Let's Say Thanks is a cool pro-social project from the folks over at Xerox that allows you to easily create and send a thank you note to the troops stationed overseas. Pretty slick.
This would be a good activity for the kids to work on while the rest of the adults fix Thanksgiving dinner!
I just spent a couple days at the YPulse Youth Marketing Mashup East which was held on the campus of Boston University. As usual, it was a fantastic event! Congrats to Anastasia and the Modern Media team for putting together a really informative, fun and relevant event.
I have a few longer posts about the event brewing in my noggin that I hope to push out here on Barking Robot sometime next week. But I had a couple quick thoughts and highlights from the event that I'd like to share while it's still fresh in ye olde noggin.
On Boston: The more time I spend in this city, the deeper I fall in love with it. New England in the fall is something that everyone should experience. One morning I took a walk along the Charles River. The tree's were heavy with orange, yellow and red foliage, the ground was still wet from the overnight rain and rowers glided silently up and down the Charles. Stunning.
On Boston University: Graceful old buildings, a deep sense of history and lots of energy oozing from the student body. Just fantastic. One morning on my way to the YPulse event, I passed the campus chapel and a beautiful sculpture of doves flying up into the sky. At the base of the monument, students had placed bundles upon bundles of flowers. I was curious, but I was also running late, so I didn't have time to learn more.
The YPulse event was opened by Dean Kenneth Elmore, Dean of Students at Boston University. He started with a super energetic and warm welcome to Boston the city and Boston the University. Dean Elmore was full of passion, energy and enthusiasm. As part of his keynote, he spoke about President-Elect Obama, collaboration, community and how great things can be accomplished when we work together. It was very inspiring.
Dean Elmore also took a moment to explain more about the bundles of flowers being left at the base of the sculpture I had seen earlier in the day. The sculpture is a memorial to one of the greatest alumnus ever to study at Boston University--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The morning after Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States of America, students began to spontaneously leave flowers at the MLK monument to honor Dr. King and his contributions, sacrifice and role in making the Obama presidency a reality. It gave me chills.
We need more people like Dean Elmore in the world.
On Virgin Mobile: Ron Faris from Virgin Mobile USA gave a really fantastic presentation on the Virgin Mobile Festival and Pro-Social Initiatives. He started by having everyone text "karma" to 68405. He then told us that for every text, American Eagle would donate a hoodie to homeless teen. Way to go Virgin Mobile!
Ron's presentation was really, really interesting. Virgin Mobile, and the Virgin brand, have done some really innovative, creative and interesting work in the music, pro-social, marketing and branding space. He also talked about the mobile and texting habits of Gen Y and how Virgin is leveraging mobile to engage and market to youth. You can read more on the live blog transcript.
At the end of his presentation, he mentioned that Virgin Mobile next pro-social cause is to become an advocate on the issue of homeless teens. Virgin Mobile will be launching an awareness campaign in the next couple of weeks. Want to hear something shocking? According to research conducted by Virgin Mobile, there are approximately 1 million homeless teens in the United States of America.
Yes....1 million.
These teens are homeless for a variety of reasons ranging from being kicked out by their parents due to sexual orientation, abusive parents or being abandoned. This figure just floored me. I've spent a lot of time working with homeless adults and mothers with children, but I was woefully ignorant on the subject of homeless teens.
I spoke to the Virgin Mobile team about their homeless teen campaign and I will keep everyone here at Barking Robot updated on how you can help out. I feel very strongly that the education technology community should be actively and passionately involved in this issue. Homeless teens are an education issue.
On SurveyU & MTV: Dan Coates from SurveyU gave a really interesting and relevant presentation titled, What Every Brand Could Learn from the Obama Campaign's Marketing to College Students. He shared lots of really good information, far too much to share here, but you can read more over on the YPulse Live Blog. SurveyU also had a very, very interesting report titled, What Happens to Media as Millennial Take Control?, that I'll blog about in-depth next week.
Dan Hart, SVP MTV Digital, also gave a very insightful presentation, Engaging Viewers Through Multiple Screens, where he talked about MTV's strategy to meet the demands and viewing habits of their (mostly) Gen Y viewers.
One example of how MTV was meeting the always on media habits of Gen Y was Backchannel --a social and interactive platform that allows "fans gather to talk about The Hills as it happens! Type your thoughts and don't hold back! Other players award points with a click of their mouse on the best comments. When it's your turn to click, earn points by predicting the comments you think will be the most popular." Mr. Hart said that this multi-channel approach has been wildly successful and popular.
On YPulse: As usual, this was a fantastic event. The next YPulse Mashup will be held in San Francisco on June 1 & 2, 2009. If you work with youth in education, technology, social services or marketing, you should--no you need--to attend the 2009 YPulse Mashup.
And now, time for that nap...
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On November 4th 2008, millions of
Americans will go to over 200,000 distinct voting locations and using
different systems and machinery to vote.
Some voters will have a terrific experiences, and others will experience the same problems we have been hearing about for years - long lines, broken machines, inaccurate voting rolls, and others will experience problems that we haven’t heard about before.
We voters are using Twitter and other texting tools to report on how the vote is really going during this election, and we’re urging everyone to use the common word (or “hashtag” in Twitter lingo) of #votereport as they do so. If that happens, we’ll all be able watch on maps and graphs how the election is going across the country.
That’s why a new citizen-driven election monitoring system called Twitter Vote Report was just launched. Using either Twitter.com, iPhone, direct SMS, or our telephone hotlines, voters will have a new way to share their experiences with one another and ensure that the media and watchdog groups are aware of any problems.
And YOU can help! Be a citizen journalist! Submit a report about conditions at your polling place. Four ways to submit reports to Vote Report:
And if you would like to talk to a human to report bad conditions you’ve observed, please call our partner 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
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Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is a program that began 58 years ago and has helped connect UNICEF to literally millions of donors, fundraisers, celebrities and partners. This year, UNICEF is embracing both the social and mobile web to engage even more people in their annual campaign.
"For the first time ever, we’ve launched both a Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF MySpace page and Facebook Cause.
If you use either of these sites, just add us as one of your friends.
Then, when you’re writing on someone’s “wall,” or “poking” everyone you
know, invite them to add us too, and help spread the word.
This year—for the first time—you can Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF with your mobile phone! Just text the word “TOT” to 864233 (UNICEF) to make a $5 donation* and help UNICEF save kids’ lives."
The Text-or-Treat initiative is a pretty clever program. When you visit the Text-or-Treat page, you can choose one of the virtual trick or treaters and help fill their UNICEF box by sending a text message. Cool!
I sent my text message to support Doogie. Which one will you support?
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CollegeTweetUp is a grassroots community effort to create a directory of college and university students who use Twitter. Anyone is free to add their @handle to the directory.
To add your name, just send a tweet with the message "college tweetup" and "school name" to @resawu or add it directly on the CollegeTweetUp PBwiki page.
Despite the growing body of evidence to the contrary, if you ask people to describe the stereotypical video game player, most would describe a teenage boy who spend hours a day playing violent video games in isolation. But as with most stereotypes, perception is usually very far from reality.
Take the video gamer described above. Would you be surprised to learn that the average video gamer is a 35 year old male who has been playing for 13 years? But wait, there’s more.
According to the 2008 Electronic Software Association’s 2008 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry:
Clearly there is a huge market opportunity for the video and online game industry to meet the needs of this burgeoning casual gaming demographic. World Golf Tour (WGT) is a free online golfing destination whose goal is to be the premier virtual world destination designed to meet the needs of an affluent, dynamic and active community.
So, what exactly is World Golf Tour? Take the popularity of online gaming, mash it with the nearly 61 million golfers in the world, throw in a dash of Second Life and you have World Golf Tour. Like other virtual worlds, WGT has a variety of key features:
All in all WGT is off to an impressive start. In fact the membership numbers have zoomed, with unique visitors up an astonishing 922% over last month.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW WGT CREATED THEIR AMAZING 3D IMAGES
A couple things worth noting:
Things I’d like to see:
As the buzz around WGT continues to gain momentum, I have no doubt that WGT will continue to grow in popularity among golfers and gamers alike. In fact, if the economic meltdown continues, don’t be surprised if this winter’s hottest golf retreat ends up being virtual the links on The World Golf Tour.
All in all the team over at WGT has created an impressive virtual world that has masterfully combined the social nature of golf with online gaming and brought it to the social web.
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Last week I attended the Innovative Learning Conference (ILC) in San Jose, California. Despite what seemed like a very light turnout, it turned out to be a great conference experience. The educators attending ILC were engaging and it gave me a chance to meet up with some of my social networking pals in real life. I also had the opportunity to see some really good presentations.
Like most conferences there was an exhibition hall with lots of vendors touting their goods and services as the latest and greatest learning tool. All the usual ed tech suspects, with their big marketing machines, were there in force.
But what really intrigued me the most was a couple from Vancouver, B.C who have created a mind blowing, game changing and all around awesome web-based comic strip generation tool called Pixton.
What is Pixton?
Simply stated, Pixton is a social community where anyone can easily create, share, remix and publish their comic strip stories with people around the globe. If you find a great comic in French, you can instantly translate it into English. Or German. Or even Greek. Pretty cool, eh?
There are three versions: Pixtion for Fun (public), Pixton for Schools (education) and Pixton Storyboard (private).
Pixton for Schools provides students with an active and fun learning experience. It's also a good way for teachers to tap into the multiple learning styles of their students. Teachers can also create accounts for students without requiring them to have an email address. Pixton is also an amazing digital tool for students to create digital storytelling projects.
In terms of the educational value of comics, the Pixton team emphasizes the following:
In terms of teaching, Pixton for Schools has a Lesson Bank where educators can share their lessons with other teachers. Teachers can also create their own private, safe and secure virtual learning environment (VLE) right on Pixton!
Beyond the classroom, Pixton would be a great way to quickly and easily build professional development, training, tutorials or other pre or in-service materials. You can learn more about the how you can use Pixton in an educational setting or the educational value of comics by downloading the free Pixton for Schools information packet (pdf).
The Pixton tool set is very intuitive, easy-to-use, and really fun. If you browse the public gallery, you'll see all the creative ways people are using Pixton and your mind will quickly overflow with ideas.
And there are lots of ways for you to share what you create with others outside the Pixton community. You can embed your Pixton comic in a wiki (like PBwiki), blog, or share a link via email, Twitter or IM. And soon you'll be able to print out your comic too.
Clive and Daina Goodinson have created powerful and fun learning tool that is bound to be a popular and powerful learning tool for the digital and traditional classroom. All in all, Pixton is an exciting edition to the social web.
Following in the footsteps of Flickr, YouTube and Twitter, Pixton is poised to join the short list of cutting-edge, top-tier and truly innovative social web tools. The really exciting thing is that Clive and Daina are just getting started.
I can't wait to see what else they have planned for Pixton and beyond.
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In Lesson Plans, part of the New York Times blog network, a group of teachers chronicle their experiences during the first weeks of the school, offering readers with a first hand account of today's classroom challenges from diverse perspectives.
The teachers participating in this conversation cover a variety of topics ranging from multi-cultural education, the 2008 presidential election, teaching students with autism and sharing their day-to-day struggles in the classroom.
At a time when there is much discussion on how to reform our public school system, it's easy to forget that our educators are doing the best job they can. Hopefully the NYT Lesson Plans series will provide "civilians" with some insight into the world of education.
My hope is that Lesson Plans will lead everyone involved in education --parents, teachers and politicians--with a better understanding of the challenges, issues and move us all towards our shared goal of providing our kids with the best education possible.
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A few days ago the Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a national survey of U.S. teens (survey sample: 1,102 youth ages 12-17) and video games.
The study, a project of the Pew Research Center and the MacArthur Foundation, shatters many of the previously held beliefs that video game obsessed teens lead socially isolated lives devoid of interaction with other people.
In fact, the Pew study found that "virtually all American teens play computer, console, or cell phone games and that the gaming experience is rich and varied, with a significant amount of social interaction and potential for civic engagement."
Among the key findings:
Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day.
Game playing experiences are diverse, with the most popular games falling into the racing, puzzle, sports, action and adventure categories.
Game playing is social, with most teens playing games with others at least some of the time.
Game playing can incorporate many aspects of civic and political life.
Game playing sometimes involves exposure to mature content, with almost a third of teens playing games that are listed as appropriate only for people older than they are.
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The Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom workshop was created by Vicki Davis, recognized Web 2.0 expert and creator of the Cool Cat Teacher blog, for Atomic Learning.
In the Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom workshop, Davis herself utilizes Atomic Learning’s short, show-and-tell video tutorials to guide users through flattening their classroom by expanding it to include global communities and collaboration tools.
The workshop is a valuable resource for educators seeking to integrate technology and includes over 80 tutorials on topics such as Applying ISTE NETS standards to your project, Connecting Classrooms online, Digital Citizenship and Safety and many more.
View the workshop by clicking here.
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Starbucks, as part of their back-to-school campaign, has announced that during the month of September they will be giving teachers a free cup of coffee on. Here's the scoop from the Starbucks Ideas in Action blog:
"It’s not an apple to welcome teachers back to school, but a cup of coffee. In recognition of teachers, Starbucks is offering school teachers, grades K-12 a complimentary tall cup of brewed coffee on Mondays during the month of September.
Bring in your teacher identification to any Starbucks. We appreciate the many ideas you’ve shared on MSI to recognize the wonderful work of teachers."
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Did you know that PBwiki hosts complimentary Office Hours each week? Yep, it's true. Join PBwiki every – Wednesday at 1 P.M EST to speak to the staff and get help getting the most out of using a wiki in your classroom.
Don't forget! PBwiki is hosting a Back to School Challenge! From now until October 31st
you can earn a free premium wiki plus great classroom resources. Learn
more at www.backtoschoolchallenge.com
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Given the opportunity, what would you ask John McCain or Barack Obama? Today Katie Couric has announced that she will being hosting a convention webcast that will feature questions submitted by viewers like YOU! Here's the scoop from Katie:
"I have a press pass and I intend to use it at the Democratic and Republican conventions...to get some of your questions answered.
The video explains the plan, so check it out. And be sure to watch my live webcasts from the floor of the conventions in Denver and St. Paul."
This is a good opportunity for us as a community to get some of those education related questions out into the public domain and in front of the candidates. What's their stance on NCLB? Or technology funding? Do they have a plan to reform public education?
So go over to CBS News and submit a question. Or two...
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A few months ago I blogged about Animoto, a slick new web app that takes your
pictures, mashes it with audio, and creates a music video that can be exported to
YouTube or embedded in a variety of social media platforms like a wiki or blog.
The service proved to be so popular among the education community that the Animoto team just launched a new micro site just for educators: Animoto For Education. The Animoto Education site is full of case studies, FAQ's on how to get started using Animoto in your classroom and information on how to get a classroom account.
I have no doubt that your students are going to continue to create some really amazing projects using Animoto. So take a look at Animoto for Education and think about the many ways it can be integrated into your curriculum this year.
And be sure to share what you create with both the Animoto For Education site and the AnimotoEDU Group on YouTube.
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Almost from the get-go Twitter has been popular with the "early adopter" crowd. And for awhile there the big question was whether or not Twitter could make the jump into the mainstream culture.
Twitter has had some growing pains (see "Fail Whale"), but as of late seems to be much more stable and on track to providing people with a powerful communication tool.
Corporations are also beginning to take notice and are using Twitter as a way to open a two-way dialogue with their customers. Fluent Simplicity has started compiling a Twitter Brand Index to track the ways in which companies are using Twitter to engage with their customers.
Is Twitter a fad? Time will tell. In the meantime savvy companies are beginning to take notice of the power (and in some cases, the double edged sword) of Twitter and other forms of social media.
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