The Media Spot

National Day of Civic Hacking is a national event that will take place June 1-2, 2013, in cities across the nation. The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.

Two schools TMS has worked with were profiled by the Teaching Channel in this video that unpacks the Common Core Standards for elementary schools. Funny that they mention "technology" being integrated throughout the standards, but their example is of teachers watching videos of each other. I happen to know that both schools are doing much more sophisticated work that blends digital media into students' ELA and Math units, but it's not yet on the radar of CCSS evaluators (at least at the time this video was made).

Douglas Rushkoff, media thinker and author of Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, joins to discuss his new book and the idea that we no longer plan for the future, but instead spend our time grappling with the immediate.

stripped down version

Research and media skills:  research and media skills blended into the Standards as a wholeTo be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new. The need to conduct research and to produce and consume media is embedded into every aspect of today's curriculum. In like fashion, research and media skills and understandings are embedded throughout the Standards rather than treated in a separate section.

Prezi allows soundtracks now.  

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Science360 for iPad provides easy access to engaging science and engineering images and video from around the globe and a news feed featuring breaking news from NSF-funded institutions. Content is either produced by NSF or gathered from scientists, colleges and universities, and NSF science and engineering centers.

Citizen Science is an adventure game that teaches scientific literacy and limnology.