The idea of sharing in a 21st century university is a given. Terms like collaboration, cross-disciplinary, interactive get thrown around. The Open-source movement has also crept into class-room and curricular initiatives.

But what might happen when you take this to its logical conclusion, and invite participation and sharing at a different level? That’s what Digidorm is all about. A sort of a social network for colleges. I know what you’re thinking: isn’t that what Facebook was all about in its early days? It hopes to be more, engaging anyone in the education space –enrolled students, alumni, faculty, parents, employees, and even high school students.

Digidorm intends to tap into the culture and vitality of college life and the communities that sustain any college, mashing up knowledge, providing writing tips, and library info, and college applications.

Digidorm is a bold idea by James Palazzolo, formerlyof ASU. Bold because it compiles some 3000 universities and allows anyone -who registers– to publish writing, video, photographs, and documents.

Interestingly, James did his master’s degree at ASU on this topic, and has the chops to make this work. I’ve known him for years as someone always involved in collaboration and sharing, from wikis to text messaging (before the Virginia Tech incident forced every college to go this route) to live blogging.

Will it ruffle feathers? I can expect this for several reasons.

• Not only because of the content that will show up there, but because it could become the defacto intranet for colleges that should have created this in the first place.
• Being a third party space, it will be out of the range of those who must manage a college’s (or an individual’s) reputation. How will a professor dispute an inaccuracy? How could parents request a takedown of an embarrassing photo of a child?

Already people who are trying to cope with keeping tabs on a school’s image (that show up in Facebook posts, videos on YouTube, tweets and vlogs) have their hands full. Digidorm adds one more headache -or opportunity, depending on how you approach it.

CHECK THIS: video that explains how to get started with a contribution.