-- JacquesDaignault 2006-05-14 21:32:37
-- ReneeFountain 2006-05-14 21:32:37

Presentation

The IAACS web site has been completely redone¹. It now uses “wiki technology". Wikis are intensely simple, accessible and collaborative hypertext tools which challenge and complexify traditional notions of - as well as access to - authorship, editing, and publishing. Usurping official authorizing practices poses fundamental - if not radical - questions for both academic theory and pedagogical practice.² An examination of these questions - as well as an introduction to the reasonings and workings of the new IAACS site - has been scheduled for:

Practice sessions

We will be available during the other lunchtimes (Tuesday and Wednesday) to help members practice how to WikiWork. For example, you may want to start by letting other members know who you are, that is, designing your own wiki pages (your photo, interests, publications, etc.) Or, you may wish to master the PleaseThankYou wiki option (have your work edited, translated, that is “helped along" by and for others). Or, you may simply want to come and feed your technology committee (Yes, it is true, we do work exceptionally well for chocolate.)

What a wiki is and why use it?

A wiki is a collection of web pages that can be edited by anyone, at any time, from anywhere. The overriding goal of a wiki is to become a shared repository of knowledge with the knowledge base growing over time. According to its original creator Ward Cunningham, “a wiki is the simplest on-line database that could possibly work."

What is unique about wikis is that anyone in the world can change anything in a wiki page. That is, no one authorizes the creation of wiki pages. Everyone is automatically (by default) authorized to write, edit and publish. However, not only can people write, edit and publish their own work, they can rewrite, edit and even “un-publish" the work of others. This “un-authorization" in terms of ideas and their dissemination applies not only to content, but also to the organization of contributions. Hence, by definition all wiki content is “work in progress," or, in wiki language, WorkInProgress.

Wikis work most effectively when people assert meaningful autonomy over the writing process. While such structurally embedded openness does involve technical configuration and delivery; its import may lie in the challenges and complexities it evokes with respect to the dominant social norms and practices regarding who authors the written word. It is our hope that the enactment of such horizontal knowledge assemblages in the IAACS community may evoke a (re)turn towards and an insistence upon the making of “impossible public goods" (Ciffolilli, 2003).

References to explore

The Virtual

• Daignault, J. (2006) (in process). Les concepts de liberté et de virtualité au coeur des pratiques éducatives à base de logiciels libres.

• Daignault, J. (2006) (in press) Le virtuel, est-il un souci? In Communautés virtuelles: Penser et agir en réseau. Presses de l'Université Laval.

• Daignault, J. (2001) La force des communautés virtuelles: créer en ne s'actualisant pas, Esprit critique], vol.03 no.10, Octobre 2001, consulté sur Internet: http://www.espritcritique.org

• Murphie, A. (2002) Putting the Virtual back into VR, a reprint of the article below, in Brian Massumi (ed.) A Shock to Thought: expression in the philosophy of gilles deleuze and felix guattari (London:Routledge).

• Proulx, S., Latzko-Toth, G., (2002) La virtualité comme catégorie pour penser le social : l'usage de la notion de communauté virtuelle, dans Sociologie et sociétés, Montréal, Presses de l'UdeM, Vol. xxxii, No 2, Automne 2000, pp. 99-122.

Wikis

• Wikipedia - A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software. (GNU Free Documentation License). The biggest multilingual open access encyclopedia on the internet. (http://www.wikipedia.org/)

• Fountain, R. M. (2005). Wikipedagogy. Profetic, dossiers pédagogiques.
  http://www.profetic.org:16080/dossiers/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=110

Technology: Free/Open Software

• Free Software as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is Software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. Freedom from such restrictions is central to the concept, with the opposite of free software being proprietary software and not software which is sold for profit, commercial software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_definition)

• Open Source Software (OSS) In 1998 a group of individuals advocated that the term free software be replaced by open source software (OSS) as an expression which is more comfortable for the corporate world. The aim of open source is to let the product be more understandable, modifiable, duplicatable, or simply accessible, while it is still marketable. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_software)

• The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) is an organization that was formed to promote the use of Open Source software in Africa. FOSSFA brings together a consortium of partners in Education, Health and Government to work towards the achievement of ICT objectives in Africa using Open Source software (http://www.fossfa.net/fossfa)

Technology trends (2006 Edition)

• The Horizon Report -The annual Horizon Report - describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium's (NMC) Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education. Each year, the report describes six areas of emerging technology that will have significant impact in higher education within three adoption horizons over the next one to five years. In defining the six selected areas, the project draws on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable individuals in business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community itself. The Horizon Project expressly focuses on the ways that interesting emerging technologies can be applied to teaching, learning, and creative expression. (http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2006_Horizon_Report.pdf )

http://iaacs.org

iaacs-and-you.pdf

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Notes