A Different Kind of Distance Learning (and Teaching)

I recently saw this piece in Ode Magazine that talked about people from Guatemala providing online language instruction via the internet.

Twice a week, Margo Griffin, who lives in Denver, Colorado, has a one-on-one Spanish lesson with her teacher, Mayra Juárez, who lives miles and miles away, in Antigua, Guatemala. Both attend from the comfort of their homes via the Internet, a webcam and an innovative socially responsible business called Speak Shop.

Telekinetic Twittering

Here on CNN.com is a very cool article about people being able to Twitter by just thinking.

Wilson, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, was confirming an announcement he had made two weeks earlier -- his lab had developed a way to post messages on Twitter using electrical impulses generated by thought.

Testing Out SlideRocket

I have been playing with a new Web 2.0 presentation tool called SlideRocket. It is pretty slick and pretty easy to use.

Here is a presentation I put together.

Now THIS is Digital Storytelling

Digital Storytelling

This morning, I found this amazing presentation about using Digital Storytelling with students via the Fireside Learning Community.

Check it out.


Digital Storytelling Presentation

Little Bloggers

The blog Rising Voices recently posted a story about children in Uruguay being trained to blog using their XO Laptops.

Pablo Flores of Ceibal, the governmental organization in charge of distributing OLPC laptops in Uruguay, will organize a series of workshops which will gather national and international bloggers with the young laptop-toting students to show them how to set up a blog and take advantage of other social media tools.

So now, what happens when those students have a global voice? What do they say and to whom? And then what happens?

Extreme Collaboration

 

 

The New York Times has a nice piece today about a group of elementary school students who played chess with an astronaut on the International Space Station.

After their game, and after he returned to Earth, they all met to talk about the experience.

Now, that's extreme collaboration via technology!

Analog Blogging

It is now so important to be connected via wired and wireless devices. We can, for example, blog from our desktops, laptops, cell phones, Blackberry devices. In the office, at home, in libraries, in coffee shots, on the subway, etc.

And this is assuming that blogging is fast enough for our communication needs.

But, what if you were in a non-connected place and wanted to comment on the world around you. How about blogging on a blackboard.

Here is a really interesting story of just such a project by a man in Monrovia. Check it out.

The Odyssey on Twitter

This is really clever. A guy named Eric Alt re-imagined the Odyssey if Odysseus had been sending updates via Twitter.

Here is an example:

Here's a link.