“Clay Shirky says that the dissemination of news events via social media has heightened the role of emotion. The instantaneous manner with which users of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are inclined to pick up, modify, and share messages favors excitement over objectivity.” (via IdeasProject)
Of course I still suspect Clay Shirky is really a charming “Internets Expert” character from central casting played by Tom Hanks.
Teaching for the Future
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Teaching for the Future is a podcast and blog education, technology, and media literacy. Listen as host Dave LaMorte discusses how technology and the Internet is changing the face of our world.
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13-year-old trades iPod for Walkman (Engadget)
“It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.” from Engadget
Sexting Code List Is Useless at Best
I know many teachers and parents live in fear of the Sexting epididemic. It is scary to think that your child or your students are participating in dangerous or risky behavior. It’s their job to stress us out and our job to worry about them.
However I think the risky texting fear is getting out of hand. The people at Fox News put up a list of the secrect teenage text language to try to exploit your fear and anxiety (I know you’re shocked).
If you follow the link you will see some familar lingo such as l33t meaning elite and some terms that I think someone made up for this story such as FOL as in fond of leather. Some of the specifics of the terms listed sound more like terms of creepy AOL Chatrooms than texts between teens. This is the kind of stuff that local news casts use to keep you watching and parent sites use for linkbait. At best it is annoying, but it is often just making a confusing thing more confusing.
Luckily the people the good people at Fox News are able to shine some light on what’s reallying going on with a more recent article, Secret Sex-Message Codes Your Teen Is Using — or Probably Not. It’s way more likely that kids are coming up with their own terms and acronyms amongst their friends than anything else. Most likely there isn’t some secret sexting language, but rather some kids being risky in their own way.
Like with anything there is no list or magic parenting bullet that will keep your kids chaste and pure. You’re going to have to go incognito as their parent or trusted adult and do what you think is best.
No one said this was going to be easy.
Ahmadinejad sucks at Photoshop
“The crowd in this pro-Ahmadinejad rally appears to have been clone-tool enhanced.
اضافه شدن طرفداران محمود احمدي نژاد با فوتوشاپ روزنامه كيهان
(Thanks, Yishay!)” From Cory Doctorow
Sugar is Sweet (Ars Technica)
Sugar on a Stick brings sweet taste of Linux to classrooms
“The official release of Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) is a significant mile stone for the Sugar project. In this release, the platform exhibits a much higher level of refinement and maturity than the previous versions, which were shipped on OLPC’s XO laptops. The user interface is smoother, the individual components seem better integrated, and many impressive new programs that have been added.” from Ars Technica
Sugar on a stick was officailly released this week and I’m excited to try it out. I was never able to get the beta version onto a USB stick I am hoping to see if I can get this version to work. I’ve been running Sugar off the iso disk to mixed results and I’m excited to try the new version.
