02.27.07

Trends via NMC

Posted in future paradigms, web2.0 at 4:23 pm by sbetts

Just read a post by Judy O’Connell on her Hey Jude blog stating that the New Media Consortium has the Technologies on the Horizon report out. So off I went to their wiki.

This 32 page report (download) is a good read for those of us working to prepare the next generations. It describes 6 areas of emerging technologies that will influence higher education (and via the domino theory, us also). It reviews key trends in the practice of teaching, learning and creativity and ranks those considered most important.

The Six areas:

  1. User-Created Content
  2. Social Networking
  3. Virtual Worlds
  4. The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication
  5. Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

Now that makes you think - I recommend it as bedtime reading.
Sharon

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02.26.07

Citizendium - improvement over Wikipedia - or futile effort?

Posted in OpenSource, future paradigms at 3:34 pm by sbetts

The opening paragraph reads:

The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a “citizens’ compendium of everything,” is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names. It has taken on a life of its own and will, perhaps, become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects. We will avoid calling it an “encyclopedia” until the project’s editors feel comfortable putting their reputations behind this description.

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As educators, we try to teach evaluation of sources - will forcing registration make this Wiki more or less reliable for students to use? What do you think?