...Bigger Than My Teacher Gives Me Credit For...

(...to the tune of John Mayer's Bigger Than My Body Gives Me Credit For...)

Ian Jukes posted a link to this article to his blog:

Jon Beasley-Murray, Assistant Professor of French, Hispanic and Italian
Studies, the University of British Columbia, has decided to replace term papers
with something more challenging. He has asked students in his Latin American
literature to do their projects on Wikipedia, the biggest multilingual
free-content encyclopedia on the Internet.

Beasley-Murray told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview published on
Sunday, May 11, that writing for Wikipedia "seems like a much larger stage, more
of a challenge.""The vast majority of Wikipedia entries aren't very good," he
admitted, adding that the site aims to be academically sound.

The professor promised a rare A+ grade to students who manage to get their
projects accepted as a "Featured Article," the top rank on the online
encyclopedia.

Imagine... if students showed their learning (language, critical thinking, media bias, etc.) by putting their work before a worldwide audience. And I don't think it's just for post-secondary, either.

WASBO 2008

I was privileged to present today to the Washington Association of School Business Officials annual conference in Tacoma, and had about 50 people in attendance. The two-hour session was titled It's a Flat, Fast, Creative World: Change or Die and built on previous presentations about The World Is Flat, The Long Tail, and other core ed tech principles.

I tried to record the sessions in Elluminate, but my apologies ~ I forgot to hit the "record" button, so there's no audio! AAARRRGGHHH!

At any rate, the slide deck is available at SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/derrylyons) and supporting links on del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/derrylyons/wasbo2008)