Innovative Thinking and Peace: The Peace Innovation Course at Stanford

Prof. Johan Galtung is fond of giving the example of Mulla and the Eighteen Camels to underline the importance of innovative thinking and compassion in peacebuilding and conflict resolution.

Peace Innovation - a new undergraduate course at Stanford University taught by Prof. B J Fogg (of Computers As Persuasive Technology (CAPT-ology) fame) - aims to "help people use new technology to invent peace". Students work in small groups using Web 2.0 services (Flickr, Google maps, YouTube ....) to explore if they can be used for peacebuilding.

The course is based on the idea that noew technologies such as mobile phones and web 2.0 are great tools of persuading people into believing (belief formation) and behaving in a certain way. Very interesting indeed.

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Knowledge 2.0 - Knowledge Outsourcing using Web 2.0 technologies

Image via WikipediaTeaching in virtual classrooms and knowledge outsourcing is a emerging and fast developing trend in India. The online learning market is set to grow manifold in the coming years and Web 2.0 technologies, in combination with faster Internet are critical in making knowledge outsourcing a key part of services exports from countries like India. Numerous Indian internet startups have harnessed the power of the Web 2.0 to impart online tutoring to pupils at home and abroad. Tutorvista has already developed a niche in this market. A promising company with links to India is WizIQ. According to the company website,

WiZiQ is a web-based platform for anyone and everyone who wants to teach and learn live, online. Teachers and students use WiZiQ for its state-of-the-art virtual classroom, to create and share online educational content and tests, and to connect with persons having similar subject interests.

WizIQ has recently developed a module for Moodle - the most popular education related Content Management System (CMS) solution. The WizIQ moodle module connects to WizIQ's free Online Virtual Classroom - a free alternative to expensive conferencing tools in online teaching/learning software market.

I am currently testing WizIQ for online teaching and have added the module to my moodle site: http://www.tutorvista.com/moodle

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Some cool web 2.0 links

Image from WikipediaWeb 2.0 is currently the rage and never a day passes without some new and interesting ideas being implemented. Here are a few that have caught my eye today:

1. opensocial.org: Decommoditizing Social Networks By Connecting User Profiles Via OpenSocial
2. Searchme.com: visual search
3. publishing 2.0
4. pdfmenot: embed pdf files as flash (similar to scribd), and of course;
5. zemanta.com: a blogging helper add-on for Firefox that creates neat looking posts for blogger, typepad and wordpress

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