Update: How annoying. Even with the URL escaped in my post and the emoticon module turned off in ExpressionEngine, the software insists on rendering the key combination of a colon followed by a P in the URL as a smiley face. I really must find somebody who can help me migrate to WordPress…. Thanks to […]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia Page Call for Reviewers
With some encouragement from Seb Schmoller and David Jennings, I searched for and found a way to ask Wikipedia editors at-large to peer review our History of Virtual Learning Environments page for tone and for compliance with their style guide. (You’ll see an icon and text box to this effect prominently displayed at the top […]
Taking the Wikipedia Prior Art Effort to the Next Level
The wikipedia prior art effort has been spectacularly successful so far, racking up close to 200 additions and changes in just a few days. I believe this work has significant intrinsic value in addition to its potential legal value. At any rate, I’d love to see us take our game up another notch. Now that […]
Wikipedia Page on History of the VLE Gathers Prior Art Info
As you may know, patents can be invalidated if one can demonstrate that the claimed invention was in public use or described in a published document prior to the date of the patent filing. This evidence is called “prior art.” A few of us decided that we should begin documenting prior art–not just on the […]
Teaching Faculty About Wikipedia (and Social Software in General)
I just discovered Jon Udell’s wonderfully archeological screencast about the evolution of a wikipedia page. In eight and a half minutes, he beautifully demonstrates how a community negotiates knowledge construction when nobody is the boss, anybody can edit, and there are no formal processes. As we know, this is a particularly vexing question to many […]
The Promise and Perils of Social Software
My friend Joe Ugoretz has a new article on social software in the Academic Commons. He provides a good overview of a number of social software tools and suggestions about how to use them. But also embedded in his piece is a warning about what happens if we fail to embrace the new technologies and […]