Here’s a brief recap of the past month (or two) in Wikiotics:
Summer Pilot program
For the last six weeks or so we’ve been working to support the English language programs at the New York Public Library, who we made contact with after our presentation at the Digital Media and Learning 2011 Drumbeat science fair. The NYPL runs a series of classes focused on the “We Are New York” series of Television shows put out by the city. The series is quite good and you can find out more about it here:
http://wikiotics.org/en/WANY
Summer classes at the NYPL start in a few weeks and we’re going to make them the focus of our own summer activity. We have development time lined up and a volunteer ESL tutor to help build Wikiotics lessons that support the “We Are New York” ones. By the end of the summer we should have a collection of related ESL materials available to everybody teaching, or just watching the TV episodes at home. Anyone interested in this project can follow our progress, or join in to build and improve materials, at our “We Are New York” project page, which already has a lesson for each TV episode.
OSCON
Wikiotics has a booth at OSCON this year! If you are attending, or happen to be in Portland, Oregon between July 27th and 28th, come by and say hello. We will have our latest development efforts on display and more information about the summer pilot.
Android
In collaboration with Adelphi University in New York, we are working on an Android application to enable offline lesson practice and make it easy for people to use the microphone and camera on their smart phones to add new pictures and audio recordings to the system. Progress is good and we hope to have something publicly released in July.
New logo
After 140 entries to our logo design contest, we selected one from designer “[cindy]“, who was an early and very active participant in the contest. The winning design can be seen right here on this blog and should be up on the main Wikiotics website soon. More of [cindy]‘s designs can be seen at her 99designs profile page.
SBLUG
Jim gave a presentation to the Santa Barbara LUG about Wikiotics on April 14. People kindly provided much feedback, which has already led to some improvements in Ductus.
Creative Commons teaches Grants
As we enter the third full year of Wikiotics activity, with technology to show and new collaboration efforts underway, we are turning some attention to funding opportunities that could help us increase the project’s reach and effectiveness as an educational tool. Thanks to Creative Commons, Jonas Öberg, a fellow Free software/culture organizer, is running a grant writing class through P2PU (http://p2pu.org/general/getting-your-cc-project-funded). I was lucky enough to get a seat and the class has been great. If you have or know of any grant opportunities, please pass them along! We may already have the proposal materials on hand.
Keeping in touch
The best way to keep in touch with us is to visit the #wikiotics room on the FreeNode chat network. To join, point any modern web browser to http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikiotics. Recent changes to the wiki (including lessons) are listed at
http://wikiotics.org/special/recent_changes. The software
development timeline is located at http://code.ductus.us/timeline.