Folks in the Second Life education list tell me this event is a super-big deal. Dr John Bransford, education psychology specialist affiliated with the National Science Foundation will be speaking on "Virtual Environments as ways to Reorganize Thinking about Research and Education" on October 2 in Second Life. Here’s the complete description from the Learning…
Category: Information Society
Media Shift asks “Can human rights videos go viral?”
Mark Glaser, on the PBS-sponsored blog "Media Shift," recently posted about the new WITNESS "Human Rights Video Hub". Mark asks "so what if you could take videos shot by citizens of human rights violations, such as police brutality or torture, and got them to go viral, bringing more attention to the crimes?" He quotes from…
Jnana helps dumb people build smart agents
Just got back from a presentation in SL by Lex Lardner of his "Jnana" smart agent builder, a powerful application that enables non-programmers to create a set of dialog menus using simple logic and query-answer statements. (Full transcript provided by Signpostmarv.) Lex showed us how easy it was by building a quick set of dialog…
Web-mediated shopping: My Space closing on Google
The Center for Media Research reports on recent numbers from the web statistics site Hitwise, which indicate that search engines are still the primary drivers of shopping traffic, but that social networking sites are catching up. Google of course is still the leader in online retail visits, at 14% of all shopping traffic. But Myspace…
Addicted to virtual worlds? No really, I can quit any time
Are you addicted to Everquest (i.e. Evercrack), Warcraft, Second Life, There, and/or Ultima? You won’t be alone, says a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew surveyed 742 "internet leaders, activists, builders and commentators," asking them about the effect of the internet on social, political and economic life in the year…
Uncovering an old 9/11 online discussion
During 9/11, many people turned to their families and friends for comfort and security in those frightening first hours and days after the attacks. And many many people turned to the internet. On the swing dance website I moderate called Yehoodi.com, many people in the swing community gathered in our discussion boards to share what…
Knight Foundation announces $5 million grant for “community journalism in cyberspace”
The Knight Foundation recently announced that they are launching a new $5 million fund for innovative community journalism in cyberspace called the ‘Knight Brothers 21st Century News Challenge.’ The grant program will provide funding for "new ideas, prototypes, products and leadership initiatives that use innovative news methods to help citizens better connect within their communities."…
Correlation between griefing and violent game play?
The excellent Game Politics blog recently did a little investigating of claims by Louisiana attorney general Jack Johnson and other anti-game violence politicians. Apparently Johnson has been touting an American Psychological Association study that he said had found that violent video game play causes real world violent acts. I happen to know the current chair…
Human Rights Video Hub launches – fighting impunity with technology
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the human rights group WITNESS is piloting a new "Human Rights Video Hub" in association with international blog aggregator Global Voices Online. Their first efforts focus on a police shooting in Malaysia and a series of protests in China. After participating in some of the initial consultations on…
Chinese protestors take to YouTube: You can’t stop the signal!
Global Voices Online reports that the Chinese police recently cracked down hard on a large protest in Rui’an, spurred by the mysterious death of a young school teacher ruled a suicide by authorities. Nothing new there: Chinese citizens protest, they get a beat-down. The twist is that now cameraphones are common accessories among Chinese citizens,…