Wordpress
Etienne Wenger
Wikipedia (A snowman)
Martin Weller
Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0
Web Sciences
Yorick Wilks
H G Wells
Wired Sussex
Having blogged since 1999, then on Diaryland, I lived through the blogging revolution of 2002-2005 when a plethora of platforms came along. I tentatively tried several, including LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr and EduBlogs before settling on WordPress in 2007. It remains the most versatile, open, viewed blogging platform of them all. So easy that it is my default platform for a range of interests: learning, swim teaching and coaching, the First World War and more - a couple of 'Books of Remembrance' even and a multitude of other themes, issues and intersts. Try it. And like here, remember there is one very important option: public or private, in both cases it is still a blog, but when private it can be a diary and a portfolio. Mine is both a learning journal, and a journal. As a resource its value grows with regular use and maintenance - like a garden
When it comes to e-learning academics then there are few bigger names than Martin Weller, but when it comes to a demonstration of global reach through 'user generated content' shared by hundreds of thousands of people forming interest groups and communities then for me, Wordpress, rather than Wikipedia is the e-learning blogging platform of choice.
I've called Wikipedia a 'snowman' as I had called e-mail a 'snowball' in the same sentence; one you aim, the other last as others add to it. Is it still the default for students? The problem now is that the content is like a granite cliff - unassailable it beleived in its scholarship and increasingly inaccessible as the editors become so entrenched - addressing eachother rather than a specific audience. There needs to be a dial that allows you to tone down or filter the content depending on whether you are a primary school student or have a PhD.
Web Sciences is a subject specialism at the University of Southampton.
Yorick Wilks has developed some interesting ideas on Artificial Intelligence and is at the Oxford Internet Institute.
H G Wells is a visionary, the Douglas Adams of his time.
Etienne Wenger - Communities of Practice Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Martin Weller - The Ed Techie
Tapscott, S. and Williams, D. (2007) Wikinomics; How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, London, Atlantic Books.
Pearce, N. (2012) ‘Developing students as content scavengers’, OpenCourseWare Consortium Global 2012/OER 12 Conference, 16–18 April, Cambridge.
Wilks, Yorick (ed.), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues. 2010. xxii, 315 pp. (pp. 259–286)
The on going story of the heavy metal umlaut on wikipedia.
http://jonudell.net/udell/gems/umlaut/umlaut.html