Knowledge Web Project 2003 Report

Forgive radio silence, but we've been busy, as you'll see. The two big news items are that we have partnered with a great company, Plumb Design in New York to create a beta version of the Knowledge Web, which I will debut at a California statewide Computer Using Educators conference in Palm Springs in March. It will be available to teachers and beta testers in January.

The other big news is that the Best of Connections 25th anniversary PBS special has been funded by Applied Materials. The filming was at History San Jose in November, and we are currently in post-production. The program, called Re:Connections, will air on PBS in 2004 (images).

New Advisory board members: We are pleased that computer luminary Doug Engelbart has been joined by virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, the head of the legendary Xerox PARC lab John Seely Brown, IBM's Jim Spohrer, digirati Howard Rheingold, New Horizons for Learning founder Dee Dickenson and more. Details here

Beta:
We are fortunate to be able to make an alliance with Plumb, as their work is technically sophisticated but also aesthetically stunning (see selected works, especially Experience Music, Smithsonian and Visual Thesaurus).

Partnership was possible because our two organizations share similar philosophies and approaches to pushing the envelope on information navigation that is powerful, nonlinear, and intuitive. Thanks to Peter Vlastelica for championing our cause and to designer Andrew Zeldis. As we are more a partner than a client, we needed to formalize an agreement, so we are grateful for the help of our legal team, Matthew Kaser, Jim Pooley, Pat Reilly and Gerry Davis.

The beta is a major milestone, so we'll celebrate with a party in our virtual reality headquarters in Showcase world.  The folks at Virtually Learning have also made prototypes of a Burke avatar and a 3D interface for the K-Web (in Unite world).  If you want to visit these, follow the instructions here, substituting the names of the worlds above for ecollege)

The beta will be tested by teachers, many of whom are veterans of the professional development workshops last summer. They will then develop lesson plans that will be refined in a teacher's workshop in Seattle in early 2004, and then implemented. We'll post the student projects that come out of this. Thanks to Judy Bonne, Andy Rodgers and Gary Howlett for spearheading this. Both the beta and teachers workshops are possible because of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (thanks to Jim Spohrer and Cathy Casserly).

Best of Connections. Mike Malone and Robert Grove have secured underwriting by Applied Materials for the 25th anniversary Best of Connections special for PBS, which will conclude with the K-Web as the digital incarnation of the series. This will ensure a broad audience for the K-Web launch of the full system. Thanks to Debra Sanderson and Becky Barber on pre-production.

Team updates:

Communications (special thanks to Kathy Schmidt) assisted James on graphics for the new book Twin Tracks, (because I couldn't get used to a camera working on the button up, I was forced to model instead, contorted into unnatural poses, after which i declared "I don't know what supermodels get paid, but it's not enough."), preparing a Powerpoint presentation for the speaker's bureau, and updating the pamphlet. Currently they are updating k-web.org (thanks to Laurie Putnam and friends) and the promotional video as well.

Technical Development (Bruce Lowenthal and Gary Moyer) has been uploading content and refining the database in order to integrate Plumb design's graphical user interface. Gary Kelly is our liaison to Plumb. They are also experimenting with Touchgraph, which may allow users to create their own K-Webs. Steve Dipaola and his students are also experimenting with innovative K-Web interface designs . James also conferred at Google HQ with Terry Winograd, who runs the Human Interface lab at Stanford.

Edtech is presenting K-Web at professional conferences (e.g., ASCD, the big biannual EARLI European edtech conference in Padua Italy, Computer and Composition at Purdue, the World Future Society in San Francisco and the statewide conference in California and Washington), testing lesson plans, and planning teacher workshops. Patrick will base a course on the K-Web at UC Santa Cruz beginning in January. James did several video conferences with students in Seattle and all across Canada, including the high school students in British Columbia who are doing a yearlong course based on the K-Web (thanks Jeremy Meharg). He also keynoted at the Intercultural Education Association conference in Austin in virtual reality space designed by our friends at Virtually Learning (transcript here and screenshots here).

Institute Admin team is assembling boards, writing grant proposals (National Endowment for the Humanities, FIPSE, as well as to foundations) and looking at other fundraising activities (thanks especially to Sharon Svensson).

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