A good place to start is with the original reasons for establishing WikiEducator. I set up the wiki primarily to support the collaborative authoring requirements for free content in support of COL's 1 facilitation role in guiding the development of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC 2 ). VUSSC is a project involving 27 small states, working together as a network, including the development of free content to support the educational needs in these countries. I always hoped that the WikiEducator would grow organically from this small nexus into something bigger. Reading the statistics, this is proving to be true.
I don't see this early history to be compelling reading for our audience, so I have linked to this content. Nonetheless I have used Ken's invitation to document the early beginnings of WikiEducator. I cover this under the following headings which you may want to read when you have more time on hand:
- History is important: In order to dispel any new myths which may or may not arise from this post, I feel that I should document some of WikiEducator's early history 3. . .
- The first prototype: Getting back to the inception date of WikiEducator, in preparation for my move to COL in Vancouver, I set up a prototype installation of WikiEducator 4 on a desktop machine . . .
- Reflections on choosing the domain name 5 : I registered the WikiEducator domain name on 12 February 2006 in New Zealand, which was not put into production until April 2006 when we moved the prototype onto a hosted server. . . and
- Why not Wikiversity: I should point out that I seriously considered joining forces with Wikiversity 6 in the early days before “going it alone”, so to speak . . .
History enthusiasts aside, it's more important to look at the outputs after our first year and the numbers provide some indication of what our community has achieved.
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