Wikipedia Cofounder Debuts Wiki-Style Educational Website

February 26, 2010

There's no stopping Larry Sanger, cofounder of Wikipedia. His newest venture is a wiki-style website that features more than 11,000 videos spanning 2,000 categories and subjects including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

 “Think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia," said Sanger, "filtering out everything but quality educational videos."

Designed to complement traditional learning, WatchKnow.org lets users explore material in specific subject areas. Moreover, it provides tips for video searching; suggestions for students, parents, and teachers; and a guide for anyone who has videos to contribute that could enhance this educational melting pot.

Funded by the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi (CFNM), WatchKnow.org hopes to gather another 40,000 videos within the next year. At the moment the site includes videos from National Geographic, YouTube, and Google Videos. The endeavor, which has taken 18 months to develop, has been endorsed by instructors from Harvard University, Stanford, and Brigham Young University, among others.

“Technology is playing an ever-increasing role in the development of our children, and WatchKnow.org can be a big piece of that puzzle,” said Tom Pittman, CFNM president. “With the help of educators, we can create something very important and useful to the future of education.”

Source: http://www.watchknow.org/