So over on ETI, Tom says that I’d be spasm-ing over the fact that his boss Mark Shuttleworth feels “the future of educational content lies in the wiki.” He’s right…I am. The wiki for the entire national curriculum for South Africa is simply awe-inspiring. I can’t help but think that this collaborative construction of curriculum is in some way the future for many reasons…relevance and economics the most obvious. (Check out the California Open Source Textbook Project which aims to save the state over $200 million in five years.) I have so many questions about the site…will it stay open for all to edit? How are teachers being trained? How are they being encouraged to participate? How widespread will adoption be?
According to Tom, Mark also feels that
regular wikis alone aren’t quite powerful enough for a task this complex. We need what programmers call revision control systems that will closely track different versions and changes so we can evolve texts and curricula in an open, yet controlled way — the way open source development projects are managed, possibly modifying some of the same tools.
Amazing stuff. Not perfect, I know, and there’s obviously a lot to work through. But still…
I did some blogvangelizing to the state supervisors and principals association on Friday and I showed them this site. I’m not sure they understood exactly what it was they were seeing, but they all left eyes wide open about what these technologies are doing. Whether it’s wikis or blogs or podcasts of whatever, I think my new clarion call is that educators must start creating content, good content, and that their students should share in that creation. Tom’s also right to say that teachers and students need to learn collaboration with each other, and what better way than to share in the creation of and reflection about curriculum. But regardless the purpose, we need to get our teachers on this train…the sooner the better.
Speaking of amazing stuff (and this South African initiative is a big step toward solving some of the intractibilities of school systems), I would like to direct you to a fantastic post by Chris Corrigan responding to an even more fab article on the nature of the “wicked problem” as presented by E. Jeffrey Conklin & William Weil here: http://www.touchstone.com/tr/wp/wicked.html
Corrigan responds here:
http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/2005/05/wicked-problems-and-open-space.html
And I put my oar in here:
http://tellio.blogspot.com/2005/05/touchstone-tools-and-resources-part.html
I think you will appreciate what they have to say because they agree with your clarion call for students to be co-evolvers of the curriculum.