BigShinyThing

An interesting snippet from the if:book blog:

[...] the word processing software being bundled into the [One Laptop Per Child Initiative's] 100-dollar laptops will all be wiki-based, putting the focus on student collaboration over mesh networks. This may not sound like such a big deal, but just take a moment to ponder the implications of having all class writing assignments being carried out [on] wikis. The different sorts of skills and attitudes that collaborating on everything might nurture. There a million things that could go wrong with the [...] project, but you can’t accuse its developers of lacking bold ideas about education.

Now there’s a thing. Its been a long time (anyone remember Smalltalk?) since we’ve really heard of any educational technology taking such a radical leap of faith. Whether the benefits of participatory co-creation outweigh its downsides is up for question on many levels. But it’s nice to see some educationalists embracing rather than censoring the tools of the zeitgeist. (more…)

Now ideas really can come from anywhere. Idiki has been developed by Freaknet, a group based in Casania. The site uses the Wiki model to expose ideas so that anybody can try to improve and extend them. Idiki is obviously an acronym for ‘idea wiki’ but it’s also a basque word that means ‘to make public’. How neat. The process is potentially quite brutal for ideas — opening them up to the rigours of mass collaborative editing — but Idiki is also based on the principle that ideas can’t be owned. Not now, anyway.

It also needs you to feed it.

Via our current bible for digital art and hacktivism, Neural magazine.