Category Archives: play
piracy as creative practice?
ars technica has an interesting summary/critique of a working paper, titled “File-Sharing and Copyright” by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. Since the genesis and intent of most copyright law is to stimulate creativity — not to protect authors and publishers — Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf argue that while file-sharing might be harming the music business (“might” [...]
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 the [...]
Also posted in censorship, commodification, education, informationalism, participation, property, security, surveillance, youth Tagged AriX, article, hacking, iphone, OLPC Leave a comment
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 [...]
Also posted in commodification, education, informationalism, quotes, work, youth Tagged CD, Krstić, Microsoft, Negroponte, OLPC Leave a comment
we are the ones we’ve been waiting for…
From Chopra & Dexter’s Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software, p173: Jacques Ellul imagined an iron cage constructed of technology (Ellul 1967), but never the possibility that the cage could be unlocked by its prisoners. We began with a historical note on hacking: the significance of hacking should now be clear. [...]
dangerous tools
This screen shot is from Parents. The Anti-Drug. What I like most about this web site is the way it both ‘teaches’ parents what text messaging is AND it explains how this new technology can be a drug-enabling-tool for teens – our war on drugs hard at work. There are no statistics to support this [...]
Also posted in surveillance, youth Leave a comment
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 [...]
Also posted in education, governance, youth Leave a comment
Eight Takes on Play