WELCOME new users!
As of Friday February 08, 2013 (13.02.08), the WLTRes web site has 18 total registered users, almost all are new registrations in the last 3 months. These names may start to appear in "group lists" under the Community Builder menu in the left-hand-side (LHS) Main Menu. For the site visitors, only a first name or a last name will appear in group lists. The site visitor will need an account and have to log in to the WLTRes site to see a bit more information about registered users on this site.
As "public" or "site-wide" or "exclusive-to-group-members" user profile information becomes available to site visitors and to logged in site users, please take some time (1) to add or update your personal information and interests and your professional information (education, knowledge, experiences). Also (2) please browse through the Community Builder member lists to which you have access to "get to know" your virtual neighbors. Note what, if any, common interests you have that might lead you and other "like minds" to collaborate using this WLTRes web site. For that is...
- The #1 purpose of this site: to facilitate collaborative groups in ways that help them develop "better" distance learning materials (and web sites) and help them improve the availability of free distance learning they create and provide others. But, if necessary, WLTRes and the work-products from the WLTRes members should provide very low-cost access to high-quality education to as many needy people as possible, copy-right-free, people of all ages, ethnic background, geographic locations in-the-world, whatever their previous education backgrounds. NOTHING produced on WLTRes or related "Web Learning" sites should be for-profit, period, full-stop.
"Our target students" could be people already in a brick-and-mortar class or in another online class, people preparing to take a class or people who just want to revisit a subject and learn more about it... perhaps with a little (or a lot of) online help when they need it and without much to any cost or trouble to find it, get it and use it to their satisfaction. - The #2 purpose is "providing useful information" to educators, to site owners, stakeholders, distance learning site-designers and site-builders, and to the necessary computer technicians.
- The #3 purpose is to "help working groups with a 'presence' on this WLTRes site with distance learning site and course content project planning, project information sharing, and with project executing. All such projects should provide free "progressive" (a.k.a. liberal) high quality education to the group's target audiences.
See the Projects and Project Management Details menu item in the Main Menu for a few sample or suggested projects of interest, at least of interest to me, JGW, in 2011 and 2012. I'll be updating mine. Some of you may create and be revising yours... Others may volunteer to be "test-students" for courses or lessons prototyped or in-development on this or related "Web Learning" web sites. We'll see what the "site membership" wants to do and how they want to do it...
Other News:
- Very much more "user information" is going to be captured (voluntarily) on this site in the week starting February 11, 2013. This is because as of 13.02.08 I (jgw, WLTRes founder & PI, site builder and principle site content contributor thus far, have finally obtained the "pro" version of the Community Builder more feature-rich extensions, modules and plugins for this now "old" Joomla! version J1.5.26 site
- While my (jgw's) efforts to finish building-out the J2.5.x "clone" of this site are continuing, users of this "old" J1.5.x site will be able to starting adding more contact information as well as their personal and professional knowledge and skill sets, their availability to be volunteers to help improve this web site and/or to work in groups defined on this site, their interest in being "instructional designers," or special topic content researchers or developers and/or general site article or web links contributors.
- And THAT is what I've been building-out this site for since 2009 !!! The "above" is a start; more on the updated WLTRes "Mission" soon.
Site visitors and logged in site users:
- Please continue to browse the web pages, identifying and learning some of the content on the site which most interests you. You might consider mentioning what is most interesting to you in one of the Forum categories.
- Logged in site users please update your User Profile, say, every week or so. New knowledge and skills check-boxes will be appearing in everyone's profile for many weeks to come.
- New articles will appear in coming weeks and months to provide overviews and basic instructions to site users to help them better use the additional community building features now installed on this site.
I, jgw, upgraded some but not all of the Community Builder section and services of this Joomla! version 1.5.26 web site as of January 14 to just a few of the most current extensions from the "professional" version of CB, which is CB v1.9.0 Pro. There were delays and confusions between myself and the "CB People" in the UK and Switzerland only resolved in the first week of February 2013. I now have all the necessary extensions, modules and CB plugins with which to "properly" and "fully" update the CB services on this site. You, the site visitor or logged in site user, will start to see the "entry points" into the "Pro" CB system by clicking-on the Community Builder menu-item in the site's Main Menu on the left hand side of most web pages.
My To Dos:
- Beginning Feb. 11, 2013, I, jgw, will be configuring the WLTRes "Pro" CB services on this J1.5 site so that:
- user profiles will be more "robust" and allow each user to express which of a variety of technical and educational skills they have (e.g. computer programming, computer systems analysis and design, instructional design, educational content development knowledge and skills, stand-up / in-classroom instruction, etc.), the extent (number of months or years).
- They (you) will also be able to specify the recentness of their work experience in each, and their work preferences should they be able to volunteer to do any similar tasks for a project managed by this web site.
- Within days or weeks after the above services are enabled, user-specification of their (your) relationships between self and other site users will be facilitated and searchable (e.g. friends, co-workers, special interest study-partner or research-partner, knowledge or special skills colleagues, etc.)
- work-flows will be tracked and individualized reminders of tasks to complete given to each user when they next log in to this site.
- All CB-related services will be "integrated with" the ProjectFork project management system also installed and working on this web site.
- As stated earlier in this article and elsewhere on this site, this site is still using the Joomla! CMS, version 1.5.26. The Joomla! core developers ceased supporting all Joomla! 1.5.x versions as of September, 2012. Upgrading this site is an increasingly urgent task for me, jgw, to complete a.s.a.p.
- The site upgrading tasks necessary to "jump" from a version 1.5 site, the code that makes this site "run," jumping "over" two intermediate major versions of Joomla! that followed J1.5 in 2011 and 2012 (v1.6.x, v1.7.x) to version 2.5.x (available since mid 2012) have been daunting. (new) Since late January, 2013, I (jgw) have also been working on a "test site" in Drupal 7 for the Green Party of California. I, jgw, will continue to explore and test the Joomla! CMS upgrading process so that this web site, with the new, improved and much more useful CB services can upgrade to the latest version of Joomla!, version 2.5.8+ or version 3.x.