Asian University Digital Resourse Network

This would normally fall under microblogging as a matter of status updates. Anyway, we are currently working on the website of the Asian University Digital Resource Network (AUDRN). It's a network which aims to promote sharing of digital tools and practices around local knowledge among digital librarians and information scientists.

This ground-breaking initiative is supported by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA) and is hosted in Miriam College through the L.E.A.D. Center.

Listen to the quick introduction about AUDRN.

TEDxManila

To all who heeded the call of innovation, passion and inspiration, thanks for making it a great experience. Our gratitude also go out to our sponsors especially to G2iX.com for their support and kind words for TEDxManila.

Indeed, we can only hope this inspires more people to take ideas worth sharing to the next level. Read more about Alain Yap's "Five Best Things about TEDxManila."

A true hero is measured ...

... not by the size of his strength but by the strength of his heart ...

The power of collaboration around giving

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Blog Action Day Yesterday

Missed the deadline but not the "aftermath" of the deadline. Still, I consider myself a part of this.

Here's an update from blogactionday.org's Robin Beck:

"Yesterday you and bloggers in 155 countries across six continents wrote about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned Blog Action Day 2009 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world.

A full recap is up on our blog, and here are some highlights:

We hit 31,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17.9 million people yesterday. We just exceeded 13,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven't yet registered into the final count.

We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year's event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama's White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence yesterday as well:

• The Official Google Blog gave a green tour of the company's campus;
• Mashable asked what you're doing to reverse climate change;
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog suggested "Five apps to help save the world";
• Treehugger gave us two simple things that could, by themselves, stop climate change;
• Global Voices posted a roundup of bloggers from around the world writing in many languages;
• Gadling spent the whole day posting about green travel;
• BlogHer covered the road to the next international climate negotations in Copehagen.

There are many more, and we encourage you to check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for a longer list of some of the world's largest blogs.

Many of our nonprofit partners, leading organizations from around the world, were also actively involved in making the event a success:

• TckTckTck released a beautiful and touching new video;
• Greenpeace bloggers from around the world joined in;
• World Wildlife Fund featured Blog Action Day on their international climate blog;
• Oxfam helped emphasize the human side of the climate crisis;
• 1Sky wrote about the front lines of political activism in the US;
• The Nature Conservancy helped us understand the science of climate change;
• NRDC's Switchboard bloggers wrote informative posts all day;
• Consequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.

You should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort. And it doesn't have to end today. For many, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, and we encourage you to check out our Take Action section to learn more. "

Eee PC just gave me a platform to talk about it

Image credits: newopps.blogsome.com

Where else but via its myeeepcmylife blog site.

I know I've just about abandoned blogging -- thanks to the growing popularity of presence tools (Read: micro-blogging). So you would pretty much "see" me often on Twitter and/or Facebook.

And yes, I've just been woken up from blogging slumber. Want to know why? Read more at my Eee PC blog.

Educator.com: Equalizing education

This should particularly appeal to students who want to get up to speed in learning online with highly qualified professors.

Educator.com styles itself as a pioneering E-Learning startup looking to equalize education. Its Twitter profile says it specializes in Algebra, Biology, Calculus, Chemistry, Java, Statistics.

I did a quick look at its main website and for Mathematics alone, it currently has 34 course offerings in Mathematics.

The Educator.com experience seems designed to recreate the live tutoring experience on to the internet. For example, a middle interface video lets the readers know exactly what's being explained while keeping an eye on the lecturer. If users need help in any of the scholastic subjects they offer, Educator.com sounds like a blessing to them. The site is currently still in expanding mode as the people behind it are getting more professors to fill in the subject such as physics, trigonometry, and more advanced topics like calculus.

Educator thus looks like it should be a must for those looking for the best scholastic content on the Web.

Here are a couple of samples:

First up, learn chemistry will take you to Advanced Placement Chemistry which is being run under Dr. Harold Goldwhite.

His background and the scope of the course follow:

"University of Cambridge educated (Ph.D and B.A.) Dr. Harold Goldwhite guides you through Educator's Chemistry course. Professor Goldwhite has taught all over the world, from 46 years in Los Angeles, to several years in England, and visiting professorships in France, Mexico, and Venezuela. His experience on the History Channel and vast knowledge of chemistry transform his lectures into an informative and fascinating journey with a comprehensive syllabus that covers standard and accelerated one year courses. Topics range from Atomic Theory, Chemical Reactions, Bonds, Kinetics, Acids and Bases, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, to Radioactivity. Each lecture is accompanied by multiple examples for each new idea and detailed notes of things to remember."

Next up, learn calculus leads you to the online class of Professor Murray. More below:

UC Berkeley (Ph.D) and Georgetown (B.S.) educated Dr. William Murray instructs Educator's Calculus II course covering from Advanced Integration Techniques and Applications of Integrals to Sequences/Series. Professor Murray demonstrates his extensive teaching experience by clarifying complicated topics with a wide array of examples, helpful tips, and time-saving tricks. Will's course is essential to those struggling with Calculus who would benefit from clear explanations and examples of common problems. Each video lecture is accompanied by several worked-out video examples and important notes to prepare for any examination.

There's a whole lot more but you may wish to quickly search the site for quality learning wherever, whenever.

Social network + online store = Sandbox

Don't know about you but after I've joined tons of Social Network Sites in the last 6 years, I realize that I go through the cycle of technology adoption from trigger to peak of inflated expectations all the way to plateau of productivity. In between, I also tend to sink into some sort of SNS fatigue. So when a new site turns up -- usually every six months, I routinely create an account, based on each one's relative novelty.

Most usually come within my online attention radar. This time, I came across Sandbox via a huge billboard among a bunch of others along the stretch of Highway 54 in Makati, EDSA to the younger generation.

Ok so I ask myself what else is new? You've seen one with a lot of videos. And another with a lot of pictures, and yet another one with loads of music. What else could be different with Sandbox? Perhaps, the following?

To the younger set it could be a provider of services like friendster but with online store.

To the more mature and sophisticated netizens, it could very well be a source of services like facebook but with online store.

Then again, probably the best thing that makes Sandbox different from other websites, is:

It's an online store that allows you to download music, games and movie-themed content to your mobile.

Hold on, give me time to create a new account and go through the cycle again. And good thing there are open APIs. You don't have to really abandon your other SNS so long as the accounts could cross-connect.

[Edit] - After creating an account and doing the usual validation steps, (Note: They are rather particularly stringent about the usrn@me + p@ssword specs.), I was taken to the site. One thing that caught my attention, the right-hand side application icons that move like those of the Mac during Mouse hover. Will give myself more time to explore its digisoria section. Looks interesting.

It's ok here

Or that's how the site AyosDito.ph would translate to English. Site's title tells us it has something to do with buying and selling in the Philippines. A comprehensive nationwide buy-and-sell website is something that I've actually been looking for in the last 4 weeks for posting an advertising for a school to no avail. So I had to go via the usual route of newspapers for national reach plus the plain old community approach of handing out flyers. Turns out I missed this vehicle by two weeks. Still it might be worth mentioning in this blog post.

You might be interested to find out that AyosDito covers the entire archipelago of 7,100 islands. And that means you can even browse regions from CAR to ARMM. Check out NCR to see some used items. Now if for some reason you'd want to buy or sell a bicycle, you may wish to click on bike.

Currently, the site is on very active mode, to wit:

Post an Ad for FREE and WIN Big Prizes!

Weekly prizes: HP Mini-note, Sony Digicam, and iPod Touch

Check out the amazing prizes that we are giving away and find out if you are one of the lucky winners of AyosDito.ph Post and Win Contest!

For those following posts on Ad Astra

... seems like they'd have to do that on twitter for the most part.

Blogging could perhaps give way to micro-blogging for now.

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Kairos has patiently waited on me

Image credits: http://www.masternewmedia.org/

Sometime in 2007, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. It's a service that allows one to "program" mash-ups using feeds and other inputs to generate custom feeds. True to form, I started toying with some sample Pipes, e.g. pulling word-of-the-day inputs from freedictionary.com and producing "interesting" photo-collections.

In 2008, I came across a protomnema-inspired vocabulary-building educational framework, and after vaguely mashing the two ideas simply gave them short shrift.

Then for some reason, I suddenly felt a need for Yahoo Pipes. So I picked the 2-year old mash-up and tinkered with it again. Click on the Word-to-Flickr Image Aggregator.

Get RSS results here.

For a moment there, it all seemed like a result of random collaboration.

Immersive gaming: Where is your reality?

Image credits:http://buffetoblog.files.wordpress.com

David Needle reporting on the Web 2.0 Expo says that according to Will Wright, the gaming industry legend perhaps best known as the creator of SimCity and Spore: "The richness of Web-based environments is starting to blur the distinction between games and reality."

Among other things, Wright talks about the possibilities for the concept "immersive". Here's his take on Nintendo's Wii: "Most of the entertainment around the Wii is watching your friend act like a doofus, swinging the thing (Wiimote) around."

More of the serious stuff here.

Nowhere to go but up?

Better yet, what happened to the American Dream?

This is part of Slate's Shoot the Recession Project.

Just so I can catch up ...

Image credits: http://huffingtonpost.com/

... on my blogging, I'll just piggyback, for now, on Michael de Percy's post about "New Media and the Future."

Not by any stretch?

Don't know about you, but I think it takes more than posters to draw parallels between the two.

Vectorizing in glass

... or at least that's how I call it. This high school student is creative. [understatement]

Got cars, no buyers.

Photo credits: Christopher Furlong/Getty

So where will all those cars go?

"Japanese carmakers slash production by up to 50%. Thus reports the Guardian. This seems like a smart strategy (for now).

Am told that Toyota even had to rent a ship to store 2,500 cars off the Swedish port of Malmö.

See more photos of growing stocks of unsold cars worldwide here.

Headway School for Giftedness and 21st Century Learning

Image credits: www.ictlic.eq.edu.au/

Just parking a work-in-progress. HSG's website will undergo a major revamp. Will keep you posted. Meanwhile, you may be interested to read this article about 21st Century Learning.

Toying with Wordle and recurrent themes

These words were harvested from my recent blog posts.

Google Linux on your PC

Image credits: http://www.theimagecap.com/

Wow! Yes, that's what Jack Wallen's article seems to be trying to elicit from his readers. More here. I wonder who's running scared.

Do you sometimes get the feeling that you are OCD?

Please tell me I am not.

How does Google return a search about kids and Philippines?

Image credits: http://www.flashdaweb.com/

aka SEO basics.

Technically, the link kids Philippines should be able to show us the results.

Now if someone were to promote say, kidsahoy.net, then perhaps this post could make a little difference. Will check back in about 2 days to see how things play out. Meanwhile, remind me not to duplicate this post. I am told that Google, "penalizes websites that have different URLs pointing to the same page."

Plagiarism or Reference?

Image credits via boingboing.net

Don't know about you but I'm aware that even just hotlinking an image is largely frowned upon. Read the larger context here.

New Media > Old Media?

Image credits: wikimedia.org

Case in point. Gary Granada vs. GMA Kapuso. You be the judge. More here.

Call her $erena

Williams sets female athlete mark: $23 million, a record for career prize money by a female athlete. Not bad for someone who collected her first check of $240 from a tennis event in Canada in 1995. More here.

Just a side note: I'm tempted to think that $23 million pales in comparison with Manny Pacquiao's boxing prize money in his last bout. That said, I think it's unfair to call him ₱acquiao.

Is it the coffee or the ambience?

Image credits: reallynatural.com

Don't know about you but I'd like to believe that coffee should not be expensive. Now if I'm not mistaken then perhaps that partly explains why "Starbucks will close 300 more stores, and lay off 6,700 workers". Or is it solely because of worldwide recession? So who is your coffee?

Is this a promise or a threat?

Image credits: mangee

Kevin Merritt, the CEO and founder of blist, a Web-based list manager and spreadsheet that was used on Change.gov, the Obama Administration's transition Website writes about how Obama will be using Social Media to create an open and participatory channel to his constituents.

Could be a "good" model for other politicians? Read more here.

What happens when you cross Skype and Firefox?

... you get a winning-lotto-number-that-you-can-dial fail!

Go to failblog for more FAILS.

Didn't know I was a business innovator ...

Image credits: npr.org

... until I stumbled upon "We Are Smarter than Me".

The wiki-driven book, by Barry Libert (also co-author of Barack, Inc.) and John Spector, says:

"[It] is itself the product of an extraordinary collaboration of Wharton, MIT and thousands of business innovators, worldwide. Drawing on their collective "in the trenches" experience, the wearesmarter.org community reveals what works, and what doesn't, when you are building community into your decision making and business processes."

Indeed, the power of discovery, disclosure, connection and co-creation.

One reason to look beyond email

Image credits: Weboma

There's a better way to act on urgent requests for help.

Picture this:

"Hello, How are you doing? i had sent you an email earlier today,please i need your urgent assistance, I had traveled to Nigeria for a conference , Unfortunately for me all my money and other items were stolen at the hotel where i lodged and i cannot call anyone because i lost my phone where phone numbers were kept also there is no money on me to make calls, nobody even know where i am now, I am so confused right now, I don't know what to do or where to go,I have access to only emails, No phone Please kindly loan me 1500 Dollars and also send it by western union to me with the below details NAME: address: 2 isiba street itire lagos Nigeria 23401 Write me immediately so i can have the western union details to use to collect the money sent , scan and send me the western union money transfer receipt or just write out the details on the receipt and send to me . Please keep this to your self only please Please come to my rescue Best regards,"

Perhaps this should have been titled "How to spot a Nigerian Scam."

More about scams here.

Cheney says no one saw financial crisis coming

... or so it appeared on the link provided by Yahoo News. But wait there's less! Just follow the link to see what I mean. I hope they change the title to "Cheney says no one saw the CIA operatives get involved harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists."

I think the younger generation readers would call this Rick roll'd? Or is it bait and switch?

Simple wish for Christmas, Redux

Peace and goodwill, in spite of ... perhaps because of ...


[An updated take away from Steve Kayser's wish in 2007]

Happy Christmas World!

Was thinking of getting a copy of Outliers ...

Image credits: Amazon.com

... then I stumbled upon Dan Pink's The Adventures of Johnny Bunko.

Based on reviews - I particularly like Garr Reynolds' piece, Dan Pink's latest book looked more like one written for the rest of us in the bell curve.

Besides, the mangaesque execution of the book could be a useful way to connect with kids of the early 21st century. So I might just include that on my wish list for Christmas.

Autism-friendly Browser

One of the things I'm fond of doing is sharing for the heck of it. Now this  is rather  interesting. ZAC browser. The Internet has really made learning "inclusive".

Need to convert your docx file?

Ok, so I thought media-convert.com could do it. Tough luck (for now). Perhaps sometime soon. So I fired up the trusty search engine. You should know by now.

After unsuccessfully trying out at least 3 online file converters, I realized I needed something better than a service that requires a fee for a year's worth of file conversion service. Then I discovered Zamzar.com. Price per month FREE, Maximum file size: 100 MB. You'd need to shell out money for anything beyond that though. Guess that doesn't apply to me.

What happens when you cross IM, Mindmap & voice?

You'll have a "shared, visual workspace. Use it as a collaboration environment, a meeting room, a personal web-based whiteboard, or something entirely new." That's according to Emily Chang in a November 6, 2006 post.

Then I discovered something entirely new: online tutorial. Check it out to get a flavor of thinkature.com.

Note: I just realized I had already bumped into it sometime in 2007 in the context of the "Sociology of Web 2.0." Thanks to the predictive feature of tags in blogger.com.

Edu 2.0 goes to Manila

Ordinary people have deja vue

Image via bornafrican.com

... great people wax prophetic.

"There is no question about it. In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has." Robert F. Kennedy, 1961

Read the original context here.

If only the real John McCain had been running

This is something I gathered recently from The Economist.

My 2 cents: OK, so in 3 days someone big gets elected. But whether it's Obama or McCain wouldn't seem to make much of a difference. It's the global economy, stupid! Then again, perhaps I'm looking for a superhero?

eLearning is getting more and more mainstream

... and the field is becoming flatter for all participants.

One implication is that Educational Leaders don't even have to mandate that the IT department exclusively handle their institution's Learning Management Systems. I'm thinking LMS design, development, and deployment outsourcing. IQity seems to offer something interesting especially for those in Ohio. I'd like to think that it matters little whether or not your school is based there. "Bring the learning to the learner" sounds like a good tag line. Or is it just me?

Credit Default Swaps: $62 trillion market

I don't want to sound pessimistic but it sure sounds like the next "big" thing. Now where's the money?

More on Financial Meltdown 101.

8,366 views as of this posting.

Image courtesy of Reserve Bank of India.

Blogging is about taking a stand

... and being open to criticism too. Social change seems so evasive, doesn't it? Not anymore. Perhaps this is a good start. What do you think?

How do you deal with with comment spam?

My BubbleShare photos are  currently under seige.   And  reCAPTCHA  can't seem to even help.  

Time to rethink how to value intangibles?

In the light of what's going on globally, Shava Nerad seems to wax worrisome: "(A) huge amount of the wealth creation since the invention of the transistor is intangible, and since we have no way to quantify and account for innovation, creativity, excellent records of technical teams, and so on, the market has tried to find tricks to value them, mostly through the stocks of information economy firms. "

Follow her thoughts here.

What's with the plurking and all that?

In a June 2008 article, Darren Rowse put the Plurk karma (Read: credibility) bit under the microscope in "Top 10 Plurk Users Statistics - What’s the Karma Algorithm". This he does by pulling in some figures into a profile of a "typical" top plurker. That seems like a pretty neat way of helping us make sense of what makes plurk more interesting than twitter. Still, for purposes of online reputation management, it's nice to know that the data set indicates activity in the short term as the long term.

Yet something tells me the system can be easily "gamed". Perhaps one question is, "Will gaming the system be good or bad?" A quick answer could be "It depends." As to which variables the answer correlates is something I'm still trying to figure out.

E-commerce is incomplete

... without a payment mechanism.

And that can happen when there is an exchange of value, typically involving some form of currency or anything that is "capable of pecuniary estimation". We can talk about private capital or social capital, but the latter is best left to another discussion.

So just to focus on private capital, perhaps one example will do. Disclosure: I have more experience with another payment mechanism for personal business. At the enterprise level, the following "About Us" narration of services that YESpayments - The Payment Processing Professionals offers -- especially in Manila, might just be worth considering.

A little Googling led me to this cached edition:

"About YESPayments™ YESpayments™ is an Internet credit card payment gateway. It accepts credit card transactions from sponsored merchants over the Internet and processes them through Acquiring Banks in Hong Kong and the Philippines. YESpayments™, handles the technical interface, provides risk management information and daily reconciliation. YESpayments™ has been in operation since December 2000. Technology and Security To protect card details as they are sent over the Internet data is encrypted using the Industry standard known as SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). YESpayments™ uses 128bit SSL, the highest commercially available encryption. YESpayments.com has been independently audited and assessed by a risk management company to ensure compliance with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). In addition, each month, YESpayments™ is “probed” for weaknesses by an independent security company to ensure the highest protection against intrusion."

Now for a more updated version that I freely edit.

YESpayments is designed for organizations that are serious about conducting business on the Internet. Incidentally, it has been processing Internet payments since 2003 in the Philippines, which makes 2008 YES IT Corp's 15th year in the Philippines. Here's one bit of information on what gives real value in any business -- people. "YesPayment offers 24/7 personal support in the Philippines."

Hoping they keep it up.

Creative Commons and Business Models

Here's a documentary about Creative Commons licensing in the publishing industry. Could perhaps also solve IP issues in the academe?

As I've always maintained, "Share whatever is commonplace, make money off what's esoteric ... unless you want to do charity work."

via Cory Doctorow.

Why teach about Social Media?

Take it from Howard Rheingold: "Human agencies are important here." (or something to that effect.)

More here.

99% male & 94 % female teeners play video games

That's according to a recent survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Make your conclusion. It cuts both ways.

Still this arstechnica article says "kids are alright: gamers are adjusted and civic-minded".

Online Show and Tell

For those of us too scared to step up and make a real-time face-to-face pitch, flowgram just be what what we need. You don't want to waste your bright ideas, do you?

Should we live under a rock?

In a Scientific American article/blog titled How I Stole Someone's Identity, Herbert H. Thompson writes a how-to about an experiment in identity theft. Perhaps someone could turn this into a cautionary tale?

More related SciAm articles here and here.

I like

Photo credit: polytropia on flickr.com

Here it is in action:



Thanks to John Brownlee.

And here's a sample soundcloud music mix. BTW It's called a Korg DS-10 synthesizer.

Phil Kotler, Al Ries, Ned Roberto: Where's the intersection?

And that should include Ardy Roberto.

This post demonstrates how marketing gurus can get get some good attention even if they don't advertise on TV. Then again, perhaps this post should be titled: Ned and Ardy Roberto releases marketing business solutions book.

Which reminds me to share some 2005-vintage Marketing nuggets from the top-of-mind Guru himself: Phil Kotler.

Here's a snippet from an interview:

Question: TV advertising seems to be losing its effectiveness. What are alternative ways to get attention?

Kotler: The average American is exposed to several hundred ad messages a day and is trying to tune out. TV advertising is losing its effectiveness because of growing advertising clutter, the increasing number of channels, the availability of zapping mechanisms, and reduced watching of television by certain groups. The result is that marketers must consider other methods of getting consumer attentions.

Here are a number of possibilities:

• Sponsorships. Companies have put their names on stadiums, on whole teams and on individual athletes in order to gain exposure.
  
• Mentions on talk shows. During his evening show, David Letterman sent a camera crew out to buy Snickers candy bars and ended up talking about it on three subsequent shows, including when Mars sent a whole van of Snickers to feed the audience.
• Product placement. In the movie Die Another Day, James Bond drove an Aston Martin, used a Sony cell phone and prominently featured an Omega wristwatch. Products are also mentioned in novels—in fact, Bulgari commissioned a whole mystery novel to be written called The Bulgari Connection.
• Street-level promotions. Companies have hired actors and actresses to walk in busy areas and ask passersby to take a snapshot of them using their new camera phone. Hopefully the picture takers are impressed and tell others about the new camera phone.
• Celebrity endorsements. Michael Jordon's endorsements gave a boost to Nike shows, McDonald's, Hanes underwear, and Rayovac batteries. Ex-Senator Bob Dole's surprising endorsement of Viagra put Viagra on the nation's mind.
• Body advertising. College kids agreed to paste Dunkin' Donuts logos on their foreheads during an NCAA basketball tournament."

Care to add to that? I'm thinking along the lines of assailing other senses. Imagine if you can smell "aromatic advertisement".

Don LaFontaine, 68, RIP

Angels in heaven must be enjoying his all too familiar deep baritone voice .

Here's a link to a recent interview with the "Trailer King".

Why do I get the feeling I'm a magpie?

Last night, I got wind of the launch of Google's browser.  Next, I  received  a quick heads up from Graham Glass on the merits of using it.

Then found  Techcrunch's  Don Reisinger's  glowing  review:

"Google announced Chrome yesterday and the company has already offered Windows XP and Vista owners the opportunity to try it out. And although I've only been able to use it for just a little while, Google Chrome is not only one of the fastest browsers I've ever used, it's easily one of the best.

The Google Chrome install was quick and easy. In a matter of seconds (literally), I downloaded the application from the company's site and installed it on my PC. Once up, Chrome asked to import the data from Firefox and I was off." 

 Guess what I did?

Teaching gifted students + moving some of my blog posts

Tamara Fisher, a K-12 gifted education specialist offers a Gifted and Talented Education (GT) list which although written from a Montanan perspective, perhaps could resonate well with everyone who recognizes the value of gifted education in the larger scheme of things.

She starts with:

"GT is NOT a reward for kids who behave well in class and turn in perfect work. Rather it IS an academic necessity for children who learn differently. Their learning and abilities are significantly different from the norm. Yes, some gifted kids do behave well and turn in perfect work, but so do many high-achieving, hard-working, teacher-pleaser kids. Gifted kids can also be the ones who act up in class or who don’t turn in ANY work because they’re sick of learning about pronouns for the fifth year in a row when they had it the first time. "

More here. Thanks to Mary Laltoo for the lead to the link.

Incidentally, I've been officially recruited by Tessa as guest blogger at Meta-Mentoring to support her foray back into Gifted Education. (She used to teach in the MAGIS program of the Ateneo de Manila Grade School.)

You may wish to follow my less random thoughts there.

Then I found this too...

Educational Uses for the Nintendo DS (2007) by John Rice

Now let's look at some research on video games

... in the classroom.

"The paper presents a number of examples of the use of such games, and tries to determine likely trends in their use in such an environment. Of significance is an examination of the obstacles that teaching staff encounter in attempting to use such software during lesson times, and how some staff have overcome these obstacles."

This was circa 2003, so handhelds nowadays could swing the results differently.

Use of Computer and Video Games in the Classroom

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education school)

This has gotta have some value

... to educational leaders. I hope.

That post is a little dated, but could already be mainstream by now: "School Lesson Plans Use Themes from Latest Pokemon Video Games to Teach Science".

Now I wonder how Nintendogs can fit in the Curriculum. Social Studies?

Who is your Grandma?

Guess it's never too late to start learning how to play video games!

Letting Go is a Life Skill

Didn't know adults could also get real world lessons from Sesame Street. More about separation lessons here.

Video Games that Make Us Smart

Just parking ideas about a wikibook on the value of video games (like Nintendo DS - anyone familiar with PictoChat?) for learning beyond the classroom. Suddenly, I'm reminded of a line that goes "Let's go get it!" in Timon & Pumba's bug tetris game.

So I get this 502 error

... then I thought I just needed to clear my computer's cache, cookies, temp internet files, etc. Instinctively, I launched Google search. This is what I got:


502 Error: Gmail Users Cut Off from Their Accounts.

I hope this is not a sign of a meltdown.

Quote of the day

"The Internet does not have a user's manual, so click away."

I searched Google for the author and found nothing, so I'm tempted to claim the quote.

But beyond that, it's more about the inherent difficulty of hand-holding digital immigrants that sometimes becomes a source of frustration when teaching this technology. Meanwhile, the digital natives collaborate and frolic on the web with each other.

Nintendo DS for Learning in Schools

Saw an update on FB about an event called Handheld Learning 2008 where danah boyd, Social Media Scientist, confirmed her attendance. Turns out she's one of the speakers along with John Seely Brown, Radical innovator & former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corp. Turns out, it takes place in London on 13-15 October.

Then I read that "Registrations before July 31st receive a free Nintendo DS and cartridge for use at the conference (and to keep!)." So I thought, "What's with the DS in a conference on learning?" Instinctively, I ran a Google search. And this is what I got.

Excerpt:

"Recently, a girl’s junior high school in Tokyo, Japan adopted the Nintendo DS as a means of assisting the teaching of the English Language to their students. Students used the plastic stylus to spell words correctly and were awarded once they completed five levels. The English Language for Japanese program also included video of a teen ordering food in English and dialogue for the students to repeat."

Now I'm wondering about possibilities for Sony PSP.

GMA SONA 2008 Tag Cloud

Compare this tag cloud with that of version 2007. (billion appears 21 times, hmmm)

ako (6) bayan (8) bill (5) billion (21) bilyong (5) care (8) congress (6) country (7) crisis (7) dapat (8) development (5) earn (6) energy (6) farmers (6) food (11) fuel (5) global (8) government (9) hard (5) hectares (14) increased (8) isang (5) ito (9) kalahating (7) ko (6) kung (7) land (9) loans (5) maraming (5) million (10) mindanao (7) months (6) natin (10) nation (13) natural (5) people (11) president (6) price (6) production (6) program (6) reforms (11) rice (14) salamat (6) school (6) since (6) thank (9) upang (6) vat (11) world (12) year (16)

created at TagCrowd.com

Here's the full text of version 2008.

This is what I call social drills

It allows kids to battle with other learners worldwide on Maths 101, Maths Mix, Times Tables and Spelling. I hope there are more areas to compete in. It's Web of Verbs says "play, compete, learn".

I like the seeming analogy to boxing where fighters move up and around different "leagues" based on their scores and stats as the mental pugilists gather their trophies. Must be a better way to look for heroes. Watch out for BluePanda888, he's got good keyboard skills. Point your kid's browser to tutpup.com's site.

"Patent is only for the rich ... "

... so it seems like Filipino inventor Daniel Dingel (not Dingle) would rather not file patent applications.

For having completed five years of dedicated service...

I must do what I must do...

12th Mindmapping Workshop

GMA SONA 2007 Tag Cloud

Take note of the dominant words. Remind me to do another one for the 2008 round which happens on the 28th.

agribusiness (10) airport (16) being (5) bicol (6) billion (21) bring (6) building (10) built (6) cebu (6) congratulations (8) congress (14) construction (9) fund (8) government (9) governor (8) human (6) international (7) investment (13) isang (5) justice (6) luzon (7) manila (6) mayor (8) million (8) mindanao (14) national (6) north (6) opened (6) park (6) people (9) philippines (7) plant (8) port (6) power (8) private (6) progress (7) project (6) provided (6) public (9) reform (7) regions (6) road (14) roro (7) sector (6) services (8) started (7) terminal (5) trabaho (6) vision (5) year (25)

created at TagCrowd.com

As the book suggests

... there is absolute virtue in sharing.

Thanks loads to Leon Benjamin.

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