All, Finally, here is the announcement I've been promising for the last couple of months.
We're now starting to spread the word about a major new Citizendium program. This initial announcement is meant to be low-key (no press release yet). I wanted you Citizens to be the first to receive it. WatchKnow will be a free, non-profit, K-12 educational video contest. It is currently under planning and development. See http://www.watchknow.org for a long FAQ. Here's the basic idea. Imagine tens of thousands of excellent short videos explaining nearly every topic taught in U.S. public schools. WatchKnow will be a free (open content), non-profit beta project, to launch probably this fall, to see whether we can create that. We will set the topics and invite teachers--and everyone--to submit videos. Videos will be rated, and, at a certain point, we'll select a winner for each topic. We'll pay the winner(s) within each topic a small prize(s), such as $75 and $25, but the amounts have not be decided firmly yet. We might award substantially more for certain topics. You could think of it as an American Idol for teachers, but we are not affiliated with American Idol. The project is being carried out as a new program of the Citizendium Foundation, with funding from a retired Memphis millionaire who wishes to benefit American education. We hope to launch the beta project this fall. We will be spreading the word this summer, to attract school teachers and others to help staff the program in various ways. We hope within the next few weeks to hire a technical person to actually build the beta system. See the ad here: http://columbus.craigslist.org/eng/713663956.html For future updates, please add yourself to the announcement list: http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/listinfo/watchknow-l You can discuss the new program here on the CZ forums: http://tinyurl.com/4ob9fd I have been asked to lead the program. So, you wonder, why have I agreed? First, the aforementioned Memphis philanthropist has been very generous in supporting the Citizendium, as an incentive to us to work on this project. (He doesn't want to be named, by the way.) He has been very persistent for over a year in recruiting me (and us) to get this project started. Second, it is largely in keeping with our overall mission of bringing online communities together, to create reliable, free, and (broadly) educational content. I suppose it's often this way in life--you start out doing one thing, and you find yourself presented with excellent reasons to branch out into something else. If you are worried that this means I'll be quitting as Editor-in-Chief of the Citizendium soon, please don't. I've in fact been working on both projects for several months now, spending *most* of my work time on CZ rather than WatchKnow. One exciting thing about this project, as an opportunity for us, is that, if it succeeds very well, it might bring large amounts of relatively "permanent" funding from a whole variety of sources. There will be no shortage of funds for a really useful free educational video project. As the parent project of WatchKnow, CZ naturally stands to benefit. Already, we can tap the WatchKnow engineer to serve a System Administration role for CZ as a whole. A successful beta project will no doubt provide us the funds to do something that I have been concerned that we wouldn't be able to do: actually pay my successor a suitable salary! Besides, once the system is off the ground, it should largely "run itself" and require relatively little work from me. If it doesn't--if it requires heavy management--we'll hire someone to do that. CZ's Executive Committee already knows about the project and has given our involvement their blessing. Several members have been rather enthusiastic about it. We have also received advice and help from a number of other people, including two "big names" in the world of free culture--but I will not release their names until the entire new WatchKnow Advisory Committee is constructed. We'll be looking for interested and suitable members of that Committee--i.e., distinguished educators, ed tech gurus, and free content advocates. I think WatchKnow will be good for CZ in another way. While we've been doing all right so far this year, we have not had a real "shot in the arm" in terms of the sort of announcements, press attention, and active recruitment efforts that punctuated our earlier months. WatchKnow will not only put CZ's name back in the news, it will demonstrate that we are still very much active, expanding...and funded! Finally, think of this: the video project might end up being very high-profile. There's reason to think it will; so far, everyone who hears about the idea loves it, and the idea is totally innovative and fills a gaping hole and need. If WatchKnow is very popular, it will help boost CZ, and vice-versa. So, in sum, I'm very comfortable with this as move strategically. Again, here are the key links: FAQ: http://www.watchknow.org Mailing list: http://mail.citizendium.org/mailman/listinfo/watchknow-l Discussion forum: http://tinyurl.com/4ob9fd Engineer/sysadmin ad: http://columbus.craigslist.org/eng/713663956.html --Larry ----- Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D. | http://www.larrysanger.org/ Editor-in-Chief, Citizendium | http://www.citizendium.org/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
