Dear Derek, Please don't be discouraged. I'm sure its not that no one wants to help, But there isn't a lot of experience here converting ceiling fans for several reasons.
As you can imagine, each brand and model is slightly different internally, making each conversion a custom job. The cheap low-RPM bearings are made to support a hanging fan, when it is mounted to face the wind, the bearings will fail in a month or so. The blades are made to gently move air in a still room, and the first sudden wind gust may break one of the blades, leading to an out-of-balance condition and immediate catastrophic failure. The permanent magnets you'll add will want to stick to the coils, this is called cogging, so the wind will have to be strong to get it started spinning.
Raising the magnet speed dramatically increases the output (twice the RPM=4 times the watts), However, in high winds it will easily break. In low winds it will hardly produce any watts at all, IF you can get it to spin out of cog. But,... if you still want to use it as a learning experience and a classroom technology demonstrator...
To generate electicty, you need magnets spinning next to copper wire coils. If you put magnets on the face of a car brake disc (like two pancakes facing each other, one is spinning, one isn't), its an "axial" flux. If you put magnets horizontally on the inside of a cars drum brake, (Like one cylinder spinning inside a slightly larger cylinder) it's a "radial" flux. It was discovered a while back (for a small additional expense) that if you placed a second rotor full of magnets on the other side of the stator, it gave you more juice. Also the distance the spinning magnets were located from the stationary stator full of copper coils ("air-gap") affected how much power you got.
Its easy to add a second rotor and adjust the air-gap on an axial. its difficult on a radial (like your ceiling fan).
If all the copper coils in the stator are hooked up together, its a "single-phase", and a light bulb connected to it will flicker. If the coils are hooked together in groups of three, its "three-phase", and power pulses will be smoother. I have even read about 7-phase. (going around the clock, label them ABCABCABC...)
If the coils have every other coil lined up in an opposite direction of flow, the current will alternate direction, which has the benefit of stronger pulses. If you alternate the flow of electrons (AC) you may need to "rectify" the AC with diodes into direct current (DC) to charge a battery or run a DC device. AC components are typically sensitive to voltage, so you must control the RPM's. A typical Permanent Magnet Alternator (PMA) will charge a battery pack, as the wind is highly variable (unlike a gasoline generator RPM), then a DC or AC device can be run off of the battery. (label the coils A+,A-,B+,B-,C+,C-,...)
If you want the popular 3-phase alternating current, you must use coils that are in pairs of 3-sets (6, 12, 18, 24...)
Using these principles, you can spend a couple hundred dollars to make a very robust "dual-rotor, axial-flux" wind-gen that produces several hundred watts in a 10-MPH wind using car wheel bearings rated at an 800 lb load, capable of spinning over 1,000 RPM.
Strong magnets give you more power than weak magnets, and strong magnets cost more money.
Your fan probably has one rotor, and probably is a radial layout. Each coil should have two wires coming out of it and they are connected in a bundle. Cut the bundles away until you have just the two wire ends from each coil. How many coils do you have? Do you want DC, or AC. Do you want 1-Phase, or 3-phase. Buy the strongest magnets you can afford, and mount them on the rotor as close to the stator as you can (you may have to fabricate a new rotor from scratch). It seems to help the magnets if they have a steel backing and you alternate the poles (North, South, N, S,..) I'm still learning about magnets, and I'd just copy an existing layout that works).
I am still just learning, but I believe the experienced guys when they say the watts from a single rotor radial in low wind was just not worth the effort and few dollars it cost.
I'm sure I have screwed up some part of this explanation, and deserve to be "beaten like a rented mule", and for that I truly apologize. -Ron
"When you're trained to use a hammer,...everything looks like a nail"