CAIRO: Google announced yesterday the student winners of the Knol competition that sought to encourage more Arabic content on the web.
Students from five of the Arab world’s most prestigious universities submitted Arabic-language articles to Google Knol, an information sharing website that allows users to post, edit and comment on publicly available articles.
Google Marketing Manager Wael Ghonim said the competition among Arab universities could increase the currently limited Arabic content, which makes up only 1 percent of the total content online. “We hope that we ve fueled Arab users to continue to help grow the Arabic web through Knol and any other tools that allow user generated content in Arabic, he said.
Selected professors determined one winner from each of the schools, including Alexandria, Assiut and Cairo universities in Egypt and King Saud and King Fahd universities in Saudi Arabia. Students could also comment and assess each other’s work through the Knol website.
Karim Fayed won first prize at Alexandria University for his article on swine flu; Ahmed Bahaa from Assiut University won for his article on nanotechnology; and Khaled Samy Ibrahim from Cairo University won for his article on computer programming. The winners’ articles are posted on www.google.knol.com.
Students were asked to write articles related to their area of study and incorporate the various media tools offered by Knol, including pictures, graphs and video. Although final submissions were due in May, the articles could be edited on the website until the deadline.
Knol – Google has defined the name as a single unit of knowledge – is Google’s attempt to provide a foundation for user-generated information. Publicly available in Beta form since December 2007, the site boasts over 100,000 user-generated articles from around the world.
Unlike for the more widely-used Wikipedia, Knol users must post their names and some personal information along with their articles, providing readers a way to assess the quality of the information. The author is also given greater control of his or her article. Edits must be approved by the original author, and some of the pages’ advertising revenue is transferred to the author. -Daily News Egypt
