-----Original Message-----
From: owner-keyone-l@hawaii.edu [mailto:owner-keyone-l@hawaii.edu]On
Behalf Of Mihkel Pilv
Support fully Jenna's position that WAOE must be, expressing in Internet
terms, an .org and not a .com organization. Just because there is not
much to sell. Because
the "product" will be new type of learning environment and how the
school as organization and learning space will look like.
>>>The "product" is online education, which has, if anything, too large a
market for any single provider and will probably, in the not distant future,
need some kind of framework of accreditation. It is not too early to imagine
that standard accrediting mechanisms (which are, in the US, all regional,
and voluntary, and, in other countries, idiosyncratic to say the least) fail
to accommodate the mix of email, text, video, clipping, hypertext,
conference, MOO and other technologies only now coming on line. Whether WAOE
is or ever will be an appropriate forum for such a system, it sure will have
to be developed by somebody.
As far I know
these questions are not
copyrighted. So you can't sell them.
At the same time this WAOE .org must be built up to be effective as
successful .com organizations are.
Mary Ellen Nourse asked that what kind of commercial projects are being
proposed?
Involving WAOE directly into for-profit actions is perhaps not the most
clever move. But what WAOE can do is to cooperate with some for-profit
organization (eg.
with some educational software company) in order to research which are
the most possible changes in schooling system.
>>>The bandwidth changes already occurring are wreaking havoc in and among
strategic plans for existing and prospective software companies targeting
any level of education. Why put it on a CDROM (or even DVD) when it can be
online with a 1 meg cablemodem to 70% of the schools in the US by 2001? And
what kind of "critical mass" is enough to make CDROMs into the next Betamax
technology? There are some very serious problems in identifying potential
partners among for-profits, other than a few mega-companies or, perhaps, a
range of ISP's or entrepreneurial colleges.
So this educational
software company can
make better decisions what kind of software solutions are needed for
future schools. And this software company pays for this research to
WAOE. So instead of
donation there is a contract between WAOE and this imaginary software
company.
This is just an idea. Do not have anything concrete in mind. But this
principle keeps WAOE team 'running and sharp enough' to be competitive
and take care that
concrete results have enough much value that state and companies are
interested in these results.
And using non-profit product in business environment is pretty widely
spread. (e.g. free and non-profit Apache web server is very widely used
by commercial
ISP-s.). They key point here is that this is open to anybody to use.
>>>Anticipating changes which might, could, and should affect education at
any level is surely an appropriate forum (committee, conference, seminar,
whatever), and documenting that potential to encourage its actual
applications represents a perfectly "academic" task with immense commercial
consequences. How do you "control" those consequences: endorsements, peer
review, sponsorships, etc.? With money on the table these issues get a lot
more murky.