This shows my current thinking about a way forward for wikis at the polytechnic. I’ll test it with some colleagues, project team members and through the student evaluation coming up.

Draft recommendations

1. A combination of external and self-hosted wiki pages will give the following benefits:
   Branding and online presence as a leader in Open and Connected Learning.
   Participation in a wider, global community of educators and learners.
   Support with technical issues and ongoing maintenance. and so on
2. Teachers use Wikiversity/WikiEducator to create and host their learning materials. Student group and collaborative work is also done on Wikiversity/WikiEducator.
3. All materials from the Category “TasPoly” to be mirrored on a Polytechnic hosted wiki.  This builds in risk management as well as raising our profile in the global education community.
4. A blog platform for learners and teachers to be hosted by the Polytechnic. Support also given to those staff and students for a limited range of externally hosted services eg Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Edublogs…
5. Staff and learners supported to use RSS readers to streamline accessing information from multiple points. This can be achieved through Outlook and/or Google Reader.
6. Policy will support teachers releasing learning materials through a Creative Commons Attribution – ShareAlike licence.

Comments welcomed!

• Adobe Ideas ($free) Nice tool, smooths lines so looks better when you zoom. Brush controls are harder to control than Sketchbook Pro. Free form drawing. Can’t type text in. Blank Canvas.
• Popplet ($free for Lite version) Text, drawing and images in boxes that can be moved around, resized and linked to each other. More mindmap-like than others.
• Sketchbook Pro ($9.99 AUD) Recommended by several reviews. Multiple (too many?) brush options, fine level colour controls, multiple layers, ability to import images, flexible output options.

I also tried, in no particular order:
AirSketch free, iBrainstorm, Stickyboard, Draw, Paperdesk LT, iPocketDraw, MindMash ,Idea Sketch, Iditia Free and some other ones I’ve since deleted. Some are better for different styles of recording than I’m talking about here.
My basis for comparison
What is important to me:

• Ease of use including quick colour change and eraser tool access
• Zooming in and out intuitively
• Cost
• VGA output option
• Export options and formats

Preparation for Use
I knew I’d soon want to use this approach for a real event, so I tested out tools and got to know them through doing graphical records of TV shows and evening conversations around the house – low risk and I wouldn’t be annoyed if I accidently deleted the lot! Through this process I settled on Sketchbook Pro because of the zooming, layers and colour changing speed possible. So I ended up with some pretty random images but it was fun. I played around more with a visual note taking approach, more so than my traditional mindmap technique and appearance.
Real life Use
Recent Changes Camp came up in Canberra and that was it – my challenge to myself was to use the iPad for note taking.
What I discovered:

• Found not typing/ writing with a pen shifted my focus from capturing words as such to capturing thoughts and ideas.
• The freeform conversational approach of the unconference gave a starting point to the notes, and suited my default mindmap style. I reverted pretty quickly to my standard style – you could put my handwritten maps from months ago next to my iPad ones and they are definitely both mine!
• When in a session where I talked a fair bit at the start I wanted to capture what was being said but graphic recording required too much brainpower to allow for talking. I relaxed when I reminded myself that other people were taking notes and I could access them later.

Usability session

Wikis in Learning and Education

• Use of colour and brush controls still requires conscious thought, much like picking up a different colour texta when starting a new subtopic.
• I found I captured what was for me the right balance of quality and quantity of notes while still participating reasonably in the discussion.

After the event
After the formal sessions I wanted to pull some of the overarching thoughts and issues into a more graphic style than my mindmaps. I planned it out roughly on paper and searched for visual cues to suit the topics. Being able to colour in areas of the canvas on a layer to allocate space and arrangement, and then put my actual text and graphics on another layer meant I could end up with a well organised output. I simply deleted the ‘underlayer’ when I was done.
What I learnt:

• I didn’t save often enough. Sketchbook Pro would crash occasionally and I couldn’t see a pattern as to why.
• Learnt about the layer transform tool and how that could be used to manipulate or edit an image you’ve imported from elsewhere.
• I would like to spend more time playing with the brush options
• Practice of large lettering styles would add more visual interest and variation.

Summary of my notes from #ucrcc

I love it!