During the past decade, the massive worldwide conversion of learning content from print and other older media on to digital networks has created gatekeepers who limit access to their digital content or require online users to pay for it.
A variety of gatekeepers have made a third choice:
to open their content freely into the Internet.
These are their stories.
December 2 , 2006
Mongabay.com
An open education resource in the long tail
Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com
"Mongabay.com aims to raise interest in wildlife and wildlands while promoting awareness of environmental issues." So says Rhett Butter on his homepage in introducing his website Mongabay.com. The article at the bottom of this report describes the his background and tells how the website has grown to become very popular. This sums it up:
"In just three years, Mongabay.com became such a popular encyclopedic resource for teachers, students and others researching the tropical world that it began to make money from clicks on small text advertisements tied to the site's content. Enough money, in fact, that Butler could quit his day job at a small Internet search engine to follow the call of the wild."
Rhett Butler and Mongabay.com have no credentials from the education sector. There is no academic expertise set out as authentication of the material on the website.
Mongabay.com sells T-shirts. One of the T-shirts features the Giant Monkey Frog. "The sales copy says: CAUTION: Sucking on this frog may make you insane. The giant monkey frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor) of Peru is known for its mind-altering skin secretions. Shamans in the Amazon rain forest have used this species in hunting rituals." Of course schools often sell T-shirts.
Mongabay.com sells advertising and makes more money than it costs to manage the website with plenty left for Rhett Butler to continue to travel collecting material for the website content. Apparently he plows much of the money he takes in back into Mongabay.com and the causes it promotes.
In addition to the fact that it is free and open for learning, two factors that operate in the new virtual wildlands make Mongabay a valuable open education resource.
FIRST: The information presented about wildlife, wildlands and environmental issues is heavily visited. Heavily visited open content online can be assumed to have been selected as worthwhile by the wisdom of the crowd of students and teachers who use it.
SECOND: It is serving to fill a niche in the long tail of educational content subjects. Standards and modularization of school subjects focus on a few major areas in the head of the power law curve, cutting off the long tail. The Giant Monkey Frog of Peru's mind-altering secretions might never be available to learn about without Mongabay filling the exiotic frog niche.
A site of inspiration
Jessica Guynn, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 5, 2006Frankly, he gave a damn.
It all began in 1996 when Rhett Butler -- a young Silicon Valley vagabond named for the "Gone with the Wind" rogue -- stopped to cool his feet in a stream in the Malaysian rain forest of Sabah. As he picked leaf leeches from creases in his clothes and listened to the melodic hum of cicadas, he spotted a red-bearded orangutan silently swinging through the branches.
"Though the forest is never silent or still, it brings a deep sense of calm," Butler said, gazing at butterflies in shades of yellow, orange and green fluttering through the lush canopy.
Eight weeks after he left the remote island of Borneo, that calm was shattered when Butler learned that the trees shading that idyllic spot had been logged for wood chips.
Spurred into action, Butler started writing a book about the rain forest that became the foundation for a grassroots Web site he created in 2000. His goal was to gather support for saving the wildlife and wild lands he had grown to love. What he didn't expect was that the trajectory of his career would shift dramatically.
In just three years, Mongabay.com became such a popular encyclopedic resource for teachers, students and others researching the tropical world that it began to make money from clicks on small text advertisements tied to the site's content. Enough money, in fact, that Butler could quit his day job at a small Internet search engine to follow the call of the wild.
Such an adventure never would have been economically feasible were it not for the ever-expanding reach of the Internet and the relative ease and low cost of building an online magazine.
Readers are navigating away from the mainstream and toward a steady flow of specialty publications crafted from a mix of gumption and ingenuity. Wired Magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson calls this new economy the "Long Tail," where a million niches can be found and millions of dollars can be made. For example, Anderson found that 40 percent of sales at online music site Rhapsody are not stocked at Wal-Mart.
Anderson says Butler has found his natural habitat in the long tail.
Butler, a 28-year-old clean-shaven Grizzly Adams, posts tales of his expeditions into remote pockets of wilderness in search of ways to protect endangered species and ecosystems from economic predators.
"He's an example of a niche publisher with an ad-driven model that wouldn't have been possible in the traditional world of advertising," Anderson said.
"This is the nature of the new Web," agreed Internet analyst Rob Enderle. "Folks who can find and maintain an audience and build a site that focuses on compelling content can make a living off of it. Maybe not a great living, but they can certainly make a living.". . .