Media in Middle East & North Africa

in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.

Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide.

students would prefer less technology in the classroom (especially *participatory* technologies that force them to do something other than sit back and memorize material for a regurgitation exercise)

participatory media literacy is as much about a literacy of *participation* as it is a literacy of media

Knowing something about privacy and the ways online behavior can have consequences at home, at work, in school, along with some sense of how to determine the credibility of information found online, ought to be taught in high school, or at even younger ages. But one of the big questions I don’t have a clue about is how educational institutions are going to be able to adapt quickly enough to a world in which being able to learn, fine, verify, collaborate, and communicate online requires acquisition of active skills, not an easily transmitted collection of facts.