Randy Fisher - Community-Builder

NPR : Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web

Interesting story this morning on NPR's Morning Edition (see link below):

Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web Listen to this story... by Laura Sydell, May 7, 2007

The Fair Use Project at Stanford Law School's seeks to lay the groundwork for artists and academics to use copyrighted work without permission in certain situations.

Related Links:

• Center for Internet and Society
• CIS News Releases

Source: NPR : Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web.

10 + 10 Tech Proposals Empowering Social Change: Human Rights, Community Education and Local Leadership | NetSquared

This author identifies the critieria for choosing worthy projects:

• At least half of the projects I nominated would be located in the Global South, because of the large divide that already exists between technology in the Global North and the Global South — and NetSquared's position to help alter this.

• The projects I nominated would be grounded in community concerns or community initiatives. For me, that is broad enough to encompass a "community" of human rights workers or even, potentially, nonprofits. But I wanted to see a demonstrated need for the technology or service.

• Needless to say, the projects I nominated would be involved in innovative community-building and/or social networking. A number of projects seemed like very worthwhile charities but outside the scope of this particular conference/fund.

The author identifies 10 projects that were nominated, and another 10 that didn't make the list. One, that caught my eye, was:

Making Connections: Bringing Rural and Urban Students Together: Although this project really only uses blogging technology (with some social networking), I think the pedagogy grounding the project — and the potential to influence other education initiatives — makes it an extremely important use of community-based technology.

I'll be checking this one out - it seems to me that this may be another example of how WikiEducator can use social networking tools to make connections: by providing support to other teachers / educators are developing free content as well as exciting learning activities that may / may not work in one locale or another.

In my view, this "bridging-the-gap" between rural and urban students has the potential to go far beyond simply "making connections". It can actually evolve into meaningful relationships.

Thoughts, ideas, comments?

• have you identified / used other social networking tools for meaningful causes?
• what has been your experience?
• how could the experience be even better?

Link: Ten Tech Proposals Empowering Social Change: Human Rights, Community Education and Local Leadership | NetSquared, a project of TechSoup.org