WatchKnow update: open, international, and on track
The plan for WatchKnow has changed a bit, and things are happening now. So here is an update about the project. (Citizendium is a partner in this project, and I’m its director.)
(1) We won’t be hosting videos, but only aggregating and embedding them. Our vision now is to collect the best watchable media for children and embed it, organize it, and make it searchable from one place.
(2) We will be international and more open. Anybody will be able to participate, even if anonymous; anonymous submissions will be moderated, and we plan to launch in several languages, if we can at all. This is ambitious but doable, I think.
(3) Our distinguished Advisory Committee includes Chris Dede (Harvard), Bob Hoffman (San Diego State), Larry Lessig (Stanford and Creative Commons), Tom Pittman (Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi), Larry Sanger (Citizendium), Chareen Snelson (Boise State), and David Wiley (Brigham Young and opencontent.org). I’ll be inviting some others to join us as well.
(4) Advance Website has been hired to do the coding.
(5) We are on track to launch this fall.
(6) We now have a YouTube “pre-contest” going under new rules. This pre-contest will conclude Sept. 26. All contest entries must be Creative Commons licensed. To enter the contest, just join our YouTube group and add your video to the group! You can win up to $1000, depending on how many entries we receive.
Here’s a new video about WatchKnow, embedded in this blog:
(7) The watchknow.org website has been rewritten and made a little more user-friendly, and elaborates many of the above developments.
If you feel moved to help at all, what you might usefully do (other than collecting YouTube educational videos and participating in the contest) is help us create buzz about the project by mentioning it on your blog or website or whatever.