Hello All!
Would it be possible to add a "drawing" feature to DFwiki?
There has been some discussion about "drawing " in wikis at the following thread,
Drawing Wiki
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=27763
WP1
Hi WP1,
seems a very interesting feature to add to the dfwiki... rigth now we are almost on vacation and we are not planning to start developing again untill september.. we'll get to this then.
Cheers and thank you.
Marc
Tremendous to hear that Marc. I believe the a Wiki with drawing capability will have GREAT potential. I just played with the ImaginationCubed site (posted here previously) with other users simultaneously - it is really really good - it's got the WOW factor - albeit with some limitations. In schools, this could be a very powerful tool, so please do consider development in this area. Teachers like me will then be eternally grateful to you 
Um, if I may add a point of view ... such things should not go into a Wiki ... but be a separate activity module.
Otherwise why not add chat to the wiki, and messaging, and hey, forums, and blogs! "My goodness the Wiki module is Moodle now!"
;-P
Otherwise why not add chat to the wiki, and messaging, and hey, forums, and blogs! "My goodness the Wiki module is Moodle now!"
I feel that there is great potential in having SOMETHING which would allow collaboration Wiki-like as I feel TEXTUAL Wiki Working is only part of the 'deal' - whether it is a tool WITHIN a WIKI or a separte entity, I wouldn't be fussed. Fooling around with some friends in the GEC ImaginationCubed site has shown me that.
I think that such a truly collaborative tool, which in the case of ImaginationCubed works SIMULTANEOUSLY, run with a group of students WHEREVER in the world they happen to be (such as my boarders when they are on holiday all over the world) could expand learning in my school dramatically.
I take your point, but making a Wiki multi-faceted beyond text input, would be something I'd find useful. But then I don't have the bigger picture I'm not aware of the other rigours and demands placed on developers and I'm also (as you know) ETERNALLY grateful for WHATEVER tools are put at our disposal by the BRILLIANT team that are behind Moodle development.
No worries, Drew ... the whole of Moodle is meant to be collaborative to some extent ... my concern is just to organise the overall interface in a logical and usable way so that the widest group of people can make sense of it.
If you are thinking mostly of synchronous co-drawing then a much better match for this would be in the chat module (search previous discussions on whiteboards) because you can talk while you draw (and also share audio/video later).
A asychronous whiteboard is sometimes called a "grafitti wall" ... it might be possible to develop something like this as an optional part of each Wiki page but we should really talk about how the interface should work.
If you are thinking mostly of synchronous co-drawing then a much better match for this would be in the chat module (search previous discussions on whiteboards) because you can talk while you draw (and also share audio/video later).
A asychronous whiteboard is sometimes called a "grafitti wall" ... it might be possible to develop something like this as an optional part of each Wiki page but we should really talk about how the interface should work.
Uuh, then we can get into "what is a Wiki", meaning, what are the characteristics that make Wiki a Wiki 
If you "just" need a collaborative whiteboard with both drawing and text options, it certainly should/could be a new module.
If you "just" need a collaborative whiteboard with both drawing and text options, it certainly should/could be a new module.
In the past (1996) we had websites presenting information. It was in the days that most of us assumed that good education was all about feeding the students on the right time with the right knowledge (sometimes even piece by piece: like in programmed instruction).
Then check it with tests and Word-assignments and show them the way to other resources. The first VLE's showed also that face on the early internet.
Typical parts in these days: resources, weblinks, quiz, faq, glossary, guided instruction (AICC)
Around 1997 the next generation VLE's came up: websites combining the presentation of information with tools to support the communication about these (new) artefacts: forum, *) chat, poll, shared workspace,
It could help the individual student to sharpen his individual thoughts by comparing them with the expressed thoughts of himself and others in the forums or by sharing collected (and self created) artefacts. Moodle was born in this era, focusing on forums and missing in the beginning the shared workspace.
With Wikis (popularity starts around 2000) you introduce a new kind of tools: it offers the opportunity to construct - in a loosy way **) - together with other students a new knowledge artefact while the teacher can monitor the ongoing work (and give on-line helpfull cues). Without the wiki the collaboration is happening outside the view of the helpfull teacher: they get an asssignment, construct something in Word and deliver that after several weeks as their masterpiece: difficult to help them during these three weeks and give feedback on their learning process if you only can see the final product.
The last innovation is that the focus is more and more shifting from teachers to students:
- Give students tools so they can monitor (and steer!) their own learning process. (MoodleFN, the project templates and our own humble checkmark-graph, visible in my personal icon are such attempts, I hope Martin spends some time on it.)
- Giving students access to the tools for creating the education artefacts in a course: students as constructors: glossary, wiki,
(So when can we give students AS CONSTRUCTORS access to all these beautiful teachertools like book, multipage, quizz, lesson, (shared) journals, etc... WITHOUT LOOSING THE PRIVACY RESPECTING MONITOR FUNCTION for the professional teacher/coach. Can't we create a mechanism like in the wiki: teacher class group student access under the same button and combine this witha better filtering on the edit-fields, also wished for non-expert teachers as editors...)
I disagree with the well meant attempts to limit the teacher in his choices. ***)
Why not allow them to add all kind of tools inside a wiki?
OR...why not allow them to add all kind of tools in the sidebar of a central forum? Wasn't that the original thought behind the social format?
If you want to help the teacher with his design choices, then a growing set of templates would help more then restricting possibilities.
*) Social Constructivism is not the inventor of this forum-idea: I found the idea in a book from 1962 by A.D. de Groot (founder of the Dutch Curriculem Institue and famous writer of "(Misconseptions about) The thinking of the chessplayer". The book is called Methodology, foundations for research and thinking in the Social Sciences. In this book the author explains that after constructing your artefact you "as little scientist" go back to the forum for checking your idea/theory/idola against the thinking of the "ruling" community..
**) In the past the Computer Industry was trying hard to build very restrictiv tools to collect and store Knowledge (AI), what never worked in educational settings.
***) Do you remember the early discussions abaout the wish to have a Wiki in Moodle? Now we have two