The first is Sugata Mitra's latest TED Talk about his Hole in the Wall experiments and child driven education. His first experiment consisted of a single computer, accessible only through a hole in the wall. The children of an impoverished village displayed an incredible ability to learn together in spite of never having used a computer or knowing english. He's achieved the same results many times since.
Mitra's Conjecture
Education is a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.
The second is Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall which of course includes the haunting protest in Part II by the Islington Green School choir. (warning... for some reason the vid loads slowly)
I got my Buzz this afternoon just before the feeling of being left out set in. Excited and snowed in, with nothing better to do, I gave it a try. It felt familiar and uninteresting. But what is interesting, is how they're getting it out. Here are a few quick thoughts.
Why in GMail?
I suppose Buzz was integrated into GMail to quickly build up a user base. Remember 'Google Contacts' had already been made a separate service, so GMail's contacts (default social network) is clearly not the reason. You might think it's because they thought it made sense to treat it like an inbox. But it might make equal if not more sense to put it in Google Wave. However, Google Wave hasn't had much traction, so stuffing Buzz in there would have instantly killed it.
If this scheme works, Google will likely continue to use GMail as it's Trojan's Horse to push out new products, especially social products... even if it makes no other sense.
Orkut? Total Buzz kill
While Buzz is clearly a Social Media move for Google, they've been careful not to mention Orkut and Buzz in the same sentence. Incidentally, Orkut has never been given the 'G' stamp of approval... GOrkut or Google Orkut just don't exist.
Aggregation is stupid but it always sounds good
Next, there's the aggregation of your social streams. Twitter, Flickr etc.
Social Media aggregation just doesn't seem to work. But for some reason it never stops sounding like a good idea. Co-mingling your social circles is like taking both your parents AND your in-laws on a cruise vacation. That is such a bad idea.
For now, Buzz is just a simpler version of FriendFeed...
Buzz vs Twitter
But whatever happened to FriendFeed? Well other than being acquired by Facebook, not much. It's not getting much attention these days. In fact, Buzz is the only reason I've gone back to FriendFeed in months. Back when we did know FriendFeed, it wasn't because of it's superior ideas and technology, but because it was fighting with Twitter.
Google will no doubt keep talking about Twitter to build more buzz (for Buzz)... bad pun, I know.
So is Buzz really Hype?
Well I can say that unlike Wave and Orkut, Google has done a careful if not clever job of getting the Buzz out. It's more marketing and positioning than technology or innovation.
@foursquare --- it's like a facebook game only both fun and useful. also sparking up consumer spending... well that's not too good:( share your fave places and restaurants. friendme
@googlevoice --- combined with gmail... just damn. Simple, searchable, transcribed, managed vmail... oh yeah, a freemium beauty too.
@dailybooth --- remember when twitter was fun. stupid is fun and dailybooth is ... :) friendme
@socialscope --- kicked twitterberry, ubertwitter, facebook app, and that stinking foursquare browser app off my Blackberry. Thank goodness... more memory for photos.
Update 1: I've hacked together a Posterous Sidebar Flair Hack Builder Tool here.
Notice the two pieces of "flair" in my posterous sidebar, "recent posts" and "flickr photos". Perhaps you've tried to embed some javascript in your custom posterous theme and found out that they simply don't allow it. That's probably a good thing. You can get crazy and buggy with this stuff. However, without javascript support, typical blog sidebar widgets won't work.
But... I googled some suggestions and customized them for my needs. Basically, some javascript in an iframe and you can build yourself a nice, safe sidebar widget. This is sort of how Google Gadgets on iGoogle work. I think I might eventually lose the flair, but in the meantime, I'll share how it's put together. My widget supports showing posterous posts, tweets, rss feeds, delicious feeds, and flickr photos.I built the "recent posts" widget using my posterous rss feed. The two iframes I embedded in my theme are
Update 1: I've hacked together a Posterous Sidebar Flair Builder based on this post here.
You need to set the width and length of the iframe to fit your theme's sidebar. It might require a little trial-and-error to get it right.
About the Parameters "method" parameter can be set to "posterous", "twitter", "rss", "delicious", or "flickr". "css" parameter can be set to the path of your CSS file. Otherwise it uses defaults that I like:) "style" parameter can be set to "posterous" --- this uses "posterous" default theme "header" parameter can be set to the Header text for the widget, i.e., "Recent Posts" "count" parameter is the number of items to display
parameters for "method" = "posterous" "hostname" = sub-domain of posterous blog, i.e., martinruiz for martinruiz.posterous.com "tag" = tag, i.e., "technology"
parameters for "method" = "twitter"
"username" = twitter username, i.e., martinruiz
parameters for "method" = "rss" "feedurl" = path of rss feed, i.e., http://martinruiz.posterous.com/rss.xmlparameters for "method" = "delicious" "feedurl" = path of delicious feed, i.e., http://del.icio.us/feeds/json/RuizMartin/martinruizparameter for "method" = "flickr" "username" = flickr user name, i.e., "martinruiz" "user" = flickr user id, i.e., "8335702@N03" --- note replace "@" with "%40" "layout" = "v" for vertical, "h" for horizontal --- default is "h" "size" = "s" for small, "m" for medium, "t" for thumbnail, "b" for big --- default is "m" Give me a heads up
if you use it, so I can look out for you:)
Thoughts of sadness and smothered genius struck me as I walked down 52nd street between 5th and 6th avenue. Once known as "Swing Street" and home of many jazz clubs, it's now a lifeless, urban dessert. It's hard to believe that Jazz greats like Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker once played there.
Amazingly, donorschoose.org makes hacking education easy. I see these projects as micro-startups, bootstrapping, hacking and finding creative ways to educate kids.
The notes below were written to me by students of a Donors Choose project I helped with, "FlipCams for Hispanic Students". Their teacher is using the Cams to enhance their learning of English. I relate to these kids. I learned english after entering first grade... sink-or-swim. I've set up a Giving Page for projects where Reading is encouraged or Technology is applied in creative ways. Click and donate... If you find a cool project, let me know and I'll post it on my giving page.
(via facebook)I still have plenty to achieve in my life but SHPE(Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) saw it fit to invite me to talk to students and parents about my experiences as a Latino Technologist. The truth is, I still feel very much like I did when I was in high school. In a way it fuels my inner drive. I had a few moments to speak to the students and parents before my talk and *I* was blown away and inspired. I shared a few personal stories that have influenced my choices. In a nutshell, I've been engineering/hacking everything from education and business to technology since the age of 6. Here are a few thoughts I shared, 1. concentrate your energy on a few things - that's how I learned english when I started school... at the expense of many other things, but it was worth it.2. tinker and experiment a lot, and definitely *create* stuff - I broke a few TVs before I learned how to fix them:) Most of my learning came by way of solving problems and creating solutions. 3. focus on what you're good at, especially when you're not sure what to do - this is how I chose a college and major.4. it doesn't take many resources, especially money to get some things done - I grew up very poor. We had three books in my home which I read over and over again... and I figured out how to finance my education. 5. listen to your mom!As I reflected on what I was going to say I began to realize I might have a book in me... maybe some day I'll write one.About Manhattan Bridges High School - Academy of Engineering Manhattan Bridges High School opened its doors in 2003, catering to Spanish-speaking students who have been in the US for less than 4 years. The school fosters a family atmosphere and has an engineering based curriculum. About SHPE - Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (via shpe-nyc.org) The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1974 by a group of engineers employed by the City of Los Angeles. Their objective was to form a national organization of professional engineers to serve as role models in the Hispanic community.
The biggest obstacle Smith faced in launching StraighterLine was a process called accreditation. Over time, colleges and universities have built sturdy walls and deep moats around their academic city-states. Students will only pay for courses that lead to college credits and universally recognized degrees. Credits and degrees can only be granted by—and students paying for college with federal grants and loans can only attend—institutions that are officially recognized by federally approved accreditors. And the most prestigious accreditors will only recognize institutions: organizations with academic departments, highly credentialed faculty, bureaucrats, libraries, and all the other pricey accoutrements of the modern university. These things make higher education more expensive, and they’re not necessary if all you want to do is offer standard introductory courses online. To compete, Smith needed StraighterLine courses to be as inexpensive as they could be.
College for $99 a month could literally save a persons life!!! It might even be a darn good Healthcare plan. After all, health has been linked to level of education.
This article discusses StraighterLine, an online college that costs $99 per month. Yep, it's too good to be true. Not because you don't get a quality education, but because their degree is not "recognized". Also known as "Accreditation".
StraighterLine has worked around this by partnering with "Accredited" colleges that will recognize it's credits for those who wish to transfer. Understandably, but unfortunately, some partners have backed off under pressure from students and others arguing that quality of the college's degree is being cheapened.
StraighterLine should perhaps "Partner up" with corporations who'll promise to interview and hire their students. I would also target the masses of people who could not afford an education otherwise.
I read my Twitter friend's updates in Google Reader, along side news and blog feeds. Unfortunately, your Twitter friends timeline is not public and requires authentication. The service I relied upon to do this was broken all day yesterday. This led me to experiment with a few things including Feedburner. So far it seems to be working fine. You'll need a Google Account to set this up... 2 steps:
1. Simply burn your Twitter friends timeline with Google's Feedburner and your Twitter 'username' and 'password'.
2. Import the new feed into your readerAlthough I haven't tried it, I suppose you can take advantage of other Feedburner features like "Email" and "FeedFlare".
This Frontline segment, "Education in the Digital Age", explores the impact technology at what was once a troubled school in the Bronx, NY and a more progressive school in Chatham, NJ.
I. Intermediate School 339 in the Bronx 3 Years ago... lots of gang activity, low test scores... only 9% of children were performing at grade level math.
Now... 64% at or above grade level math. Every child has access to laptop. Teachers use computers and software to track answers and focus on the hardest questions. Board of Ed blocks sites like Youtube and MySpace but the kids hack through controls:)
"As long as kids are productive, teachers don't have a problem with students chatting..." - comment from teacher discussing how the kids are learning to multi-task.
II. Chatham School, NJ Instruction at Chatham is interactive because the kids expect it to be. Classrooms have Smart boards and teachers create podcasts of lessons. One teacher set up a Ning Social Network to study Hamlet.
Some observations from teachers include: - Teachers are entertainers... - More students struggle with focus than before. - some teachers accept, Sparknotes as the reality of how the 'real' world works
"Walking into classroom without all that media is like walking into a desert" - comment from teacher about expectations and reality of technology in life and education.
The takeaways for me are... 1. Children can simply benefit from access to computers and the freedom to use them how they like.
2. Experiment a lot with technology... risk of failure is far out-weighed by reward of the experience.
3. Standardizing use of technology across classrooms is far less important than allowing teachers to explore with tools they are comfortable with.
It's hard to ignore the differences between the schools, like ethnic make up, access to resources and more. One school seems more focused on needs while the other reacts to expectations. That said, it's clear technology has a profoundly positive impact on learning across the board.
