So far on this blog, my posts have explored larger themes, such as Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants and the media's treatment of stories about technological dangers. But our blog here at Digital Nation also aims to take you behind the scenes and into the process of making a documentary film for FRONTLINE. We want you to see what we're working on, read what we're thinking about, and learn how our reporting is shaping our opinions on a daily basis.
"The model is free. You can use our content elsewhere in the web. What do we get out of it? We want you to help us build an ad network," said Matt McAlister, head of the Guardian Developer Network.
To find related Guardian articles, the API can draw on the tagging system from its own content management system, internal search engine for guardian.co.uk provided by Endeca and a related-content service powered by Zemanta. That content is then packaged in standardised formats including XML, JSON and Atom which can easily be added to external sites.
"The whole idea is to spread out journalism," McAlister said, and APIs can lead to explosive growth.
Twitter's API drives 20 times more traffic to the service than its own website does, and Twitter's web market share passed that of social news site Digg in January. Third parties using Twitter's API have developed a huge range of services and applications that have helped drive Twitter's growth spurt.
Over the past few years, I have been collecting interesting Internet videos that would be appropriate for lessons and presentations, or personal research, related to technological and media literacy. Here are 70+ videos organized into various sub-categories. These videos are of varying quality, cross several genres, and are of varied suitability for classroom use.
Our schools need to re-evaluate how much time we spend on print alone and start broadening our focus. Joe Brennan, among others, does a great job connecting the dots between writing and video. Unfortunately, most of our educators have difficulty understanding the value and nuances of creating and viewing effective video.
SD = Identifying Similarities and Differences CL = Cooperative Learning SNT = Summarizing and Note-Taking ER = Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition HP = Homework and Practice NR = Nonlinguistic Representation OF = Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback HYP = Generating and Testing Hypotheses QCO = Questions, Cues, and Advance Organizers
Download a free copy of Media Meltdown, media literacy graphic novel for 8-14 year olds. Teacher resources, media lit games and more at http://mediameltdown.net.