Flat Classroom Project

This is an example of social entrepreneurship and a new way that people are connecting online. This is a great organization (Discovery - discovery channel, etc.) and they have a great program.

My Dad has diabetes as did my grandfather. This is a great program and discovery does things right -- please consider letting your students join this great event. "Discovery Education has launched a program for high school health/science teachers designed to help educate students about Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes. The site includes lesson plans (coming soon), lots of videos and multimedia interactives on digestion, blood glucose and diabetes. To recognize World Diabetes Day on November 14, all students with Type 1 diabetes are encouraged to create videos to "Shout Out" about diabetes and tell their story. For each video submitted, Novo Nordisk will make a donation to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help fund research leading to a cure for Type 1 diabetes. Plus, each student who submits a video will receive a free Discovery DVD. "

Article explains that malicious applications can be removed from the android phone. iPhone has the same feature. May give some inspiriation for a segment of vision?

Everyone's all a-twitter over the so-called "kill switch" found in Google's first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. Here's the thing, though: Not only is it not a big deal -- it's actually a good thing.

A possible social implication on the use of the web. May spark an idea for a segment of video?

Researchers studying the aging process have found that surfing the Web may improve the memories of middle-aged and older adults.

This article predicts what may happen in the future based on current experiments between universities. Gives some nice history. Some good material for a wiki.

Smarr is one of the people who can legitimately claim the benefit of foresight. He is one of the internet's architects, one of the academics who connected their universities using slow, slow dial-up modem links, just to see what would happen next. He has seen this communication highway grow, and is still at the forefront of research as he explores what he calls "ultra-broadband", asking the question: what will cyberspace look like when it is 10,000 times its current speed?

The Ning for the upcoming conference in January -- it is REALLY Happening - I'm so excited!

The conference in January.

Important article to read about how a virtual avatar murder has consequences in the physical world.

Firefox minefield is the alpha version of Firefox 4 -- early testers report a very fast web browser -- but warning - IT IS STILL IN ALPHA!

Important to include twitter as part of what you're reporting.

Interesting article w/ new term "hacktivists" -- politically motivated hackers. That is a new term. Twitter is written up in this report as being used by extremist groups of all kinds "socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others...." Why not just say everyone uses twitter? (Well, everyone DOESN"T use twitter but it can mobilize a lot of people in a pretty short time.)

This group may be an interesting group to interview for Flat Classroom project - from Houston.

Got a link to this wiki from Estie Cuellar, amazing teacher who has joined in Flat Classroom this year. She says: "I would like to share something with you guys. I teach a Sports Marketing Class. I'm always looking for new and fun ways to reach the kids. Yesterday, I started my class on a comprehensive project that I'm calling, "Rock On." The goal of the project is for the students teams (all of my classes work in teams) to synthesize what they've learned in class so far (they've learned the marketing mix, target marketing, positioning, segmenting, and the 7-key functions of marketing) and plan a 20 city tour for their band. I found the project from a "Best Practices" book that Jeff McCauley of The Marketing Teacher compiled from marketing teachers and sent out as a PDF a couple of years ago. I have modified the original project to utilize Web2.0 technologies." Interesting ideas - wish I could teach marketing!

HSBC Bank signing on as the sponsor of the Flat Classroom Conference.

So excited about HSBC bank signing as the major sponsor of the Flat Classroom conference - major kudos to Julie Lindsay and Qatar Academy!! It makes me exceptionally proud to see the STUDENTS in this picture as this conference is about reengineering the place of students in educational conferences and making them the part of the future of education. If you want to attend, sign up now, as the spaces will be limited!

Microsoft announced this morning at its PDC conference that the next release of Microsoft Office will include browser-based versions of some of its main office software products - Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Offline software programs are connecting online.

A signficant development since the advent of the world wide web. May offer an opportunity to predict.

After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print.

Second life has upped their prices this week. This is why I couldn't buy land - I budgeted at old prices but don't have the money to create my student island now. Of course, I'd wait until this past week to buy the island, but I wasn't ready yet!

Second Life is a virtual world -- the prices just went up this week.

iTrail application for the iPhone.

iTrail lets the iphone track your gps coordinates while doing physical activity. Still not entirely accurate, this runs best on the iPhone 3G, one of those things that will "get there" eventually.

Website about using cell phones in school - will be topic of a great movie for someone on Flat Classroom.

Information collected by Karen Montgomery on using cell phones in learning. Some great resources are here.

Look at how this will work with wireless, another good idea for a movie.

An area of explosive growth that is beginning to emerge is the integration of other senses than sight and sound -- smell, touch, taste, etc. and this is an example of how a company is planning to use the sense of touch to let a person follow a soccer game. Don't know if anyone would do it, but if everybody thinks it is a good idea, as a rule, you're too late.

Long, but very interesting - It is a Law Review article.

Great museum of newpaper covers showing the results of the presidential election.

Front pages of newspapers from today from www.newseum.org -- this is a great read on the history of today. (Thanks Will Richardson for the link.)

Read this if you're covering politics and take a look at the fivethrigtyeight.com blog.

Tom HOffman shares some of the background story of fivethirtyeight.com - a great story of collaboration and work and how "no names" become somebody with hard work, intelligence, persistence, and a commitment to "do it right" sans an agenda.