NPR ran this story (May 25, 2008) on the topic of education being conspicuous by its absence in discussions among the presidential candidates. The article centers around the YouTube video called Ed in '08: the State of America's Schools included below. The video has generated almost 3,000 comments.

I came across one of Bruno Giussani's blogs, Lunch Over IP, a few years back and have enjoyed reading his thought-provoking posts ever since. He just posted The Value Chain 2.0: Bringing in the Consumer , an essay by Xavier Comtesse (mathematician, author, and Geneva-based Director of Avenir Suisse, a think-tank) and Jeffrey Huang (Professor and Director of the Media and Design Laboratory at the Swiss Institute of Technology EPFL in Lausanne).

I've been thinking a lot lately about the business/production models of successful companies like eBay, Flickr, et al in this knowledge based economy that swirls around the generative, participatory technologies that are beginning to thrive in the world wide web ecosystem. The value of their business models is based, in part, not in what their factories produce, as they have none, but in what their consumers voluntarily contribute and share. This is such an enormous thinking twist for the industrialized mindset of my generation's brain. And, frankly, as an educator trying to think outside the box, this makes my head hurt. But it still fascinates me.

In their essay, Xavier Comtesse and Jeffrey Huang state:

Value chain 2.0 takes into account the active consumer in the production of value, across every level of a company’s activities. [emphasis added] Henceforth, we call the active consumer the “ConsumActor “ to indicate this reality.

The ConsumActor acts along two dimensions, as a:
- creator of context (action)
- creator of content (knowledge)

The whole essay is a rich exercise in "thinking different," which, of course, I love. But, always the educator, I'm asking myself, "What are the implications here for best practices in education?" Leveraging student "consumers" in the production of value as creators of context and creators of content... This blows my mind as these ideas significantly extend my former questions: "Who owns the learning in your class? Who is doing all of the thinking work in your class?" Now, add, "Who is creating the value in your class? Who is 'actioning' knowledge creation?"

Though some educators seem to suggest this, I suspect it would be naive for us to assume that the students alone are capable of doing this. If they could, we wouldn't need schools as anything beyond a baby-sitting service. No, as Value Chain 2.0 indicates, this is a complex joint venture.

The hard part for our profession, is figuring the implementation out. What does this look like?

I'm with Scott McCloud, who issues a brilliant challenge in this post on the alarmist empty rhetoric of bystanders. (It's just way too easy to criticize the hard, often thankless work of our educators.) He basically asks, "What else you got?" If we could just get the finger waggers to join us in figuring out what implementing very complex and exciting ideas like those offered in Value Chain 2.0, that alone would be no less than a kind gesture and perhaps even a tremendous help. Criticism and fear are too cheap and easy.

Using today's tools, what does leveraging the participatory generative creative potential of your students look like in your school setting? How can students substantively participate in the creation of context (action) and content (knowledge) in our present techno-centric world? What can "school" learn from eBay, Flickr, Amazon and the like? We need these discussions in school.

Our schools world wide reflect the diversity of our communities, of the people they serve. Schools in caves, in huts, in refugee camps, you will find some interesting pictures of schools around the world. And the way the world's children getting to school are just as interesting: by hanging from a cable as they zip across a rushing river or by cramming into a bicycle bus they have to peddle. The collection of pictures at this link is very interesting.

Here are two pictures to get you started:

Halong bay with a community of around 1600 people live in four fishing villages. They live on floating houses and are sustaining by fishing and marine aquaculture. This is one of the floating schools of the floating fishing village.

Schools the world over, just like people the world over, face some real challenges!

A number of social networking sites that focus on reading can be found online. Media specialists love to promote reading and may want to explore sites like Shelfari. You could promote professional reading for your staff, for parents, and for students. If I were a media specialist, I might want to highlight the top reads in the media center this month, or promote specific books.

And of course this tool is not just limited to the media specialists. Teachers can use tools like this to promote subject-specific reading. Principals may want to recommend books to parents. Guidance counselors may want to have recommended readings. I encourage you to explore age-appropriate social sites that promote reading!

You could include a widget on your site, like the one you see below from my list of books I plan to read. Your bookshelf widget can display books you have read, are reading, plan to read, are your favorite books. You can even assign tags to books, like "SummerReading" and display just the books with that specific tag. You can also customize the look of the widget on your blog as well.

I remain fascinated by the disruptive impact of technology, and not just in schools, in other institutions and whole societies around the world. The ease of use of pervasive technology, digital cameras and video, with access to immediate global distribution will inevitably be used in social activism that challenges existing social, corporate, and political structures the world over in ways that will make the 1960's in the United States look boring and passé.

To date such activities largely have been entertaining and benign as this video by "Improv Everywhere: We Cause Scenes" demonstrates. They mobilize large groups of people via the internet to show up and stage an improvisation in a public setting.

But in the last couple of days two videos have been posted to YouTube that I suspect are an omen of things to come: people leveraging these tools to make global statements challenging the status quo. In this first example, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer begins a lecture at a university in Hungary as a protester stands up, accuses Microsoft of stealing billions in Hungarian taxpayer money and then throws three eggs at the CEO.

Then Russian presidential candidate Garry Kasparov was delivering a speech when a modified, remote controlled, toy flying helicopter carrying male genitalia came flying toward him. Russian speaking commenters over at Wired.com's post about the incident offered the following translation of Kasparov's comments after the flying object was smashed by security:

I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate. Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt." Someone in the audience shouts, "Finally the political power shows its face!" Kasparov quickly replies, "Well, if that's its face..." to laughter from the audience.

I do not speak Russian and have no idea if the translation is accurate or not, but another commenter seems to indicate it is. (Don't watch the video if it will offend you. That's certainly not the point of my including this link to it.)

I include these examples, not to entertain, embarrass, or offend, but to make the point that these tools will inevitably be used for activism--probably in more significant ways that these examples begin to demonstrate. Perhaps this is among the reasons we have seen China's efforts to centrally control the internet in China.

And while governments and corporations the world over have been increasingly leveraging technology for surveillance of their citizens, citizens the world over are going to turn that surveillance, that reporting, that global transparency on the goeverments and corporations themselves. The fact that the technology is readily available to everyone will disturb a delicate balance.

As a photographer who reads numerous photo-related blogs around the world, I have seen an increase in posts about the legal rights of photographers as increasing numbers of photographers, while taking pictures in public places, are claiming to be harassed by police and security. In fact a large protest rally is being organized in Los Angeles.

But It Just Got Even Easier
A company in Israel, FlixWagon, has now made it possible to broadcast live from your Nokia Series 60 3rd edition cell phone! (Here is a link to an interview with FlixWagon by Robert Scoble over at FastCompany.TV.) Now, as long as a cell phone signal is available, security will not be able to confiscate the video shot of a staged incident or event as it will already have been broadcast. Certainly this is only the beginning of an increase in this capacity to broadcast your life coming to market. People seem to love it!

As I have mentioned before, our capacity to develop technology is vastly outpacing our capacity as a society to come to terms with how to use this technology in ways society feels are appropriate, fair and proper. Social norms have yet to be formed about any of this. What is private? What is public? What expectations should I have to anonymity of person, of information, of data?

Implications for School
This technology has significant implications for learning. If I were a teacher today, I would be all over uStream.tv! For some time now educational technology enthusiasts have chided our profession for banning cell phones from our classrooms. The more cautious educators have been reluctant to change practice citing the ways the cell phone can be abused in the school setting.

And now that live CellCasting (remember you first read the term here!) is possible, I can see this debate heating up significantly. I for one do not blame schools for wanting to proceed with cautious deliberation and informed integration. But, in the long term, school is likely to be the place this new disruptive technology has the least impact.

The world is being carved wide open, and, for better or worse, we will all get to see what it looks like.

Dare I say it? Is there a problem? Might the problem have little to do with students and teachers and more to do with policy makers who are radically out of touch with reality? I'm just asking questions here.

In March a principal was reportedly arrested in Texas because he allegedly threatened to kill the science teachers at the school if the students didn't pass the end of year high stakes test--and apparently he seemed to actually mean it.

Anita White, who taught at New Braunfels Middle School for 18 years before being transferred this month to the district's Learning Center, said Principal John Burks made the threat in a Jan. 21 meeting with eighth-grade science teachers.

She said Burks was angry that scores on benchmark tests were not better, and the scores on the upcoming Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tests must show improvement.

"He said if the TAKS scores were not as expected he would kill the teachers," White said. "He said 'I will kill you all and kill myself.' He finished the meeting that way and we were in shock. Obviously, we talked about it among ourselves. He just threatened our lives. After he threatened to kill us, he said, 'You don't know how ruthless I can be.'

"We walked out of the meeting just totally dumbfounded because it was not a joke," White said.

New Braunfels Police spokesman Mike Penshorn said the incident was filed as a verbal assault, but is being investigated as a terroristic threat.

[Source: Education | MySanAntonio.com]

And now I read this from Georgia, my home state of 20 years, where I invested 20 years of my best professional efforts as an educator:

State notifies parents before releasing awful test scores
In social studies CRCT, less than 30 percent pass; In math, 40 percent

By LAURA DIAMOND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/19/08

Georgia school leaders were so shocked by dismal scores on state math and social studies tests, the state superintendent released a statement Monday to prepare parents and others for the results.

According to the unofficial results, only 20 to 30 percent of Georgia's sixth- and seventh-graders passed the state social studies exam. In math, about 40 percent of eighth-graders could be held back because they failed the test.

The state will release official scores from the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests next month.

Parents whose children failed the math test will be notified by local schools. The state requires eighth-graders to pass the reading and math exams to move to high school.

[From State notifies parents before releasing awful test scores | ajc.com]

Where will the school districts in Georgia find enough teachers to teach summer school for the increased number of children who can not be promoted? What educational programs will have to do without, or be eliminated in order to fund this enormous additional expense (that now includes sky rocketing transportation costs)?

Will a significant number of 9th grade teachers have to be reassigned next year to 8th grade to teach those students who could not be promoted based on these results? Will the test results from the summer retakes be "fixed" to solve these enormously disruptive issues?

How many assessments are our students required to take from K-12? And how much money has been spent developing and grading all of these tests? What is the total amount of money spent to date on this accountability agenda that is producing these results? The sum must be staggering! Would this money not be better invested in hiring teachers in the schools that can actually offer services to students that promote academic achievement? Is it time to hold this accountability agenda into account for expense versus value added results?

But the two most important questions that come to my mind: What will be accomplished if we completely break one of our most precious and essential democratic institutions--our public schools?! What of the children?

Photo Credit: e-magic on flickr.com

Having just moved to California, I am beginning to discover some of the amazing resources available to California educators. Calisphere is certainly one of them! This collection of primary sources, designed for classroom teacher use, is aligned to the California curriculum standards and can be searched in several different ways including themed studies,

Calisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.

[From Calisphere - A World of Digital Resources]

In the past two weeks I came across two quick reads and two videos that caused me to make some connections worthy of thought.

Bruce Schneier, writing on May 15, 2008, at Wired, made me stop and think about all of the "free" services I routinely explore for their value-added potential in education. I often just make up absurd information when that information is required of me and I don't want to provide it (like, for an email address: noneof@yourbusiness.com). I have never stopped to think about the lifespan or later possible use of this meaningless, inaccurate information. I just don't want any more junk mail. Bruce writes:

Our data is a part of us. It's intimate and personal, and we have basic rights to it. It should be protected from unwanted touch.

[Source: Our Data, Ourselves ]

We teach children about the socially expected behaviors surrounding our personal physical space from casual to intimate. This article really got me to stop and think about the virtual me, my data (from financial, health, social, professional, civic...) and the socially and legally appropriate ways that information should be touched--information, accurate or not, that comes to represent me and affect decisions made about and for me, perhaps without my knowledge about the decisions ever being made. I might not even know the information was aggregated and used.

I also watched Jonathan Zittrain's presentation (from April 11, 2008, at the Tribeca Grand in NYC) about his new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. The video of the presentation (about an hour) is graciously made available by the New York Greater Metropolitan Area chapter of the Internet Society at this link. In the presentation Jonathan talks about the generative nature of the internet versus a new push to use "tethered devices" as he calls them--devices that close innovation and are controlled by the manufacturer even after the sale. [I have written briefly about the internet as an operating system before. Jonathan's ideas helped me clarify some of my thinking.]

He mentions several really interesting examples before extending his examples to the FBI paying to have the OnStar system remotely reprogrammed in a car owned by people of interest to the FBI so that everything spoken in the car was transmitted to the FBI through OnStar without anyone in the car being aware. He goes on to say that because of consumer demand we have built an unrivaled infrastructure that could be leveraged for surveillance (by the good guys and the bad): cell phones and other devices.

And then I read this article about the National Cyber Security Initiative by Ryan Singel at Wired:

... would spend billions on unproven, embryonic technology, and possibly illegal or ill-advised projects, according to the analysis ...

While many of the specifics of the plan are classified, U.S. intelligence chief Michael McConnell told the New Yorker in January that he wants the National Security Agency to begin eavesdropping on the internet, and a McConnell aide said the spy agency was prepared to examine the content of e-mails, file transfers and Google searches without a warrant.

[Source: Report: Government's Cyber Security Plan Is Riddled With New Spying Programs]

I'm not really passing any judgement on these examples. Like most everyone else, I want the bad guys caught. I want us to prevent the bad people from doing bad things to good people. But larger issues may be at stake, issues worthy of careful thought and scrutiny. None of us want to wake up one morning and ask, "How in the world did we get here?!"

The rampant pace at which our technologies are developing is vastly outstripping our awareness of the issues that surround that development and our capacity to have informed conversations about those issues to establish public policy and legal frameworks that are both reasonable, fair, and that appropriately safeguard and balance the best interests of a free democratic society, a capitalist economy, and the rights of the individual. And not only is the pace of development rapid, can it also be completely invisible to public scrutiny and democratic oversight? Should it be? These are complex questions!

And during the week I also came across this video interview, on a less weighty, yet more immediately personal level, at Switched with Clay Shirky, adjunct professor teaching New Media in the graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. Clay really informs my thinking about the internet.

The issues broadly touched on in this post are complex and have long term implications for freedom, safety, democracy, privacy, economic sustainability, to name but a few. In order to have more informed conversations with our children about these significant, developing concerns, we need to have greater public and professional conversation about data security, privacy, and ways we can move our social, political, and legal structures to develop policy frameworks that keep pace with the challenges that technology brings to our daily lives.

These are challenging and exciting times!

Creative expression as amusement? Creative expression as contribution? Creative expression as manipulation? Creative expression as effective communication strategy? Creative expression to make a point? Creative expression as sheer entertainment? Creative expression to provoke thinking and evaluation? Creative expression as distraction? Creative expression to nourish the soul? Creative expression as self-indulgent noise? Creative expression as an act of problem solving? Creative expression as art?

How do you use your creative expression?

As our culture barrels ahead with this new capacity for the masses to inexpensively create and distribute slick digital media content, how will we evaluate quality? (Or will we even bother?) In the last century we had editors who earned respect among their peers and in the public eye for their skillful execution of craft, for their dedication to excellence and quality. They took care of the difficult and demanding work of crafting artistic standard. Now that everyone can create and distribute, who will pay attention to quality, to a shared, valued sense of worth?

So much of our life is already bombarded with commercial interests and just plane noise. How are we going to collectively learn about artistic expression through our own new-found acts of creation--a capacity reserved for only a few "talented" people in the past.

Will YouTube continue to be flooded with noise and self-indulgent, low quality products that only amuse and distract us from our true potential for higher levels of significance? Or will we have a growing body of greater contribution because people of all ages are now able to enlighten the human condition through this amazing YouTube distribution system? (Don't misunderstand, I think we need some amusement in our lives.) Will adults, will educators, look in amazement at student-created digital media products that required little skill but look slick because of the technology affordances we as adults don't really even understand?

I guess the main point of this post is that we need to raise the bar on what we expect our students to contribute. Just because it looks amazing (and we haven't a clue how it was done) doesn't mean it actually is amazing. The package isn't the content. Perhaps one reason educators need to better understand the digital ecosystem is not to confuse the form with the substance.

And, by the way, what actually is creativity and creative expression anyway? Want to offer some ideas? Click comment. Comments are now open.

And with that, I offer this little video, which many of you probably have already clicked on before reading this entire post (smile)! We do love our packaging! This 30 second clip took just a couple of minutes to create using animoto: upload some pictures, select some music, click create--three easy steps. This would be a great way to share students learning in your schools! (I mean really, what child wouldn't want to attend this school?!) Yet, substance this is not.

We talk a lot in educational circles, and especially those of us who are technology enthusiasts, about global literacy, global competitiveness, global awareness, global warming, connect, connect, connect. It's a big world out there. Blah, blah, blah.

But in this video from TED, Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, highlights the irony that in a time when we have the capacity to know more about our world than ever in the history of human kind, we actually know less.

Americans are fed a steady diet of superficial because, according to Alisa, it's simply cheaper to do. I have long decried the sad state of journalism in our country. Listen to her short (about 4 minutes) talk from TED. Then go hug a Social Studies teacher. Then you and the Social Studies teacher subscribe to TED. Watching those presentations will enrich your life!

Click here to subscribe to TED. Click here to go to the TED website.

Math isn't about the numbers. Music isn't about notes. Literature isn't about letters. Is school really about grades?!

Research indicates that our minds crave novelty and motion--seeing the world in a different way: creatively connecting what was previously disconnected.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that everything is really about pattern recognition. And while our very physical survival depends on pattern recognition, our souls need it even more, and at higher levels, to thrive. And thrive we must! We love to discern patterns in our life experiences, connecting the unlikely to make more sense of the mundane, to find more meaningfulness, to discover that which resonates more deeply in our souls.

Additionally, I think that human nature wants to overlay a fresh, more satisfying emotional context to otherwise ordinary life experience--yes, even to the parts and pieces of distilled, disconnected, fact-based curriculum. Contextualize. Bend perspective. Reshape, perhaps break rules. Connect. Disconnect. Re-connect. Find the patterns. Build new meaningful, more elegant patterns. Discern relationships.

We call all of this beauty. Being more alive. Learning. Art. Joy. Life. It's all the same!

As I've said for many years, I believe deeply that we don't know what we like. We only like what we know. And the more we know, the more patterns we discover thus making our lives and our contributions richer and more satisfying in every way.

Interestingly, these three pictures, from different projects by different people, defy motion and break existing patterns in some very unexpected ways (adding a new dimension to the research findings?) and thereby arrest our attention and invite deeper pattern exploration! (Each photograph is a link to different pictures of the same.)

How do we, as educators, as moms and dads, arrest children's attention to welcome them more deeply into that irresistible world of learning, of contribution, of discerning and connecting new patterns to better make sense of the old?

A couple of days ago the web lit up with excitement over a free, innovative content linking tool: Apture. Once you have established your account, you insert a piece of code into your blog template. From then on, after publishing a post, you go back to the post in your web browser and select words or phrases from your post, even whole paragraphs, to which you wish to assign links that will then appear when others view your post and mouse over the inserted link. You can link to video from a variety of sources, Wikipedia articles, flickr pictures, webpages, documents you have uploaded, maps, Washington Post archives, audio, etc.

This little video explains more about the Apture experience.

I always preview my posts immediately after publishing them, so this additional step in my workflow is not too cumbersome, especially as the links add a new level of interactivity with the content, providing an extra level of depth. And if you find the extra links distracting, you simply avoid placing your mouse over them. So now, here at drTimTyson.com, not only can you double click any word that is not a link and get a definition (AnswerTips), you can also now mouse over any of the Apture links to delve deeper.

The web lit up after Clay Shirky spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week. Blip.TV is hosting his 16 minute presentation--a must see. I'm embedding it below. I want to encourage everyone to go beyond taking the time to watch it; really soak in what he's saying, giving deep thought to its implications for the art and science of teaching and learning. Aside from being an engaging story-teller, he skillfully unwraps some compelling and powerful ideas.

Here are just a few of my take aways:

• "Media [dare I substitute 'classroom instruction'] targeted at you that doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for."
• Focus our attention on designing for, rather than trying to dissipate, the cognitive surplus: what are we going to do with this new architecture of participation to move it from social crisis to a meaningful asset?
• For our present generation, new media [dare I substitute 'classroom instruction'] moves from just consumption to also include producing and sharing [--or, as I like to sing: contribution].
• If we could leverage just 1% of the cognitive surplus soaked up by watching television, we would have the equivalent amount of time to produce 10,000 Wikipedia projects.
• Moving to participatory contribution is a one way shift we are growing into, not a fad that will pass.
• How are we as educators going to leverage and manipulate the cognitive surplus, through our students' unparalleled interest in this emerging architecture of participation through technology, to move them beyond the mindless stupor in which we grew up passively soaking up television (and our teachers' endless lectures)?

How are we going to engage our students authentically to empower their contribution? In a way, this reminds me of the horrible cycle of child abuse that is perpetuated from the abused to the next generation. We do what we know. Now, we need to move on to doing what we know can be done: leveraging the cognitive surplus for meaningful participation and contribution.

Apparently May 1st is also "official" RSS day. As I travel around speaking to educators and parents, I find that RSS is still a huge mystery to the great majority of people. I suspect RSS is one of the world's best kept secrets. So many people don't even know RSS exists. And of the people that do, many have some foggy notion about what it might be. I must admit, I had a bit of difficulty getting my head around the power of this technology myself.

Resources to Learn About RSS
So, in honor of RSS Day, here are some easy-to-get-your-head-around resources that really help clear up some of the fog of mystery.

Let's start with a short, easy Common Craft video about RSS. And Back in Skinny Jeans has a great post entitled, How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way, that's an easy and informative read. Wesley Fryer, over at Moving at the Speed of Creativity, wrote a post explaining RSS back in 2005. (And if you still want to see more videos on RSS, check out these search results for "RSS" video on YouTube and "what is rss" on TeacherTube.)

I've written about RSS a few times over the years. You can check out these posts as well if you like:
More on the Power of RSS and NetNewsWire (2/1//2008)
Cool Tool Alert: NetNewsWire (2/3/2008)
Under the Hood of Our New Website (6/2006)
How to Subscribe to MabryOnline.org through RSS (6/2006)

Saving the Best for Last
And three other sources for your RSS learning pleasure: these are actually RSS aggregators. Don't worry if you're not sure what that means. Just go to either type (online or download) or both of these, and start using their aggregator. As you use it, and each resource will guide you through how to do so, you will begin to understand more about RSS. After all, we really learn by doing!

Bloglines (setup your free online account)
NetNewWire (Mac free download) or FeedDemon (Windows free download)
Google Reader (setup your free online account)

I know you're busy. Your time is jammed full. But RSS is just too powerful to ignore! It's an efficiency tool. RSS can help you find what you're interested in much faster by having it automatically come to you! Start learning it today!

A Great New Twist
My blogging system allows me to create an RSS feed from a search request on my blog. So, in the search field at the left, I typed in "RSS." All of the posts I have published that contain "RSS" appear. In the sidebar on the search results page is Subscribe to feed. The search field created an RSS feed for the search results!

What does that mean? Well, you could subscribe to the search results. In other words, if you subscribed to the search result for "RSS," from now on, anytime I publish a post that includes "RSS" that post would go straight to your RSS aggregator. Nifty little thing that RSS feed!

An interesting article from Wired magazine underscores the need for schools to significantly rethink content delivery (read: digital content delivery), student-created digital knowledge products worthy of the global stage, and organizational and digital school structures that will foster, even promote and require, both. Here are just a few quotations, but the whole article is worth reading.

The advent of DSL and cable modems gave rise to a slew of popular web services, produced multibillion dollar companies and reshaped consumers' daily lives -- all with relatively wimpy "broadband" connections that top out at a mere 3 to 6 megabits per second (Mbps).

Now two of the largest ISPs in the United States are hoping to kick off yet another broadband renaissance, this time with home connections that promise to reach 50-100 Mbps, enabling a slew of high-definition content, better-quality video-sharing sites and even 3-D video. Call it Broadband 2.0.

Experts say this increased bandwidth -- when it becomes widely available -- will have a profound effect on everything from our social interactions on the web to the way we consume media.

"The YouTube philosophy is really the primary motivator here," says Connie Chang-Hasnain, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and expert in broadband communications. "Even grandmas post things on YouTube. But, right now, the resolution is terrible and there are some very predefined limits due to bandwidth."

All of that will change with 50 Mbps download speeds, she said, and by simply improving the sound and video quality of video streaming sites, you can dramatically change how a society learns, teaches and communicates.

[Source: Broadband 2.0 Poised to Reshape Web, TV ]

When I moved to California a few weeks ago I was astounded that Verizon, my ISP (Internet Service Provider) dropped a fiber cable right at my front door: FIOS. I can download and upload as fast as 15mps--stunning!

We are presently sitting on incredible, yet largely un-leveraged, potential for maximizing the art and science of teaching and learning, even without Broadband 2.

Poll Everywhere is, as its name implies, allows users to create polls. But this is indeed a web-based application with several remarkable twists.

Many teachers are familiar with student response systems: you pose a question on the chalkboard or interactive whiteboard, and the students answer the question with the assessment device you distributed at the beginning of class. Well, with Poll Everywhere, you show your question. Students get out their own cell phones and send a text message. You get realtime results through the web page.

You can embed your poll in a webpage or blog. You can embed your poll live into a PowerPoint presentation. (Windows only at this time.) The application has a nice look and other features as well.

With the free account, you can have an unlimited number of polls with up to 30 votes cast per poll per day for up to 1,000 votes per month. Five other fee based plans are available. Clever ideas!

I tried Poll Everywhere today as part of a presentation. The biggest issue we faced was the adult participants not knowing how to send a text message. But it actually worked well!

and some thought! Unlike the state of Oregon that wants to claim its laws are copyrighted and can therefore not be posted on online sites, this video speaks to the heart of the internet as a sharing machine...

Source: CharlesLeadbeater.net
Book: We-think: mass innovation, not mass production

I have temporarily closed comments to all blogs at drTimTyson.com, including this blog, Practical Practice.

I was hit by a spam robot over night that has been pouring hundreds of advertisement and general junk comments into my blog. In the next several days I will add a CAPTCHA mechanism to my blogs to deny access to these pesky little bots. The good news from all of this is that I will also make some screencasts on how to do add this protection for your own blogs as well.

Close to my heart are those kindred souls that have a vision for making our world a better place and who make that vision a reality one meaningful act at a time. This post highlights two such people: Julene Reed* and Dr. Jane Goodall.

I met Julene several years ago and immediately identified with her kind and gentle spirit. The more I have come to know her and the work she quietly does, the more I have been astounded at the scope and quality, the substance and depth of her contribution to humanity, a contribution made through our profession--made through the lives of children. She sets a glowing example for all educators to emulate.

A few months ago, I asked Julene if I could highlight her work here on drTimTyson.com. I wanted to post this interview with Julene as a celebration of Dr. Jane Goodall's birthday** and her amazing contribution to humankind. You will see why as you read further. I know this is a long post, but my hope is that Julene's interview will give educators ideas about how to center the educational experiences of students on the gift of meaningful contribution--empowering students with the knowledge that they actually have within themselves the very real capacity to make our world better.

So set aside some quality, quiet time to read and reflect on the entire interview. View the videos of Julene's students working in Africa with Dr. Goodall's organization. And as you read, keep foremost in yo