Cool music video for the Independence Day break

(h/t Stephen Seay)

Announcing the Virtual Gaming Classroom Wiki

I’ve just launched a Virtual Gaming Classroom Wiki. It includes resources for teachers wanting to implement training, simulations, and interaction in second life. (although I need to add some info about processes).

It also has resources about creating virtual debates with Skype and other video conferencing tools like UStream. (I left out Seesmic and My Ovoo). Included some resources on. Hopefully this inspires some teachers to try out virtual discussions, roundtables, or even virtual debates in their classrooms.

Enjoy and feel free to send me ideas for resources, articles, books, and videos.

Ten Educational and Instructional Technology Books

Here are some of the best education technology and instructional technology books available.
It includes social media, education innovation, and project based learning.

“Disrupting Class” By Clayton Christensen. This is more for people who approach education technology from a business perspective–but identifies the ways in which education will be disrupted by innovation in the coming years.

“Cluetrain Manifesto” by Christoper Locke and Weinberger. The first book which identified the social media revolution.

“How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School” by the National Research Council. A to Z of brain science in relation to learning.

“Multiple Intelligences” by Howard Garner. Garner’s book is one of the fundamentals of curriculum development.

“The Meaning Makers” by Gordon Wells. Wells’ book is for the education of young literacy learners, but has applications elsewhere as well.

“Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky. Shirky identifies cultural and web trends which are important to realize and act upon.

“A Whole New Mind” by Dan Pink provides the rationale for a push toward creativity, empathy, and play in school curriculums. This includes the use of games and simulation.

“Global Achievement Gap” by Tony Wagner

“Reinventing Project Based Learning” (ordering soon via Amazon)

“Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools” (ordering soon via Amazon)

ISTE Ed Tech Books

These books talk about brain research (or at least the national research council book does), culture and technology trends, and are pretty theory rich. What do you think works with the classroom practice of implementing curriculum and assessing student learning? How about books on blended learning?

Grandma’s Iphone

Great visual storytelling….kind of inspirational.
(ok…its not an iphone commercial…but whatev…..)

(h/t to Don Kasprzak an education technologist at the University of Wisconsin)

Edupunk: The Battle Royale Over Blackboard and Education Technology

What is Edupunk:

Edupunk is an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude.[1][2] The New York Times defines it as “an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of ’70s bands like The Clash to the classroom.”[3] Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or Edupunk.

Here is Steven Downes’ introduction to Edupunk. Thanks to Chronicle of Higher Education for picking up this edupunk story and covering the battle royale. Here is a cool exercise around edupunk (Word Doc download) which could be adopted for high school and college. For more coverage…check out the just launched Edupunk.org, you can check out the other 4 parts of the debate, and this interesting formulation of edupunk on slideshare.

The question remains…are Blackboards days numbered? What do you think? Does blackboard add value? And can open source tools really replace what Blackboard does? Is it a meme? Is it an ideology? Does it matter? What is punk about? Is the punk metaphor appropriate or misguided? Is the DIY movement important?

Edupunk Web Excursions + My Random Thoughts:

In later videos Garner suggests a Bill of Rights to guide a movement away from top down or corporate control. In a blog comment he made an interesting point:

For the record, when we started blogging at UMW, we used the metaphor of a “sandbox,” because we were vitally interested in emergent effects. I favor that metaphor because it’s more about play, collaborative experimentation, surprise, inclusiveness. Jim’s “edupunk” meme or ideology or metaphor reflects an angrier response, obviously.

I don’t believe in utopias, myself, though at the same time I’m quite idealistic.

Eleven Models for Community Aggregators and Informational Dashboards

Three quick and dirty methods for creating an information dashboard:

1) Netvibes

2) Pageflakes

3) My Alltop (although this is very, very limited. however it is an interesting model for aesthetic reasons)

Six other information dashboard and community aggregator models:

4) Social media widget aggregation (flickr, RSS feeds, delicious, etc.)

5) Adding RSS widgets like Lego blocks (can use a blog or wiki as the framework or platform)

6) All top clone (see also “Build Your Own Alltop for Advocacy“)

7) Information River model This is a three part series. (supposedly like Techmeme)

8} University of Mary Washington model (UM Blogs which also has a great wiki training and learning infrastructure as well) Teacher blog aggregate student blogs. The main blog aggregates data from various groups and associations on campus.

9) John Saddington’s model

10) Yahoo Pipes

11) If you are more technologically sophisticated, you may prefer the aggregation method used by Brazen Careerist or Business Week or Junta.

Alternative information dashboard and aggregation models you may enjoy:

Bonus #1: Edu blogs does a great job of aggregating blog posts from the higher education bloggosphere.

Bonus #2: you might try a lifestreaming platform that allows multiple RSS reeds. RSS Remix used to do this, however is no longer available.

Bonus #3: One trend in information dashboards is the aggregation of hyperlocal bloggers to create a community around place. One example of this is Outside.in.

Bonus #4: Another prominent form of aggregation is the aggregation of reviews. I believe this is done via the open APIs that various platforms like Yelp and Amazon provide.

Bonus #5: its not the same, but Filtrbox creates data based on key phrase.

Of course you can use combinations and permutations of the best of each model.

Instructional Technologist Jim Groom of Mary Washington at Duke CIT Showcase 2009

Jim Groom, instructional technologies, speaks to several key issues:
(note: his presentation is 1:01 long)

Power of Aggregation
WP-plug ins (creators all over including a 16 year old)
Embedding is the power.
Content moving freely (content, re-mix culture, plagerism)
“We got Google juice at Mary Washington”
ex. Fredricksburg Historical Markers (students did research on all the markers in the area–then people searching about history of Virginia. Also included a biography.

“Hey…look what mary washington is doing for us.” People are using this in ways we never imagined. How about we use it to get announcements out. Then the explosion happened. Academics/clubs/organizations blur.
After the Orpheum Film Club–Club after club after club. Now all the activities across campus is aggregated in a clubs and activities blog. We didn’t even plan it. 42 different calendars. You don’t have to know HTML–I’m an American studies major. Everyone managing their own stuff–and aggregating it here. “Look what they did…how can we show it off. Celebrating + letting people know. I promote blogs. (no money in promoting blogs)”

Course portals, e-portfolios. The uses have exploded as people have explored. Freedom to imagine. Explore, experiment, and let us know what you’ve done. 19th century museum blog. Lots of success with exhibit blog–Venice. What were doing at UMW is echoing in some kind of internet eternity.
(46:01)

Here are Jims resources:

Links
Presentations
Wiki

Personalization and Customization in Education

Resources and Bibliography for Personalization and Customization in Education

What is Democratic Education? by Ron Miller
Young Minds, Fast Times,
Future School: Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up, Toffler
Why Growing Companies Need Versitile Employees
Teaching 21st Century Skills (pdf)
Edutopia Magazine
In Retrospect: Teachers Who Made a Difference from the Perspective of Preservice and Experienced Teachers

Four profiles of innovative schools at What Kids Can Do (Minnesota New County School)

Articles and Resources for Parents of Students with AD/HD and LD
Goal Setting and Motivating Teens with LD and AD/HD by J Mooney and K Stanberrry
How I Channeled My Energy into Success by J Mooney
All Kinds of Minds
Center for Applied Special Technology
Attitude Magazine: Living Well with ADD and Learning Disabilities
(Multiple Intelligences from Google Scholar)

Guerilla Learning
The Gift of ADHD
The Passionate Learner

“You are beautifully, magnificently and so very variously talented. You do not fit the mold, thank God. In fact, God depends on you to keep changing the mold. Others in this world, the ones who plod ordinarily along, living with attention surplus disorder or the other disabilities of normalcy, sometimes don’t understand you. Sometimes they place misleading labels on you, like LD or ADD. But believe me, they rely on you. The world relies on you.”
~ Dr. Hallowell, author of Driven to Distraction in a high school graduation speech

Resources on Learning from Parents
Mel Levine, A Mind at a Time (All Kinds of Minds website)
Carol Dewck, Mindset
Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind
John Medina, Brain Rules
Jonathan Mooney and David Cole, Learning Outside the Lines
Lynn Meltzer, Executive Function in Education
Robert Fried, The Passionate Learner and the Game of School

(aggregated from Wounder by School)

Best Tips for Coping with Information Overload

You might also appreciate these applications for dealing with information overload.

Second Worst Business Model in the World

The Second Worst Business Model in the World

Umair Haque recently profiled Wonga and dubbed it “the worst business model in the world” in the Harvard Business Review. Wonga subsequently talked to Umair about improving their model. (Although, I’m not sure what became of their meeting of the minds)

I was reminded of this article while reading “The Parable of the Inventor and the Trucker” by David Wiley in the Chronicle of Higher Education earlier and realized that Elsevier has what is quite possibly the second worst business model in the world. (which is only a little bit of hyperbole)

While they have an ok mission, increasing the amount of knowledge in the world, at what cost? And who do they sacrifice? Who is the proverbial collateral damage to their business model?

Professors (and students a minimum wage) work tireless hours on research (only to have the research sold back to the institutions which created the content in the first place) which is practically informational sharecropping:

Reed Elsevier reported profits over $800-million from its Elsevier publishing division in 2008. Not over $800-million in total revenue – over $800-million in profit.

How does a company make such an incredible amount of money? By persuading you and I to do their work as volunteers. We not only write the articles they publish, but we also volunteer our time to review the papers they publish. And then, inexplicably, our universities pay publishers exorbitant subscription fees so that we can regain access to the results of our own research, writing, and peer-review efforts.

Unfortunately, this lunacy is the water in which all academic fish swim, making it sometimes difficult to recognize. There was a time in the past when publishers held a monopoly on distribution and academics had no method of disseminating their work that did not involve giving away their rights and interest in their own work. The Internet has changed the status quo, however, and each of us now has equal access to a means of distribution exponentially more powerful and affordable than the paper-based distribution of yesteryear.

Thoughts?? Wonga perhaps has repented and mended its ways…will Reid Elsevier do the same. If they don’t, perhaps they’ll feel the pain of disruption.

Twenty two trends in education technology, e-learn and distance learning,

Here are some of the “key emerging technologies” that ed tech group thought were very possible education technology trends in the not so distant future (here is the formal Horizons 2009 report)

1) Audio seminars/podcasting
2) wikis
3) blogs
4) collaboration tools/sites
5) mobiles applications/cell phones as personal learning devices
6) microblogging + twitter
7) flip cameras + youtube
8} facebook
9) student oriented portfolio
10) digital storytelling
11) citizen journalism
12) geotagging
13) social bookmarking
14) blended learning (hybrid courses)
15) blackboard
16) virtual world
17) jinga webcasting (???)
18) iphone mobile outreach
19) small screen learning objects
20) screen casting
21) camtasia
22) hi def video conferencing [not buying it]

Technologies with Education Application in the Report:

Voice Thread
Adobe Buzzword
Google Docs
Facebook
MySpace
Ning
Moodle
Pageflakes
Mind meister
iCue (created by NBC for social studies)
Classroom 2.0
RezEd
Flat Classroom Project
Project New Media Literacies
Swift Classroom
Youth Media Exchange
Global Kids in Second Life

Education Technology Trends in the Report:

• Dealing with Ambiguity
• Collective intelligence (wikipedia, Amazon suggestions, Netflix suggestions). “How we answer questions. Not all questions have factual answers. More qualitative than quantitative. Students need to be able to answer these questions too.”
• Visualization tools makes info more meaningful for both text and data sets. (Wordle + Wasabi for finance + Mint.com)
• Mobile phones changing incredibly fast (change after a year…whole generation of devices) Iphone (shake, touch) “More like little computers, and less like telephones.” Applications

3 Year Time Frame for Educational Technology Trends

• Cloud computing like Twitter (3 year timeframe)
• Geo-everything + geo-tagging. For instance trip to a botanical garden or Urban Spoon (3 year timeframe)
• The personal web. Flips the nature of the web. We can personalize to whats interesting + most important to us. Easy publishing like blogging. Also media aggregation services. Also collaboration tools + collaborative authoring tool. Collaborative textbooks via Flatworld Knowledge. Also page flakes and netvibes for project resources. Like a portal. Also personal learning environments and personal learning networks.

Far time horizon for education technology trends

Semantically aware applications. Applications can understand the meaning of text. (Turkey bird vs. Turkey the country) Trip It: the online travel iternaray uses this to some extent
• Smart Objects (2 dimensional barcode, can take a picture which leads to a URL. Like tagging the world) For instance a tire that knows it needs. Or in a science lab that says “don’t mix.” Libraries could use this by embedding smart technology (for instance location based–its been mishelved). Blocks on TED talks. Also smart clothing.

Challenges in Education Technology and New Media

• Changes in scholarship (recognize + reward)
• Meaningful assessment. Better data mining (current systems, can’t keep up)
• Need to keep up with mobile.

Top Church Technology Blogs

The Best in Church Technology Blogs

Church SMO (Church Social Media Optimization)

Church Crunch by John Saddington in Atlanta, GA

Digital Sanctuary

Creative Fusion Media covers Church 2.0 and Church Social Media

Literacy Skill Sets for Writing, Analysis, and Communication

I found this rubric developed by Feuersteain in “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.”

1. Input Strategies

Input is defined as “quantity and quality of the data gathered.”
1. Use planning behaviours
2. Focus perception on specific stimulus
3. Control impulsivity
4. Explore data systemattically
5. Use appropriate and accurate labels.
6. Organize space with stable system of refernece
7. Orient data in time
8. Identify constancies across variations
9. Gather precise and accurate data
10. Consider two sources of information at once.
11. Organize data (parts of the whole)
12. Visualize transport data

2. Elaboration Strategies

1. Identify and define the problem.
2. Select relevant cues
3. Compare data
4. Summarize data
6. Project relationships of data
7. Use logical data
8. Test hypothesis
9. Build inferences
10. Make a plan using the data
11. Use appropriate labels
12. Use data systemically

3. Output strategies

Output is defined as “communication of the data.”
1. Communicate clearly the labels and processes
2. Visually transport data correctly
3. Use precise and accurate language
4. Control impulsive behviour

The more I think about it….I think its too deep in the processing and not deep enough in the output strategies. Do you have a better criteria/rubric for information literacy?

How college professors can use social media and web 2.0

There are a number of social media tools that university professors can leverage in and out of their classroom. Many teachers are using facebook groups to communicate outside the classroom. In addition, another option is the free social network Ning, which allows teachers or anyone for that matter to create a social network in under 2 minutes. Ning allows you to create groups and have a discussion forum and students can have their own blogs. (I believe a teacher in Auburn University’s PR department has created a ning network which has transformed her classroom by tearing down the walls a bit)

Teachers may prefer to publish their syllabus and perhaps daily inspiration in a blog or wiki format to create and out of classroom component to the education process. Further, they can save their favorite websites on delicious and diigo which allows you to use virtual post-it notes for collaboration.

Professors are also concerned with publication. You can post publications on a WordPress blog and/or post them on Scribd. In fact, at least one book publisher is selectively publishing chapters of books on Scirbd as a method of marketing. In addition, any content that teachers want to post online via scribd, a wiki, or a WordPress blog. Here, a public relations teacher at Georgia has opened up her knowledge base and established thought leadership on Teaching PR.org If the professor is more auditory they may prefer to post in a one or two minute podcast. Finally, university professors may post power point presentations on Slideshare.net.

They will likely want to keep track of all of their digital lives by using a life streaming tool like Friendfeed and Soup.io. An entire other topic of conversation of interest to professors is the creation of e-portfolios for students during school and to enable them to create a porfolio and personal brand afterwards. Finally, looking into Google tools like Google docs, Google spreadsheets, and Google scholar could be extremely helpful for teachers and learners at almost any level.

What are your favorite web2.0 tools that would be useful to college professors? I also suggest looking at this 10 things Journalism professors are doing with social media by Mashable. Also, the horizon report, which I just profiled is quite impressive in terms of individual technologies and useful websites.

Museum 2.0: The Smithsonian Opens its Walls with New Technology

Slide presentation by Nina Simon at Museum 2.0.

“K12 teachers are sending in lesson plans” and jump drives with all or nearly all of the Smithsonian collection will be available. They are moving 137 million objects online. In a year they hope to have more than 1.8 million. “Art can start conversations across generations.” “Our art tells stories about the great American spirit.” “And I can promise you…we will surprise you.”

~ quotes from Wayne Clough of the Smithsonian Institute at the National Press Club Event on the Smithsonian and New Technology

Teaching 21st Century Skills for Students

School Reform, Teacher Assessment, and Teaching 21st Century Skills to Students

Here are some insightful questions and ideas from Harvard’s Tony Wagner in “Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need and What We Can Do About It” for educational reform in elementary, middle school, high school, and even college classroom curriculums. His questions can help guide us to a more relevant curriculum which considers cultural trends, educational research, and the workplaces of tomorrow:

In light of the fundamental change that has taken place in our society in the last twenty-five years, what does it mean to be an educated adult in the twenty-first century? What do we think all high school graduates need to know to be able to do to be well-prepared for college, careers, and citizenship? And since we can’t teach everything, what is most important?

How might our definition of academic rigor need to change in the age of the information explosion?

What are the best ways to know whether students have mastered the skills that matter most? How do we create a better assessment and accountability system that gives up the information we need to ensure that all students are learning essential skills?

What do we need to do in our schools to motivate sutdents to be curious and imaginate, and to enjoy learning for its own sake? How do we ensure that every student has an adult advocate in his or her school who knows the student well?

How do we both support our educators and hold them more accountable for results? What changes are needed in how educators are trained, how they work together in schools, and how they are supervised and evaluated in order to enable them to continuously improve?

What do good schools look like–schools where all students are mastering the skills that matter most? How are they different from the schools we have, and what can we learn from them?

Summary of Research Findings on 21st Century Skills:

MET’s Five Learning Goals:

1) Communication: “How do I take in and express ideas”
2) Empirical Reasoning “How do I prove it?”
3) Personal Qualities “What do I bring to this process?”
4) Quantitative Reasoning: “How do I measure, compare, or represent it?”
5) Social reasoning “What are other people’s perspectives on this?”

8 Skills for the 21st Century Student, Citizen, and Workplace:

Inquiry
Expression
Critical Thinking
Collaboration
Organization
Attentiveness
Involvement
Reflection

Alternative Student Assessment Methods

Dr. Richard Hersh
Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)
College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA)
Robert Sternberg

Case Studies for School Reform

High Tech High (Forbes article on HTH)
Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School
Big Picture Company
MET School
School Reform in Rhode Island (RIDE)
School Reform in Hawaii
School Reform in Kentucky
School Reform in Nebraska
School Reform in Finland

Key Individuals and Organizations Mentioned in “Global Achievement Gap”

Educating the Net Generation (free white paper/e-book)
Coalition for Essential Skills
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
Educause
John Seely Brown
2 Million Minutes: Documentary about Global Education
Deborah Meier’s The Power of their Ideas
Dan Pink and a Whole New Mind
21st Century Skills

Relevant Links and Resources from the Bibliography

Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
Are they Ready for Work? (pdf)
Toward a More Comprehensive Conception of College Readiness
Gauging Growth: How to Judge No Child Left Behind (pdf)
Sternberg’s research on student assessment at the PACE Center at Tufts
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) via the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
“How the Worlds Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top” by McKinsey + Company (pdf)

Social Entrepreneurship Syllabus

Syllabus for the Study and Practice of Social Business

Social Entrepreneurship Class Schedule

Week 1: What is social entrepreneurship

Week 2: Funding social entrepreneurship + business models + bootstrapping

Week 3: Marketing and social entrepreneurship

Week 4: Leaders in social entrepreneurship

Week 5: Social entrepreneurship case studies (presentations/projects)

Week 6: Social entrepreneurship and the base of the pyramid (BOP)

Week 7: Struggles of the social entrepreneur

Week 8: Debates in social entrepreneurship

Week 9: Social movements + Non-profits

Week 10: Micro-leading + savings

Week 11: Scaling your social enterprise + Collaboration

Week 12: Pick a sector any sector (student opportunity for direction + choice)

Week 13: Social entrepreneurship 2.0: Trends in social entrepreneurship

Week 14: Design Your Own (Student Projects + Presentations)

Social Entrepreneurship Books for the Class

The Power of Unreasonable People
The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, by Jacqueline Novogratz
Select Essays from Design for the Other 90 Percent
Select Chapters from Out of Poverty by Paul Polack
Select Chapters from Banker to the Poor by Mohammed Yunnus
Select Articles from The Next 4 from Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy for the Base of the Pyramid by the World Resources Institute

Social Entrepreneurship Resources and Bibliography

Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)
Changemakers @ Ashoka
Next Billion
Social Entrepreneurship @ Change.org
Design for the Other 90 Percent
e-clips at Cornell
Stanford E-corner
Corporate Social Responsibility @ CSR Wire
Social Entrepreneurship at Alltop
Case Place
Top Social Entrepreneurs by Fast Company
Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs by Business Week
Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke
Trends in Social Entrepreneurship (version 1.0)
Trends in Social Entrepreneurship (version 2.0)
TED Talks
Creative Capitalism
Philanthrocapitalism

Micro-enterprise, micro-franchise, and micro-loaning

To be added….
Any suggestions for this or other parts?

One caveat: sorry this isn’t a traditional 15 to 18 week schedule, but hopefully it can help generate some ideas around social entrepreneurship. Also, I think its useful, because all the weeks to be added can be student generated or work time.

Health 2.0: Google Maps Mash ups for Disease Tracking

Google Maps Mashups for International Health

Here is a mash up that folks at Ohio State University are working on:

Find more google maps mashups for health on Google.national

University 2.0: Web 2.0 for Higher Education

University 2.0: Web 2.0 for Higher Education

Certainly social bookmarking and sharing sites like delicous, Zotero, and Diigo would have to make the list.

Social networks like Ning and Crowdvine and wikis like PBWiki, Social Text, and Wikispaces would also top the list of college 2.0 technology tools. Publishing tools like WordPress, Vimeo, and the assortment of podcasting tools are vital in the publishing 2.0 model. Finally, leveraging enterprise 2.0 and SaaS tools like Google social applications (and widgets) are likewise critical not only to finding, collaborating about, and sharing info in the 21st century.

Ultimately, it comes down to what skills you think will be vital to the next generation of citizens and workers, and content creators.

Personally, I think:

strategically finding
sorting/prioritizing/evaluating
creating/re-mixing/arranging/adding value
collaborating + project managing
publishing
sharing + promoting
and finally integrating this into a productive workflow

are seven of the most important important skills for university students to take away. Its an intregal part of media literacy and professional development 2.0.

Higher Education 2.0 Resources and Whitepapers

This is a pretty extensive ebook on using social software in and out of the higher education classroom.

Here is a 52 page e-book on web 2.0 for the university from the same company.

E-portfolios for Education @ E-learn Space

For instance Electronic Portfolios.org has several web 2.0 enabled suggested solutions such as using wikispaces. Finally, this powerpoint presentation by Helen makes a great case for e-portfolios as a vital component of the 21st century learning process.

Journalism 3.0: Crowd Sourced, Mashup, and Mobile Journalism

Mashups + Personalized Data Dashboards
I’m toying around with some ideas around journalism, mashups, dashboards, and mobile . I think one example might be news map or pages based on tag clouds (ala wordle). Certainly the work of Filtrbox in aggregating feed and tag info all in one (unfortunately I’ve experienced some usability problems creating more than one filtrbox using the free version).

Perhaps iGoogle or Netvibes (with a slightly nicer interface) provides a better backbone. A customized Alltop if you will.

Social Media Mashups + Widgets
Depending on the news niche, it seems that Google maps mashups are fairly critical. All news is local and its always interesting to see where news is being made. Perhaps geo-tagged photos on Flickr could even show up in a widget. (You can find some of the better Google maps mashups on Google Maps Mania or just Google to your hearts content) The BBC has done something similar to this, but it still maintains the look of a professional newpaper.

I’ve talked a lot about crowd sourcing. One aspect of the next wave of journalism is both community and crowdsourcing and the two naturally fit together. The Guardian has created a platform for crowdsourced investigative journalism of the government (here are some suggestions if you want to follow the Guardian crowdsourced journalism model). Of course, New Assignment.net, Now Public, Digg, and other crowd sourced journalism experiments are making decent gains (the Crowd Sourced Examples Wiki also has several “News” examples).

Of course the future is mobile. These 10 iPhone apps as well as Hear Planet (and permutations and combinations of Howcast) and others look to help turn it into a multi-media device perfect for professional and citizen journalists.

Digital Divide Affirmative and Negative Stratgies

I think the digital divide affirmative put out by Georgetown is pretty interesting (the evidence is available for free online)

Why? Well it opens up a lot of affirmative options?

-Telemedicine. The literature on ITC for health is pretty sweet. And we know that impact space is pretty big as well. (if you get modeling, you can even get to a readiness story with AIDS)
-Also I wonder if the cards exist that telemedicine can help solve the nursing crisis.
-You can also get into interesting debates on identity (the internet’s role in identity formation + transformation–this is actually a K argument)
-I’m curious what the individual impacts for solving rural poverty vs. inner city poverty in terms of the digital divide might be.
-the possibilities of random arguments like deschooling and the internet as resistance to power + hierarchy. also makes direct democracy (although the refs. c/p arguably might solve better–short term vs. long term)
-the implications of Health 2.0 and Government 2.0
-Irony (gloablalization + mcDonaldization + technoligization good)

The negative….
-Counterplans (insert the word “ITC for …..” in google to solve individual advantages)
-Counterplans: can Verizon or Bill Gates do the aff?
-Information Overload K (this gets into a critique of modernity, the banking model of education, and the very idea of what a “useful education” is)
-Internet Panacea/Tech Panacea K (with Heidegger like impacts possible, but not necessary)
-One Lap Top Per Child K (there is a little bit of criticm of one lap top per child which applies to this aff. its all based on globalization bad–in fact its globalization bad in drag. Although, I think you can make a very nuanced argument that you aren’t taking a stance on globalization–but rather the absolute free spread of information. You could also make the “free internet culture bad for children, kids” argument.)

Finally, there are a couple internet bad arguments based on the works of…
Nicholas Carr (the big switch: rewiring the world from edison to google)
Andrew Keen (the cult of the amateur)
and more general discussion of the effects of technology by authors that are referecing Marshall McLuhan.