I haven't posted WatchKnow's first press release here yet. Here it is: CONTACT: Joe Kaegi 901-260-4181 [email protected]
WIKIPEDIA CO-FOUNDER DESIGNS WIKI-STYLE DIRECTORY OF EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS FOR CHILDREN MEMPHIS, Tenn. (Nov. 12, 2009) - Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has launched a new website designed to gather and organize educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. The site, www.watchknow.org, launched in October and currently features more than 11,000 videos across 2,000 categories on subjects such as math, science and history. The nonprofit site features new software, specially developed for the site by Dr. Sanger, which allows wiki-style collaboration among users. "Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia, filtering out everything but quality educational videos," says Dr. Sanger. "WatchKnow.org links together content from traditional sites, and also allows users of the site to improve the organization of the video categories, which makes finding the video you need much easier." The site, which features videos from National Geographic, YouTube and Google Videos among others, took more than 18 months to develop and has been endorsed by educators from schools including Harvard, Stanford, Brigham Young and more. WatchKnow.org is designed to complement and enhance the traditional learning experience for students as they study concepts that are traditionally hard to learn. "Many of our country's educators are unaware of the enormous amount of good video content available for free online," said Chareen Snelson, an advisory committee member and professor at Boise State specializing in online educational videos. "aving a central repository of organized, quality videos is a blessing for busy teachers and students." WatchKnow.org is funded by the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi (CFNM), which has set the goal of offering more than 50,000 videos on the site by the end of 2010. The site offers tips for video searching, separate pages for students, parents and teachers, and a guide for contributors. "Technology is playing an ever-increasing role in the development of our children, and WatchKnow.org can be a big piece of that puzzle," says Tom Pittman, president of the CFNM. "We believe that with the help of educators, we can create something very important and useful to the future of education." About the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi The Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi was formed in 2000 with the mission to place an Internet-accessible computer in every classroom in the state. It became a pilot project for Mississippi, and the state became the first with an Internet-accessible computer in every public classroom. The foundation's continuing function is to connect hundreds of donors with charitable causes that benefit education, health and children. _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
