Ushahidi builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. Clay Shirkey spoke about this resource at TED - http://www.TED.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html
This is a list of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talks. These could be GREAT writing prompts. Most videos are brief - 15 to 20 minutes. You could share just a few moments of a video. Speakers may share vision, discovery, innovation, the future.
Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.
This site is really interesting. It provides riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. This would be a great site to check out and link or embed into online courses. Some of the topics the talks relate to are Technology, Entertainment, Design, Business, Science, Global issues.
Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tesTED math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.
TEDxNYED, an all-day conference focusing on empowering innovation in education, is being held in New York City on Saturday, March 5, 2011. It will be webcast live here at TEDxnyed.com, allowing viewers around the world to join and engage in these ideas worth spreading."
a unique innovation network - a global community of cutting-edge leaders, thinkers, and doers from many different disciplines, who come together to explore the social impact of new technologies, the forces of change shaping our future, and new approaches to solving the world's most significant challenges.