So I’ve made it to Lincoln Center for this week’s Personal Democracy Forum. Later today, I will be on a panel entitled “Building a Better Debate, With and Without TV.” I’m really excited about the conference, esp. since I think commuintyCOUNTS has a lot to offer this crowd. I’m particularly excited about the ability of small media outlets or community organizations using communityCOUNTS to engage local politicians in a meaningful discussion around issues that concern them.
June 23rd, 2008
Admittedly, I’ve been a little absent on the blogging front lately, but since returning to the states I’ve taken on three jobs and what seems like and endless number of committee appointments at school. However, one of them is getting me some recognition. My partners and I over at 10questions.com are up for a Golden Dot Award for Poli-Tech Innovator of the Year. The voting is open to the public, and I’d really appreciate your vote (second to last category).
Vote here: http://polc.ipdi.org/GoldenDots/voting.htm
Here’s the lowdown:
Ending days before the Iowa caucuses and garnering participation from then leading candidates, including Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, 10questions.com was the first truly people-powered forum for the 2008 presidential candidates. We allowed the public to post and vote on questions for the candidates. Candidates answered the top ten, and the public then voted on whether or not these replies actually addressed the questions.
10questions proved a valuable proof of principle, establishing viewer-chosen questions, not just viewer-produced questions, as a legitimate means of candidate interaction, and produced a good amount of earned media including coverage in Wired and the San Francisco Chronicle among many other print and digital outlets such as the political blogs of both the Washington Post and New York Times. Furthermore the participation of first-tier candidates in this format helped demonstrate such a structure’s ability to compel meaningful answers from the candidates.
February 16th, 2008
So I guess we have an answer to the question posed in my last entry. The summer seems to have resulted in fewer postings. This has been mostly a consequence of some mad traveling and some major distractions. Before leaving Edinburgh to return home, I took a week in Rome. That was super cool. Then it was back to Edinburgh for some housekeeping, and major Community Counts action. I even did a national radio interview on NPR’s Day to Day. Then it was back to the States and DC, where I served as a resource at the Fulbright Orientation for this year’s participants. Then I flew out to Ann Arbor for a wedding, followed by a return trip to DC to visit family. Eventually, I drove up to Massachusetts to move into my new apartment and start preparing for the new year. As I write this, I still have most of my stuff in boxes, and school starts tomorrow. I’ve actually already been in for meetings, but everyone will be in on Monday.
With any luck, I’ll be getting back into the blogging groove, and there will be some more Tabletop Explainer episodes coming. A lot of people want to see the remaining relativity videos.
August 26th, 2007
My apologies for not posting in a while, but I’ve been swamped. I first drifted away from the keyboard when a good college friend came to visit me here in Edinburgh. It was great getting to show her around town and introducing her to my friends and new adoptive home. Then of course there was the end of term. That’s right, the school year is finally over, but as you can imagine this presented some bookkeeping and the like surrounding my return to the states. However, the biggest “distraction” by far has been my involvement with Community Counts, culminating in a bit of a vindication last week when I found myself talking with a reporter from the New York Times. In fact, Community Counts was blogged about at both TechPresident and the New York Times last week. Pretty exciting eh?
That being said, I’m starting my summer holiday. I don’t know if this means you should expect more or less frequent postings. I would like to turn out some more episodes of the Tabletop Explainer (esp. the relativity series), but I’m not going to beat myself up over self-imposed deadlines. So fair readers, be sure you’ve subscribed, so that way you’ll be sure not to miss a posting when it comes.
July 2nd, 2007
So one of my big themes is how we as educators should be using, not censoring, social media. That being said, you can imagine my pleasure when I got an email about THIS. That’s right, the US Embassy in cooperation with the Imperial Museum and Bebo are working to “digitally link generations” through an online video contest. The embassy is asking UK students to play documentary film maker and put to bits the memories of the rebuilding of Great Britain post WWII. The winner has a chance to win:
a trip for two to the United States
a new laptop computer
a new digital video camera
cool video editing software
And in case you’re wondering, I named this post in reply to Digital Katie’s posting Bebo Blues.
June 11th, 2007
A few months ago a pretty cool site was brought to my attention–dotSUB. It’s a video sharing site that allows registered users to transcribe and translate shared videos. That’s right. It means your videos can be made accessible to both the hearing impaired and those who don’t speak your language. The process is pretty simple, and I’m currently uploading and transcribing the Tabletop Explainer. You’ll start to see “dotSUB” buttons below embedded videos.
So if you speak two or more languages, head over for some translating fun. Here’s an example of a subtitled video. As of this posting, it’s only available in English. Want to change that? Register. View this link; then choose a language under “Translate This Film.”
June 10th, 2007
The following is an abbreviated version of the final narrative report I submitted for my Fulbright Teacher Exchange. I have taken the liberty of adding hyperlinks where appropriate. For those of you who didn’t know, I am currently on exchange from Lexington High School in Massachusetts to Broughton High School in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Over two years ago I decided to apply for the Fulbright teacher exchange. Having taught for several years and already holding a Masters in Education, I was looking for new ways to improve my craft. Absent a clear predictive model of human learning, teaching remains more art than science. So I’ve come to believe that beyond a mastery of ones subject and minimal educational training, collecting diverse professional experience remains the surest path to improved teaching. We teachers learn by doing. I applied for an exchange confident teaching abroad would improve my professional skill set, expanding both my experience and perspective. I am happy to say, the exchange has exceeded my expectations.
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May 27th, 2007
So some five months after the problem first appeared, and two days after my blog made some waves, I finally have a proper school login and email. I’d like to think that last bit of timing was coincidental, but whatever the cause, agitation or patience, I can now send and receive school emails. This may not seem like a big deal, but email is how the faculty communicates. Announcements, meeting plans, collaborative efforts, almost all internal communication is handled via email. This meant I was always hearing about things right before they happened when people asked “Aren’t you heading over to such and such a meeting?”
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May 25th, 2007
I started blogging about work back in January, and despite previous whole-school emails pointing to my website, yesterday’s triggered my first visit from senior management. It was an unfortunate case of differing interpretations, and I’ll get to that soon. First, some background. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re a subscriber.
Background: Several months ago, Edinburgh schools upgraded their IT infrastructure as part of a new contract with BT Synergy.
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May 24th, 2007
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