Edupedia - a national domesday wikipedia project

John writes up tonight where we're at with the LTS proposal for an online encyclopedia-wikipedia on Scottish Education. The idea is to provide

• a source of definitive and highly detailed information on what is going on in Scottish Education, both in the past, now and in the future;
• a place where anyone who feels they have something to contribute to the matter can feel free to add to the resource;
• a place which may help other countries find the elements of our system which make us tick.

It is, of course, based on the collective intelligence of Scotland's teachers, educationalists, parents and pupils (it should be a place where all these perspectives can be contributed and offer a rounded account of our system at any point in time). It is also a move closer to the kind of constantly updated and fresh wiki version of Learning and Teaching Scotland's site that I have been keen to see. John asks how we might kick things off and the more I think about it the more sense it makes to go with our gut instincts - put up some a blank page and let them come, à la organic growth. If it's a resource that will be useful it will populate and be used from day one (although eBay, I found out from Robert (S), had not one hit the day it was launched, so maybe some LTS-ers might the first in there to ensure bare bones content from our own sites ;-)

Comments

[Peter]

Interesting...

What about a similar blog for Scottish subject content? In other words, each subject's arrangements covered through pages in a wiki. A fixed, "official" definition to map to the arrangements, followed by whatever people have to offer on a subject. Pupil comments, examples, worksheets, presentations, quizzes, web links, surveys, photos and images, videos, animations and games could all be added with this definition. To find the content would take any school pupil or teacher three of four clicks from the main wiki page.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Well, I think the whole idea is that great ideas like that filter onto the site. Official information changes so quickly that until the SQA get RSS feeds on their own site a wiki with inbuilt RSS for each page might provide an easier means to keep on top of things.