A challenge to the $100 laptop

The $100 laptop has certainly brought much discussion among educators. It seems it has also brought discussion among manufacturers.

Read the story. via Rick Schwier

Mexico has already signed up for 300,000. Why is it that Mexico, China, India, Egypt, Brazil, Thailand, Nigeria and Argentina have all made committments to get the technology in the hands of children.

Maybe one day our country will be wealthy enough to afford this for our kids.

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Nikki Giovanni

I haven’t written about the events at Virginia Tech. Coverage has been ubiquitous at my house — my husband writes about crime, after all. It occurred to me some time after the horrible events on Monday that Nikki Giovanni was a professor at VT. I love Nikki Giovanni’s poetry and was honored to have the chance to meet her and talk with her for a few moments back in 1998. She was incredibly nice and signed books for my daughter and for me. It occurred to me to wonder if the murderer — an English major — had the occasion to run across Giovanni in his studies. After all, I studied at UGA, and while I was never in her class, I sometimes passed Judith Ortiz Cofer in the hall (and tried to hide the fact that every time I did it, I shook with nervousness over being in such close proximity to a writer I admired). One of the teachers at school today mentioned Giovanni had indeed taught Cho Seung-hui and demanded that he be removed from her class. I’m trying to understand, with all the information coming to light about the warning signs that this young man was disturbed, why he was still studying at VT.

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A Writing Teacher?s Pet Peeves

In my ten years of composition instruction, I have developed a set of pet peeves associated with the body of student writing I have read.  Any of my students reading this should keep in mind that I do not direct this at any particular student — this list is a synthesis of common writing errors that I often find in student papers at every grade level 6-12 and every academic level, including Honors or AP.

Referring to an author by his/her first name only in a literary analysis.  It sounds too much like they’re writing about their old pal Walt instead of the poet Walt Whitman.Not using proper format.  I require MLA format.  I provide samples.  I correct it. I don’t know how much plainer it gets.Punctuation of titles.  I admit that I am probably harsher on students than is warranted because punctuation of titles comes so easily to me, but I cannot figure out why students cannot remember that short works go inside quotation marks and longer works are italicized or underlined.Use of second person in formal composition.Apostrophes used to designate words as plural.  Why?  Think of the poor overworked little punctuation marks!  Don’t they already have enough to do with possessives and contractions, not to mention quotes within quotes?Run-ons, comma splices, and fragments.  Subject+verb+complete thought=sentence.  Commas cannot join independent clauses.  Independent clauses cannot simply be mashed together either.  Let me introduce you to the semicolon.  He is your friend.Strange format decisions.  It is my experience that many young writers do not feel comfortable turning in work unless their own title is somehow different from the essay — a different font, font size, bold font, etc.  Why can’t it just be plain size-12 Times New Roman?And while we’re discussing titles, how about this attention grabber: “Essay”; or if that doesn’t grab you, how about “Scarlet Letter Essay.”  The title of the novel, of course either in quotation marks or not punctuated at all.Not reading feedback.  I spend anywhere between 15-30 minutes reading every paper.  Students flip to the grade and ask why they earned that particular grade before reading the half-page to full-page of written or typed comments I attached to the piece.  When this happens, a part of me dies inside.  And I think God kills a kitten, too.Commonly confused words and nonstandard usage: “loose” for “lose,” “then” for “than”; the whole to/two/too and there/their/they’re.  “Alright.”  “Alot.”  “Can not.”  “Irregardless.”

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Traditional Media “Elevating the Conversation” Online

Interesting post by Mark Glaser that does a really thorough job of summing up the challenges the major media outlets are facing as they “get the religion of audience participation.” The central question is:
How do you harness the audience’s knowledge and participation without
the forums devolving into a messy online brawl that requires
time-intensive moderation?

The good news here, as Glaser points out, is that we are finally past the point where people are arguing whether the audience voice should be heard. Most of the major newspapers’ online sites have growing points of participation for readers. The contention now is how to moderate all of those comments and which ones to highlight in “eye catching editorial spaces” presumably to drive more conversation. There seem to be a number of options shaping up, from reader recommendations a la Digg to paid employee moderators to filters that search for certain words. Some, like Business Week, are also motivating people to leave quality comments by offering them special incentives, such as an end of the year dinner with editors on the staff. And, of course, there is also the question of allowing anonymous comments at all. Fascinating read.

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When information and interaction change

I delivered a presentation today to the Canadian Defense Academy titled "When information and interaction change". Slides are here...audio of the session is available here. My main emphasis in the presentation was to explore how the different manner in which we access/use/create information, and the different manner in which we interact with others, defines and shapes our institutions and approaches to learning. As such, changes in information and interaction should impact design of learning and teaching.

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Of networks, diabetes and golden learning

GoldenSwamp.com is focused on explaining that the Internet is, indeed, a swampbut it is now the place where the golden knowledge for human learning can be found. An article today in the New York Times Science section explains how a network of factorsnot just a few simple onesgives rise to diabetes. A click to the article will take you to the explanation excerpted below, and to a full-size view of the above graphic illustrating the network of factors involved in diabetes.

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Schools hire consultant workers

Schools hire consultant workers 3 from PBCG to continue working for districtBy DANI McCLAIN
dmcclain@journalsentinel.comPosted: April 5, 2008

Three of the four Public Business Consulting Group employees who worked as consultants in Racine Unified's central office until late last month have been hired as district staff, the schools' finance director said last week.

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Peer-review will now be reviewed by bloggers

Since almost the earliest days of the Internet, education establishment voices have complained that open online education risked a pot full of faulty materials. They have routinely cautioned students against false online information and used this mistrust as a fundamental reason not to embrace the Internet in teaching and learning, or at least to do so skeptically.

Today a new project that launched online, BPR3 Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting, is a means for the pot to keep up with what is going on in the kettle, and to point it out when black smudge takes the shine off of the kettle. BPR2 identifies itself as: . . . the news blog for ResearchBlogging.org, which strives to identify serious academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research with an aggregation site where others can look to find the best academic blogging on the Net.
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Singapore

These are the bold targets set for Singapores newly launched ten-year infocomm masterplan:

Singapore to be No. 1 in the world in harnessing infocomm to add value to the economy and society
Achieve a two-fold increase in value-added of the infocomm industry to S$26 billion
See a three-fold increase in infocomm export revenue to S$60 billion
Create 80,000 additional jobs
Have at least 90 per cent of homes using broadband
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Del.icio.us guide

Check out David Muir’s EduCompBlog. I’m definitely adding his feed to my list of blogs. It’s an excellent read! He wrote a guide to Del.icio.us that is patterned after Jim Wenzloff’s guide to Furl. Guides like this are so helpful to those of us teaching others about these new tools. I came across this interesting blog via Ewan Mcintosh of edublogs. I’ve posted before about some of the incredible things Ewan is doing in the blogging world.

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