britannica

And then life threw me a lesson plan

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

For more than a year, I have been making a transition from corporate communications to education. I have been given an opportunity to be a computer teacher at an elementary school in Scottsdale, Arizona.

It’s an amazing time to be joining a profession that’s getting lots of attention. And scrutiny. From the recent schoolteachers’ walkout in Chicago, to the just out Nations Report Card, among others, the story is not exactly cheerful.

Meanwhile, as knowledge acquisition is moving an 120 miles-per-hour, pedagogy is ambling along.  I can see this through the lens of our two children, as new engagement tools emerge, and curricula change. Analog classrooms are trying to adapt to digital natives. Britannica now has an app for the iPad and other tablets. Classrooms are being ‘flipped.’ We can’t continue to do the same old, same old.

If there’s a simple lesson plan for my career, it’s this: push students to the edges. Focusing on ‘core’ areas, but also widen the aperture. Knowledge of ‘computers’ without context of where they are used, is meaningless. Often it’s the topical things we introduce in class that make planned (not canned) lessons relevant. One study last year found that students who did “science-related activities that are not for schoolwork” performed higher.

TO KICK OFF, I re-positioned the computer class as a Technology and Computer Lab, in which students will engage in subjects from space exploration to search engines.

Being the school’s robotics coach helps. This is a program established by the FIRST Lego League. Students can step out of their comfort zone and take risks, even while engaging their math and design skills.

Each day, the lens zooms in and widens…

 

Your Knol. Your Voice. Your ad supported wiki

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Google’s joined the race to create the perfect wiki, with Knol.

And just like Wikipedia, and Britannica, it’s introducing a few new ways to create content.

There is ‘moderated collaboration,’ for instance. Which sounds a lot like the concept behind the edit pages of Wikipedia. probably less edit wars, since the author has to approve the changes for them to go live. Brave authors could however permit edits without approval. The really daring ones will be able to link their entries with advertising to earn some income via AdSense. I can see that feature alone quickly tarnish the value of this wiki as marketers rush in.

Maybe this is Google2 — a move to create a parallel search engine that pretends to be a wiki.

Check the wiki-slayer here.

Associated Press could learn from Britannica

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

The attribution war between the Associated Press and bloggers may end somewhat amicably, but the problem is not going away.

Businessweek has called it “an early skirmish in what’s likely to become a protracted war over how and where media content is published online.” Who knows, one day they may involved in one.

The “AP way,” as Jeff Jarvis called it, may go down as trying to establish a top-down business approach in a bottom-up world. Or to put it another way, trying to force ‘monetization’ through the funnel of ‘syndication.’

It’s an odd time to try to lock down content and charge for it. I recently tried out Encyclopedia Britannica (and interviewed Tom Panelas) and came to the conclusion that instead of trying to set up snipers on the ramparts of the walled garden, Britannica has basically decided to create a new type of walled garden –leaving the keys to the entrance under the mat, so to speak. If a 240-year company can recognize the value in collaboration not confrontation, a ‘younger’ content repository like AP could surely follow suit.

If they don’t want to take a leaf from the page of Britannica, how about this experiment by David Balter of BzzAgent? He’s simultaneously selling and giving away (free download) a book called Word of Mouth Manual Volume II.

“Crazy like a fox, that Balter,” says Todd Defren, whose blog PR Squared is one of the venues selected to allow those free downloads.

“Protection is no strategy for the future,” says Jarvis.

“Content wants to lose the handcuffs,” says little old me.

Wikipedia, now in Search

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

As the news breaks that Encyclopedia Britannica is moving into a Wiki platform (over and beyond WebShare) Wikipedia is now taking aim at search, with Wikia Search.

Resting on four words, Transparency, Community, Quality and Privacy, it’s a very different experience. There’s an odd but enticing feature –in the area where you expect to see paid ads– that allows you to add a URL to the search results. Results are not very accurate, but these are early days.

Wikia Search lets you register a “social profile” adding the social network ingredient to search. “Search requires a strong social and community focus,” they say, and they are building it through collaboration –much like Wikipedia. Worth watching.

Encyclopedia Britannica’s social media play

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Lest you think Encyclopedia Britannica is to Wikipedia what moleskin notebooks are to blogs, check out what Britannica has been up to. It embraced widgets, Twitter, RSS, and is now introducing WebShare –a way for for bloggers and editors to link to content in the paid areas of Britannica, letting the blog’s or publication’s readers access that piece of content free. It’s still in a soft launch mode.

Why free, when everyone else is paying ($ 69.95) for the privilege? Britannica says it wants to give a blogger’s readers “background.” And no, the service is not aimed at A-list bloggers –those with low traffic qualify. Meaning, I suppose, that EB has realized the value of social media and has moved past the Wikipedia vs Britannica debate.

If you’re a content manager for your agency, give it a shot. Register here.

Britannica’s own blog and forum are very well managed. It covers topics such as Web 2.0, books, media, etc. I found an interesting piece on its nemesis, Wikipedia, titled Am I my brother’s Web 2.0 gatekeeper (the truth about Wikipedia.) OK, so it’s forcing the comparison, but it is really good to know that knowledge seekers now have two strong choices.

We don’t have to choose between old media and new media, between a flawed one and a poor also ran.