There have been a couple of notable resources that have crossed my screen lately that merit a shout-out:
* The first drafts of the ongoing OER Handbook have been posted on the ultra-yummy WikiEducator site. If you are wanting to be more active in the open education space there are heaps of useful pieces on the creation, sharing and reuse of open educational resources.
* Via George Siemens, this Wikibook on Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies, assembled by by Curt Bonk and a global cast of collaborators, looks most useful.
Now, since both of these resources are openly licensed, and authored on the MediaWiki platform, I can’t resist noting that the Wiki Inc. plugin (blogged by Jim Groom here) would allow any WordPress publisher to incorporate these pages with a simple copy-paste of a URL.
And when the source is updated, your reuse of it will be updated as well.
For example, here’s the Adapt page for the OER Handbook, and the Digital Divide chapter of the Emerging Technologies Wikibook over on UMWBlogs, which as previously noted is making fine use of this approach to manage its WordPress user support documentation.
Now, are those your brains on the floor, or did I just blow your mind? In all seriousness, this sort of thing may seem simplistic given some of the flashier technology buzzing across our screens these days, but to me the combo of easy-as-possible open content authoring mixed with simple dynamic reuse (all within a context of free open source tools) is a broad approach with significance well beyond the toolset.
Update: D’Arcy has assembled a nifty screencast demonstrating how the Wiki Inc plugin works. And isn’t the homepage of ucalgaryblogs.ca a thing of beauty?
That Wiki Inc plugin is SICK! I sure hope that sucker can see some publicity. What a fantastic piece of work!
Thanks for the shout-out!
Brian — you’re remix demo rocks!
Wait till we get the Mediawiki ==> Opendoc prototype extension installed. This kind of remixing will soon be possible on your desktop as well. You will be able to build an save a personal collection of WikiEducator pages — click on a link and have an ODT of ODF delivered to your desktop.
A great feature for folk who don’t have 24/7 connectivity (or restricted by very expensive connectivity.)
I have to agree with D’Arcy, this is SICK!!! And what Wayne’s talking about with remixing and re-distributing locally sounds pretty sick as well.
This is great stuff.
I just wanted you to know that I had an involuntary muscle reaction when I loaded WIKI INC.
Usually, that happens only when I’m watching exceptional athletic achievement. Zidane, Lebron James, or, to put it in Canadian, Wayne Gretzky.
This plugin is just at that level. Thank you!
The screencast got me really excited to use Wiki Inc. Awesome!
Weird, all these respected educators getting sick over a plugin 😉
I’m ready to get the contagion. The most exciting thing is how transparent is- a reader of the web page could care less how the content gets there.
Brian– have you come across any issues with Wiki Inc having problems pulling in images from a MediaWiki install?