Friday, June 13, 2008

Things that make you go "WTF?"

A little buzz among bloggers was kicked off this week by Podnosh (and picked up by Bad Science) around a report published by the Charity Commission stating that (to paraphrase) "wikis and blogs have no educational value".  I'm not going to go into a detailed stance here (I'll let the discussion on Podnosh and Bad Science do that for me, they're doing a wonderful job), but I am going to make one observation:  What does this mean for the BBC?  Let me explain.

If you take a look at who makes up the Charity Commission, you'll find Sharmila Nebhrajani is one of the commissioners.  Sharmila is also COO of BBC Future Media & Technology, and this is where I get confused.  The commission has a member who runs the BBC department that handles its digital content, website, and (I would assume) blogs and podcasts.  The commission doesn't see blogs as educational, yet the BBC continues to support Sharmila's department in spite of a £36 million overspend.

Did I forget to mention that Sharmila also has a Facebook account?

Does this strike anyone as mildly ... well ... odd?