Category Archives: education
the great irony of informationalism
On May 29, 2009, Obama announced his intention to appoint a “cyber czar” to coordinate cybersecurity policy for private and government computer networks in the US. Obama also argued the importance of educating the public about cybersecurity while highlighting the dialectical reality of cyberspace:
Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with [...]
Cookie Monsters published in CYE
Cindi Katz and I just published an article in a special issue of Children, Youth and Environments that focuses on Children and Technological Environments. CYE is an open access journal so you can read our article for free through their website (FYI – they ask you to create an account before providing access to [...]
Also posted in censorship, commodification, informationalism, participation, play, property, security, surveillance, youth Tagged AriX, article, hacking, iphone, OLPC Leave a comment
ACLU: YouAreBeingWatched.US
You ARE being watched, US. Since 9/11 Homeland Security has pumped an enormous amount of money into public surveillance technologies (online and off). Yet, as most recent studies are showing, the presence of this surveillance does nothing to reduce crime or make people more safe. So, what is this surveillance being funded for?
To help ask [...]
goodbye learning, hello workforce training
Some sad news regarding the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project:
Microsoft has joined forces with the developers of the “$100 laptop” to make Windows available on the machines.
According to Wired, Microsoft has had their sights on emerging markets in developing countries for a while now and have viewed low-cost children’s laptops as ideal vehicles for [...]
Also posted in commodification, informationalism, play, quotes, work, youth Tagged CD, Krstić, Microsoft, Negroponte, OLPC Leave a comment
information assimilation and the life of the child
From Dewey’s The School and Society, p100:
It was forgotten that the maximum appeal, and the full meaning in the life of the child, could be secured only when the studies were presented, not as bare external studies, but from the standpoint of the relation they bear to the life of society. It was forgotten that [...]
Also posted in informationalism, quotes, youth Tagged assimilation, Dewey, experience, pedagogy, school Leave a comment
division of action
I was just reading through the Wired article on Facebook’s role in the Burma protests.
The marches, organized at a lightning pace by volunteers using Facebook, show the increasing power and reach of a social-networking site originally designed to help college students find drinking buddies.
An interesting theme which runs through the article is that of a [...]
Space-Time: Affect, Struggle…Everyday
CALL FOR PAPERS: Space-Time: Affect, Struggle…Everyday
Annual Conference of the AAG, Boston, Massachusetts
April 15-19, 2008
Organizer: The Spatial Scholars Group of the CUNY Graduate Center
mesh-networking
After reading David Pogue’s review of the XO – a $200 laptop created by One Laptop Per Child (O.L.P.C.) – and spending time on O.L.P.C.’s website, I’m absolutely fixated on the mesh-networking feature of this computer (check out the “mesh demo” here). While the XO is light, durable and energy efficient – all features that [...]
child’s play in the NCLB era
I Just read through the Center on Education Policy’s “Choices, Changes, and Challenges: Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era” report. The report examines the effect that the No Child Left Behind act has had on curriculum and instructional time in public education in the 5 years since it was enacted. Unfortunately, the affect hasn’t [...]
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FDR on Security