I think it’s high time that people get past this notion of gamers as passive couch potatoes divorced from the world around them. I’ve seen gamers raise thousands of dollars for worthwhile causes like Penny Arcade’s "Child’s Play" charity and games for US troops overseas. Gamers can be ardent defenders of Net Freedom or even…
Category: Information Society
Open-sourcing the grantmaking system
My buddy Creech (Matthew Saunders) is working on a really neat proposal to the Knight Drupal Initiative to develop an open-source grant-making system using the Drupal CMS. I agree with him that there is a clear need for a more transparent, efficient and fair system for non-profits to apply for grant funding from grantmaking agencies. …
Barry Joseph’s career path: from tech geek to social reformer
Barry Joseph, the director of the Online Leadership Program at Global Kids, posted to the Huffington Post yesterday about how he got involved in youth-oriented digital media. It’s a very interesting read about how one person evolved in his career as a techie with a social conscience.
My first Spore creature: meet the Ferengi
I know, not very original name. For my first creature in the game "Spore," I wanted to create a small, mean, carnivorous race of creatures. So the name "Ferengi" just seemed to fit. I have just formed alliances with two other lesser races, and now I’m on the trail of other Ferengi who have flown…
Face-to-Face vs. Videoconferencing and Virtual Meetings: increasing the emotional bandwidth
Seeing some of the enterprise-level distance meeting and videoconferencing technologies at the Web2.0 Expo recently, I’ve been thinking about what sorts of lessons should be taken away for running effective and emotionally engaging meetings in virtual environments. Here’s some of my thinking on the matter…
My map of how I got to Global Kids
Today at Global Kids, as part of an orientation for new staff members, we did an exercise where we had to draw a visual map that represented five incidents or moments in our lives that led us to come to Global Kids. Here’s the map that I drew. It starts in the upper right corner,…
My twitter feed
This is what my friend Josh says that my average Twitter feed is like.
MacArthur announces $2 million Digital Media & Learning competition
The MacArthur Foundation announced recently that they are launching the second round of their Digital Media and Learning Competition, in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine, Duke University and the virtual network HASTAC. Global Kids’ RezEd project was one of 17 projects awarded a DML Competition grant last year. This year’s competition for the…
Comcast spanked by FCC for violating Net Neutrality!
Yes, I am days late on this, but I still thinks it important to blog this up. The cable company Comcast on August 1st got cited by the Federal Communications Commission (which is chaired by a Republican) for violating the principle of Net Neutrality. Specifically, the FCC found that "Comcast Corp.’s management of its broadband…
Giving virtual props to the Global Kids webmistress Joyce
Here’s a short video of me "giving" a crystal stone over Skype to my Global Kids colleague Joyce (aka "Rhiannon Chatnoir" in SL), as a way of showing respect and appreciation for her work at GK. For those that don’t know, among Joyce’s many other hats, she is the webmistress and Web2.0 guru for the…