Moving forward with web education work

Hello all!

I hope the new year is treating you well.

Today I wanted to discuss something important with you - moving forward with this whole project, and the best way to do so.

I think it is becoming clear that the way I have tried to run this so far has not been very successful - people are finding it hard to engage and contribute. Some people have told me this explicitly. So, how best to proceed?

Broadly what we want out of this is:

1. Useful discussions pertaining to web education
2. Sharing and development of ideas/methodologies that will be useful to educators and students
3. Creation and sharing of learning resources, including tutorials, references and curricula.
4. Outreach to as many relevant educators and students as possible, so they can all benefit
5. [Add your own, if you think I've missed anything]

At the moment the tools we have available are mailing lists and a Wiki, pretty much, plus the usual communication tools we use every day. What I would most like to do in the short term is:

1. Get people writing/updating/editing/proof reading learning material and curricula
2. Get people working on outreach initiatives to spread the world about this material
3. Get the non-native-English communities to start working on translations and outreach to their particular communities.

What do people need to be able to do this more successfully? Do we need different tools? Do I need to start micromanaging a bit more, and handing out more specific tasks and deadlines to people, eg "proof read article x in the next couple of weeks"?

Let me know what you think everyone.

thanks! ;-)

Chris Mills
Open standards evangelist and dev.opera.com editor, Opera Software
Co-chair, web education community group, W3C

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* Contribute to web education: http://www.w3.org/community/webed/

Received on Friday, 13 January 2012 14:24:13 UTC