Cormac’s blog

There’s loads to write about, as always, but I can’t seem to do it all justice in a post - so i’m simply posting some fairly random bits’n'pieces (as the title suggests) for now.

* I’m quite interested in presenting at a conference (about “Communication Technologies of Empowerment”), which will take place in Leeds next May. It is a very broad area - which is envisaged to lean towards the political context of communication technologies. I think there’s a very interesting story that Wikiversity can tell in this context; the only issue is that if I am to focus on the “how” of individual empowerment, there may be very little data to glean from Wikiversity’s collective experience for now. Or perhaps I’m wrong - maybe there’s just tonnes of experiential data there, and that I simply haven’t yet recognised it as such. In fact, I suspect the latter is the case.

* I’m also going to a conference in my own university about “knowledge transfer”, about making research accessible and useful to a wider audience than simply “the academy”. This could be a useful experience to reflect on what my research could become - ie. whether it could really start to help people who don’t wade through journals and PhD titles (something I can still improve on myself!). Wikiversity is a fascinating space to potentially connect people from academic and non-academic backgrounds - there remains much work to explore this and help make it a reality..

*Rob Lucas, of TeachForward, who I met at this year’s Wikimania, has set up a mailing list in “neutral space” (ie. not affiliated with any particular educational initiative), with the goal of bringing together people from various education/open content projects in order to discuss specific and common issues. As I’ve already confided to Rob, I’m envious of the discussion that the TeachForward mailing list has engendred, and I’m hopeful that this new list will be equally as thought-provoking. I’d like to start exploring what we can learn from eachother - which is, i think, largely what the list is for. There’s also a (fledgling) wiki to collate all these links.

* I’ve also set up a mailing list myself for my own university department (the School of Education) - hopefully to start sharing ideas from within our own pool of research ideas, problems, issues etc. I can’t believe it’s taken until now for someone to do this. Many of us live in our own little research bubbles, interacting with the people we already know, when there may be many others not too far away who have shared experiences, or who would benefit from sharing their experiences. (There’s also a lot more diversity than the website currently documents.) I still need to work on this list to get it functional and to advertise its existence - thankfully, tech-help is at hand.

* Still trying to figure out methodology/theoretical context - I think there’s so much to reflect on here that it warrants a post of its own (at some stage).

* And finally, of course, there are plenty of happenings within Wikiversity itself - getting to know Wikiversity educators (whose blogs I generally add in my blogroll on the right), discussions on Wikiversity-l (the Wikiversity mailing list) about using IRC in Wikiversity courses, as well as ongoing discussions on the (crucial) guidelines on the scope of research in Wikiversity (which we need to define in order to move out of our “beta” phase). In short, an ever-growing insight into what Wikiversity could become, and a continuing path of activity that will hopefully go on for quite some time to come..