ZDNet reports, "Google opens Knol website, a wiki with bylines"
In response to the wide-open and "the author who has more time wins" model of current wikis (i.e., Wikipedia), we've seen different models come out trying to address fairness and accuracy. Citizendium is one of them, and Google has just opened Knol to the public as of Wednesday of this week.
Essentially, the topic page has an author who can grant access to other contributors. In a way, I like the idea because it's definitely more "authoritative," but I also dislike it because it's still a gatekeeper and entryway issue. What if it becomes a political issue ... and the gatekeeper doesn't want to allow access (or debate) on the page? Does turning the authority over to an author really any better than turning it over to someone with too much time on their hands?
Although I'm a huge fan of wikis, I think it is safe to say that wikis do not inately mean fairness or balance. It means collaboration, but either by proxy or through force.
Read ZDNet's article at http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-212067.html
Here are a few Second Life Blogs and News sites:
- New Media Campus Observer
- New World Notes
- NMC Virtual Worlds
- Official Linden Blog
- Rez Nation
- Second Life Insider
- Second Life Library 2.0
- Second Opinion Newsletter
http://www.massively.com/2008/06/14/the-daily-grind-should-mmogs-and-virtual-worlds-be-separate/
The Daily Grind: Should MMOGs and virtual worlds be separate?
Friday held the Social Gaming Summit, a meeting of the luminaries of the various virtual worlds -- Gaia Online, Neopets, and IMVU to name a very few -- in San Francisco. This blogger was on hand for several of the panels, and came away with a deeper understanding of where the demarcation between massively multiplayer online game and virtual world was drawn. On the virtual world side, developers are beginning to incorporate more and more elements of what would normally be considered MMO-only features, like quests and leveling up ...
Wired Campus: Project Aims to Build Online Classroom With Latest Web 2.0 Features - Chronicle.com
The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Wired Campus noted that Howard Rheingold has won a grant in the Digital Media and Learning Competition to put all of the social-collaborative community tools (aka, Web 2.0) together in the classroom.
As Howard Rheingold commented back, "For those interested in a more complete description of the project, which includes the toolset, curricula (syllabi and teaching notes), resource repository (started here), video documentation and instructional material (in the vein of the first several entries), and the community of practitioners: the text of the award application."
Simple small business software, collaboration, CRM: 37signals
I want this. All of 37signals products, really. Basecamp for project management and collaboration; Highrise for client relations management; Backpack to organize and store it all in; Campfire to chat it all up with others (did I mention it's iPhone compatible?); and throw in Ta-da List and Whiteboard (collaborative writing) and I'd die happy. It's everything Google, but prettier and likely a bit more functional (since it's mostly a for-pay service).
Sweet, though.
Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University
Providing access to "free learning" is not a *new* idea, but it looks as thought it is pretty well crafted there at CMU. These aren't just how-to short courses on the web, either. These are full, for-credit courses (or no-credit courses if you'd rather) available to anyone interested in learning the provided topics: Engineering Statics, Statistics, Causal Reasoning, and more ...
