We’re still very much a work in progress and we are coming up against many of the things you discuss. What information do people want? How not to reinvent the wheel? How do communities all the possibilities of Web 2.0 tools fit in? Is a “tool” what people want to help them in this process? and so so many more.

There seems to be a lot of complementary projects looking at this area at the moment, in the UK and elsewhere which might be worth checking out as you think about this. I blogged a meeting we had in London in the summer with links to a few of them http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2007/07/27/pedagogical-planners-of-the-future/
if you want to know more

So, IMHO you’d be shooting yourself in the foot to ditch that (too much), as to what edutools could evolve into, sandboxes are nice (hard, but nice – and to be honest, should be the responsibility of the tool provider). I reckon your best best is pretty simple:

http://reviews.cnet.com/

They’ve kinda got it down to a tee.

With the accelerating pace of change, I’d bet in 2008 you’d have many more repeat visitors than in even 2006. New stuff is hitting us all the time, forcing us to evaluate, and then periodically re-evaluate. Add the social dimension here – where conversations can take place around a technology or an idea, and you’ll have sustainability.

It does take time – 2 years at least, to build an online community up to self-sustainability. Once it happens, it’s a great place to be.

So let me reframe the question slightly – I’m totally willing to take a curatorial role and scour feeds and the web for examples, but what is the way to motivate people to contribute their examples, or if they are already doing this, what is the best way to find these where they are? The world does not need another ‘repository’ approach

You know I have my ax to grind, but laying that hulking WordPress hammer down for a second, I like the wiki clearing house idea or the digg model. What I would really like to see as an instructional technologist is examples of work people did with a brief explanation of how they did it. Having a space to share interesting projects and compell people to think about ways in which people are imagining their courses would be a compelling model for me.

I know there are some important questions about management and larger institution priorities, but when working with faculty I like to say have you seen this project, or X and Y university was working on something similar and approached this way.

The more cool stuff I see with course and technology, th more I have to bring to the table for any particular faculty I work with. I find the blogosphere is pretty good about this in many ways, but I also understand that not everyone blogs about the work they are doing in the classroom, and like Willinsky’s lesson plan wiki, how about an EdTech cool project wiki?

My .02 cents and I only said WordPress once, well twice now.