It seems the Canadian federal government is setting up its own wiki to allow departments to post information on new policies and to offer comments and feedback on those same issues. The new wiki, dubbed GCpedia (the GC presumably standing for Government of Canada), should create a greater openness of the government when reporting issues, but it seems could also cause some significant embarrassment if the wiki is open to the public. There’s some suggestion that the wiki will initially be available only to government employees to encourage greater cooperation and information sharing among departments.
It’s intriguing when even the federal government thinks it needs to operate in a Web 2.0 way. It sure encourages me, as a teacher, to use collaborative technologies ’cause if the government is doing it, Web 2.0 has gone mainstream.
Via Liz Davis’s tweet on Twitter I learned about Twitter Grader which determines your relative position in the Twitter world. Liz scored a staggering 99.3% making her one of Twitter’s most active and followed users. By way of contrast, I scored a lowly 13%. What I find interesting is that means there are still about 30,000 Twitter users who scored lower than me. That would seem to suggest that there are 30,000 Twitter users whose accounts at pretty much dormant.
I’m really not sure what the relevance of all this is, but it’s part of my exploration of Twitter and just what it does and can do.
I started attending the K12 Online Conference today. It’s been running for several days and is entirely online as the name would suggest. I started out by downloading a presentation and putting it on my mp3 player.
I then walked around the hallways with my mp3 player on my prep period and told people I couldn’t talk to them because I was “at a conference.” Of course, I’ve had to explain what I meant which gave me a great chance to explain just how cool and convenient a virtual conference could be (and is).
If you haven’t been to the K12 Online Conference, go soon. The material will remain posted for a good long while, but you can comment on presentations and get feedback in real time if you get into the material now.
Have fun, and I’ll “see” you at the conference.
In a valiant attempt to educate, the Mathematical Association of America has started a blog called NumberADay. As you might expect, every day they post a new number along with some intriguing facts about it. The blog is a neat concept. I’m not sure how long they can keep it up, but so far they’ve got 27 entries and show no sign of letting up.
