Continuing with the theme of mashups, the revamped EDUCAUSE Connect site pulls in resources and contents from throughout the EDUCAUSE site (replacing the old Resources section) and highlights member blog and wikis posts.
Other features of the new site include an improved interface, taxonomy and folksonomy integration, the ability to comment on content, and extensive RSS capabilities.
The topic-centered Browse pages now have tabs for both new and popular content, enabling you to see trends that emerge over time. You can find what you're looking for more quickly with the faceted information search feature and view content in either tabular or table formats.
Will this effort to build a community of practice that shares, annotates, comments on their work and EDUCAUSE resources be successful? Many of us are hoping that similar mashups or suites of Web 2.0 will support the creation of disciplinary, pedagogical, research, and issue-focused communities.
How do we measure the "success" of such efforts? Aside from looking at numbers of users, how do we decide the usefulness of content and "findability" of resources and making connections to others of like interest?
