Will Cary, the membership manager at the Brooklyn Museum, announced earlier this month an interesting way for a wider population of people to support the Brooklyn Museum through their new "1stFan" program. Described as "socially networked museum membership," 1stFan provides a way for potentially hundreds more people to support the museum through an annual $20…
Category: Information Society
Casio adds 80s dayglo colors to retro calcu-watches
Some of you might remember my video review of the nerdtastic Casio 53W calcu-watch. Well now Casio has re-released the DBC32 series of calcu-watches in awesome dayglo colors. The lime green one is calling to me. Only $60 a pop. Collect them all! [From Gizmodo]
New Code helps teachers understand “Fair Use” of media materials in classroom
The Center for Social Media, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and the Media Education Lab have recently come out with a new “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.“ While intended specifically for teachers in media literacy courses, there is a lot of useful information for educators of…
Making virtual pancakes at Parson’s “Playtech” open house (video)
Rafi and I checked out the "Playtech" open house at Parsons The New School for Design this afternoon, which was a lot of fun. The CDT Lab at Parsons organized "Playtech" to enable young people to check out some of the cool interactive games being developed by their grad students. Here's me playing a silly…
The Woz, Peter Norvig, Thomas Malone at “Program for the Future” at The Virtual Tech December 8-9
Really awesome in-world mural created by Eileen Legg and Valerie Landau Rob of The Tech Museum sent me the following event announcement for the "Program for the Future" on December 8-9 that sounds super cool: On Dec. 8-9, The Tech Museum in partnership with the MIT Museum will sponsor a major conference and design challenge…
Speaking about the UN, civic engagement, new media, and virtual worlds
I had the pleasure of speaking to my friend Josephine Dorado's class on "Collaboration in Networked Environments" that she is teaching at the New School this semester. The course apparently this week is exploring virtual worlds and MMOs, after delving into a range of other social media, from social networks to micro-blogging to mashup technologies. …
Metaplace has the awesome-est EULA of any virtual world
I have heard rumors that some educators have been invited to be part of the Metaplace beta testers group for this new virtual world environment created by Raph Koster. According to one of those rumored educator beta-testers, Metaplace is "one of the most powerful, user-friendly web-based / flash-driven virtual platforms out there." But of course,…
New report describes how youth hang out, mess around and “geek out” in digital spaces
I've started reading the white paper "Living and Learning with New Media," a summary of the immense, three-year, multi-study investigation of how American youth are using digital media for learning. Funded by the Digital Media & Learning initiative of the MacArthur Foundation, it incorporates the work of 23 researchers under the overall guidance of Mimi…
Swing that PhD Thesis! (video)
Some crazy outfit called Gonzo Labs is challenging PhD candidates around the country to post dance videos of themselves demonstrating what their thesis is about. I don’t even understand most of what these theses are about. But I love that some folks are doing bad ass lindy hop to demonstrate the principles these science doctoral…
Seeking speaking gigs on virtual worlds, education, non-profit tech, and civic engagement
I realized today that I’ve never mentioned on my blog that I’m available and interested in speaking engagements, either in person or virtually. Among the topics I’m particularly qualified to speak on: Immersive Learning: The potential and reality of education and virtual worlds The Activist Avatar: the Use of virtual worlds to promote non-profit causes…