How does this compare to something like Connections (cnx.org) or WikiBooks? Will we have a more-or-less overwhelming winner as we have with Wikipedia in the space where it fits?

This is an interesting prospect. From my perspective, teachers have always customized available resources to meet their individual needs. I’m interested to see how this fairly individual process translates into collaborative efforts.

What I’m most curious about going forward is how the initial development will balance maintaining curriculum standards with allowing open access of users. Additionally, I’m curious to see how they will balance the (sometimes) competing educational perspectives.

This is a very interesting application of collaborative software and one to watch as the issue of content quality plays out. For starters, it’s a great platform for simply keeping learning materials current, locally relevant and more dynamic. For example, it would be interesting for a social studies textbook discussing the rise of unions to provide links and discussion threads on current issues such as the Writers Guild strike. However, that leads to Danny Williamson’s point of balancing the perspectives on the subject. Should anyone be able to update the content? In this example, do we need to balance the union and management positions? If so, then who actually does that? I think these questions will be answered by the community as this is tested out and people become more comfortable with the concept of shared input.

Regardless of the specific answer, it’s exciting to see collaboration and the use collaborative software in new ways that could benefit the overall community.

[...] and the global economy). She then outlined eight ways that Wikinomics will impact learning (through flexbooks, co-created content, virtual field trips, global competitions, global exhibitions, collaborative [...]