[OSGeo-Edu] Discussion of recommended standards for OSGeo educational material

[Charlie Schweik]

Hi everyone- 

Apologies in advance for a lengthy note. Anyone who has educational
content to share or may in the future -- this note is for you. And make
sure you see the request IN CAPS at the bottom -- I'm asking you all to
add your names on a wiki page about preferred content formats. 

(This loosely links to the current thread by Landon about Docbook-HTML)

A few weeks back Tyler was contacted by a group called
"wikieducator.org". They are a broader effort trying to develop open
access educational content using a wiki platform. They are supported by
an international group called the Commonwealth of Learning
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Learning). They were
explaining they also have a connection to the Wikipedia foundation
somehow.

I think they contacted Tyler first because they were interested adding
some web-based geographic functionality to their wiki. But the
conversation also turned to the issues we've been discussing -- getting
free educational material online for others to get to, and also how to
allow for new derivative works. The wiki format is their approach
(obviously). In our discussions, they convinced me that new derivatives
are possible and manageable in a wiki format. I'm still not sure about
the ability to search for modules easily in a wiki though (looking a few
years, probably down the road). But they appear to have resources, and
if we worked with them we might be able to encourage new searching
components to be developed perhaps.

So this led back to the question of whether we wanted to consider wiki
pages (and maybe even their platform) for new tutorial development. They
have tutorials on how to develop wiki content.

So, it appears we still are trying to get our arms around this idea of
some kind of recommended standard for content. And a question now is
whether we want to try and join forces with this larger wikieducator
effort. We have that opportunity if we want to take it. We could
establish an OSGeo education "Identity Page" on their site like
http://www.wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic.

But I've added this as a task (TASK G) again on our to do list.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Education_Committee_Work_Program#TASK_G._CONTENT_FORMAT_RECOMMENDATIONS_FOR_EDUCATIONAL_MATERIAL

I've also created a new wiki page for us to debate the pros and cons of
various options. I've added my own thoughts.
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Possible_edu_content_format_standards

IN SHORT, TWO REQUESTS:

1) PLEASE VISIT
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Possible_edu_content_format_standards AND ADD
YOUR NAME TO YOUR PREFERRED FORMAT (Latex, DocBook, Open Office Writer,
Wiki, OTHER? ADD ANY PROS/CONS YOU SEE FOR ANY FORMATS AS WELL. 

2) ALSO, I'M CURIOUS WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK ABOUT A POSSIBLE LINK TO
THE WIKIEDUCATOR PROJECT. The challenge is that this will probably
require us to adopt the wiki format. The last section on the above wiki
page regarding that for people's feeback.

Cheers
Charlie