those beyond my institution. What you may consider your own IP is never unique – what we do, say, construct is based on what we have seen, read and experienced to date. As lowly individuals the best we can do is to critique, adapt, improve and through it back out there for others to do the same. And yes, I do try to contribute and participate in TAFE content and events IF THEY ARE OPEN.

The days are gone where anyone can think they know it all. The only way to learn and grow is to know how to connect globally.

Learners won’t come to you for content. The large institutions putting all content on the open web has proved that. Richard Buckland here at UNSW has proved that – http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6B940F08B9773B9F – his courses are overflowing. He’s running highschool taster courses. Learners seek quality interaction and quality teaching. The web is full of content. IN my experience the best teachers are open about their teaching practices; they have nothing to hide and gain respect and reputation from being open.

I was saddened to click on Alex Miller link above and be rejected access; I respect what Alex has to contribute and would like to be able to share our own ideas with her.

But when it comes down to it, it really matters not for me that TAFE closes off its content. I can find the same, or perhaps better, on the open web. Content specific to a local context naturally has lesser appeal to some but that’s no reason to lock it away. I reiterate however that there ARE particular circumstances that require content to be closed – I’m int he process in finding a solution for one of our child care centres seeking a means of sharing childrens learning plans with parents for eg – but IP isn’t one of them.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that no hands were raised to the question – “Hands ups if would you prefer the resource mediawiki to be open to people outside of TAFE NSW?” – teachers are products of a different age. The same response would be found here. It’s a great question to trigger a conversation like we’re having here.

Finally you may be interested to view a new UNSW TV video just out that is quite relevant to this conversation – http://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/all-of-a-twitter-