Wikiversity and Connexions collaboration

There is a proposed collaboration between Wikiversity and the Connexions project to create content that can be imported and used between each project as a "proof" (or perhaps "inquiry") of concept for developing other technical bridges between various open educational resource (OER) projects and platforms. This page is to develop details of this collaboration and brainstorm how the project is to be carried out. Please feel free to add, change details, move around ideas between headings, etc. Discussion can go on the talk page, and if necessary subpages can be created (by making a link that begins with a slash, like this: [[/Subpage name]])

Aims

• To develop a technical bridge between Wikiversity (Mediawiki) and Connexions, so that content can be imported and exported in either direction,
• To develop content that is interoperable between the two projects (Wikiversity and Connexions), and which will be useful for the OLPC project (which will use the content in some form),
• To analyse the relative strengths and weaknesses of different models of production.

Topic selection

The goals for the test case content topic are that it be immediately useful and attractive to children and their families in the developing world so that its inclusion on the OLPC laptops will have high impact. Additionally, the content should be something that local communities would be likely to customize and contribute back to the project. Possible topics include music, biology, or “How stuff works” content such as “How to dig an irrigation ditch”.

Technical bridge features

• Send2Wiki: a bookmarklet that allows easy exporting of a webpage to a wiki - the idea (as I understand it) would be to make this a two-way process between the two projects.
• IMS Content Package export from MediaWiki into Connexions. (Interoperability)

Ideas

• Idea: MediaWiki templates - what are these to be used for, and how? Perhaps explain on talk page..

• At wikiversity, we have many projects that will help us understand and make better use of the MediaWiki software. These are coordinated through a central MediaWiki Project
• Topic:MediaWiki Templates - For templates for Wikiversity and any site that uses MediaWiki is one of many.

• Idea: Try to develop a community of interest around this project that includes a wider variety of people than simply developers (building bridges between communities of interest, as well as technical systems)

• Wikiversity:Wikiversity outreach looks beyond the "boundaries" of Wikiversity and even the Wikimedia umbrella organization for parties interested in Open Educational Resources of all kinds. This very page is the result of such an outreach.

• Idea: ...Wikiversity is a place to share ideas...please add yours!...

Issues

(in no particular order):

• Semantic tagging
• Interface with CNXML - Connexions's own version of XML
• Authorship - OpenID?
• Licensing (CC-BY?)
• Social issues - how do we deal with vandalism across projects, or people's sense of ownership of "their" materials?
• ...

Interested participants

Please list yourself if you are interested in any aspect of this project (and perhaps detail what it is that you are interested in)

• Cormaggio ^talk 12:20, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
• CQ 17:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
• Countrymike 21:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
• Rayc 05:09, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

External links

• Connexions

{{Humanities resources}}