Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Changing the World, One Solar Light at a Time

After spending time with villagers living along the Red Sea, and learning that an estimated 2 billion people worldwide have no affordable access to light, Mark Bent decided to light the world one flashlight at a time.

Mark is the founder of SunNight Solar, a solar-powered flashlight he developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy and NASA.

These lights help medical teams treat patients in refugee camps, farmers can use money spent on fuel on other necessities, and allow children to learn how to read at night without exposure to kerosene fumes.

Under the SunSolar's Buy-One-Give-One (BOGO) Light program, for every flashlight purchased, Bent donates a second light to non-profits that distribute the lights where they are needed.

Related Resources

• SunNight Solar
• BOGO Light Program
• BOGO > Education

OLPC Partners with Amazon.com

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project has announced that they have partnered with Amazon.com to revive the Give One, Get One program. This program, first launched last year, allows consumers to purchase two XO laptops, one is shipped to the buyer, and the other is sent to a student in a developing nation.

According to PC World, Amazon.com will start selling XO laptops in late November, around the time of Thanksgiving in the U.S. Sales will likely extend through to around the end of December.

Related Resources

• One Laptop Per Child Program
  
• 1:1 Computing: Moving from Theory to Practice
• Gary Stager >> Laptops and Learning
• Seymour Papert >> From Lunch Boxes to Laptops
• The Maine Learning with Laptop Study
• Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI)

Do Something & Staples: School Supplies for Kids in Need

"More than 11 million kids in the US live below the poverty line and don't have the basic supplies that they need to succeed. Let's Do Something about it!

Led by teens nationwide, Do Something 101 is a campaign to collect new school supplies for kids in need. Drop off new supplies at any Staples store through August 31st, and we'll make sure they're delivered to kids who need them."

Related Resources

• Do Something 101
• Do Something Facebook Page
• Donors Choose

TweetStats: Graph Your Stats

TweetStats, created by @dacort, is a new web application that provides you with your Twitter stats including, your tweet time line, your daily tweet aggregate (daily, weekly, monthly), your @'s percentages, as well as your most used Twitter interface.

You can also check out your tweet cloud to see a visual representation of the topics you tweet about most.

Pretty cool.

Related Resources

• Sweet Tweet Tees: Eat, Sleep Tweet
• Twitter Mania: 140 Twitter tools
• Twemes: Tags for Twitter
• Freed Student Uses Twitter to Demand Release
• Twit.Tv

Many Voices For Darfur Project

Learn more about the Many Voices for Darfur project. This is a great way to get your students involved in world events. This project was started by Mr. Mayo, a teacher from Rockville, Maryland.

Get Involved!

Related Resources

• Mr. Mayo Blog
• Flickr > tag > darfur
• Wikipedia > Darfur
• Yahoo! Teacher Document > Twitter Many Voices Project

Digital Inclusion: Content, Community and Technology

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL CONTENT DIVIDE
Didactics World, December 2006
Derek E. Baird, M.A.

"Despite enormous strides towards digital inclusion, technology is only part of the solution. Another vital component of the digital divide that gets less attention, but is nearly as important is lack of quality, free, and open content on the web.

The key aim of the open learning movement is to have quality educational content available for students once they cross the digital divide."

AFT Resources for Teaching Darfur

I recently had the privilege of attending the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) conference in Washington D.C. where my colleague Karon Weber and I had the opportunity to present Yahoo! for Teachers at a workshop being held at the 2007 AFT QuEST Conference.

One thing that really struck me was how progressive the AFT is in their approach to teaching as well as their positions on social issues. There were several booths that centered around what the AFT membership could do to support AIDS Advocacy, Genocide Awareness in Darfur, and Democracy in Africa.

"As men and women of conscience and as educators committed to the dignity and worth of all humanity, we have a responsibility to speak out against injustice on behalf of vulnerable and disenfranchised peoples across the globe." ~ 2006 AFT resolution on Opposition to the Genocide in Darfur

The AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign is a multi-country campaign in partnership with African teacher unions to provide resources to fight the spread of this disease. The impact of AIDS in the teaching community is staggering.

"This year in South Africa, more than 1,000 teachers will die of AIDS. In Zimbabwe more than 30 percent of the country's teachers carry the HIV virus. Many school age children have lost a parent to the epidemic. Throughout Africa, the statisics tell a similar story--teachers' lives lost and whole education systems endangered (Source: AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign)."

Here are some of the excellent resources complied by the AFT to help teachers educate their students on issues related to Africa, HIV and AIDS.

• Jim Lehrer NewsHour > Sudan
• Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur > Teaching Resources
• Understanding Sudan
• Choices Program > Darfur Lesson Plans
• Darfur is Dying > Interactive Games

Related Resources

• debaird.net + Africa
• American Federation of Teachers
• AFT AIDS Campaign (pdf)
• Flickr > tag > Darfur

The Digital Alliance: ICT Education for All

For the last month or so I've been doing some consulting for The Digital Alliance, a not-for-profit humanitarian organization dedicated to providing ICT knowledge and skills to marginalized groups around the globe. Last week, I was thrilled to learn that the Digital Alliance was invited to participate as a Member of the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) High-level Panel of Advisor's.

The UN Global Alliance responds to the need and demand for an inclusive global forum and platform for cross-sectoral policy dialogue on the use of ICT for enhancing the achievement of internationally agreed development goals, notably reduction of poverty.

Next week Quinn Sutton, Executive Director of the Digital Alliance ,will be heading to an UN sponsored Pan-African Education conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. During the week long conference, Quinn will will have the opportunity to meet with high ranking education officials from several African nations and share with them how they can integrate social media tools like PBWiki, Yackpack, and Yahoo! Teachers into their classrooms to support student learning.

I strongly believe that social media and Open Education Resources (OER) have the potential to support learning and economic advancement in developing countries and I'm proud that I've been able to work with the Digital Alliance on this project. I hope that this is the first of many more collaborations together.

Congratulations to Quinn & The Digital Alliance!

Get Wired @ YPulse Mash Up 2007

This just in! The first ever YPULSE Mash Up conference will be held on July 16-17 in San Francisco. The theme is "Reaching Today's Totally Wired Generation with Technology." At first glance, you might get the impression that this conference is primarily aimed at the youth marketing crowd.

But if you dig deeper you'll find panels focusing on social change, youth culture, and trends driving the totally wired world of Gen Y. And in another stunning stroke of genius, there will be a panel comprised of real teens. That's right folks--you'll have the opportunity to listen to real teens talk about what it means to be "like totally wired."

I was pleasantly surprised discover a panel discussion on how "technology is transforming teens at school and at home." I think it's a fantastic idea to have people outside the education (technology) community engage in a conversation about social media, education, and Gen Y. Why?

Among educators the topic of social media, Gen Y and education (reform) is a conversation that usually doesn't progress beyond "MySpace and Wikipedia are the root of all evil." Perhaps it's time for us, the education technology community, to step back and listen to different perspectives, ideas, and solutions.

Yahoo! Teachers, the soon-to-be released social networking and OER repository for educators, is filling most of my time, but YPULSE looks like a fantastic opportunity to take a break and get a deeper look into the world of "today's wired teen."

Related Resources

• Yahoo! Summit Series:Truly, Madly, Deeply Engaged: Global Youth, Media and Technology 
• YPulse
• YPulse Mash Up + Upcoming.org
• debaird.net + Gen Y

Remembering Dr. King

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project

Negroponte brings Green Machine to Hong Kong on Vimeo

Resources

• debaird.net + flat world
• Wikipedia + OLPC Project
• Learning and Laptops
• Flickr > $100 Laptop Prototype
• Flickr Group > OLPC

Seton Hall School of Law: National Teach-In

My friend David Silver, a professor of Media Studies at the University of San Francisco, founder of the Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies and co-founder of the September Project sent me information about a national teach-in sponsored by Seton Hall School of Law.

This looks like a fantastic opportunity and I'm more than happy to pass this along to BlendedEdu readers. Thanks David!

Web Resources

• Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
• Silver in San Francisco
• September Project
• Seton Hall > GTMO National Teach-in Blog
• Seton Hall School of Law > National Teach-in
• BlendedEdu + David Silver

FUSE, Open Source Education & Connexions

"Richard Baraniuk is a Rice University professor with a giant vision: to create a free, global online education system.

In this presentation, he introduces Connexions, the open-access publishing system that's changing the landscape of education by providing free coursework and educational materials to everyone in the world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 19:18)"

Web Resources

• Open Source Education
• The Center for Open Sustainable Learning (COSL)
• Y! Search Blog > FUSE in Education

Wikimania '06: $100 Laptop, Wikiversity, Wikiwyg

via Andy Carvin: "A few minutes ago here at the Wikimania conference, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales announced that the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) is including Wikipedia as one of the first elements in their content repository. (ac: though they've been talking about this for at least a year.)

He also announced a new project called Wikiversity. It will serve as an online center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. It will create and host a range of free content materials, multilingual learning materials, for all ages in all languages.

It'll host scholarly projects and communities to support these materials, and foster research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other wikimedia projects. Launching in three languages, in a six-month beta, within a month.

Wikimedia Foundation will also now have an advisory board to help improve partnerships, public relations, financing, etc. Additionally, Wikia and SocialText is launching Wikiwyg. It will make it easier for more people to get involved in wiki editing.

The technological barrier to entry keeps out really smart people who are uncomfortable with the Wikipedia interface. "Wikiwyg, in some shape or form, will be the future of the Internet," because it will allow non-techies to become Wikipedians easily.

Web Resources

• WikiMedia Foundation
• Wikipedia+BlendedEdu
• Wikipedia Credibility
• $100 Laptop Project (OLPC)
• Flickr > $100 Laptop Prototype

iEARN: The Global School House

International Education and Resource Network (iEARN): "Started in 1988, iEARN is the world's largest non-profit global network that enables teachers and young people to use the Internet and other new technologies to collaborate on projects that both enhance learning and make a difference in the world."

What a fantastic organization! Their 13th International iEARN World Conference and Youth Summit, July 3-7, 2006, will be hosted by iEARN-Netherlands in Enschede, the Netherlands.