Teaching for the Future

TFTF 117: Back to School Special! 1-(973) 404-0606

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:35:46 PDT

Voice Mail: 1-(973) 404-0606 or email TeachingfortheFuture@gmail.com

Reading Rainbow goes off the Air from The New York Times, NPR, Neatorama, and thekeri If you don’t remember children’s television in the 1980’s, don’t worry because you didn’t miss much. I’m as nostalgic as the next nerd, but kids of my generation were stuck watching a lot of junk. It was a dark time filled with lots of colors and no cohesive plots. There were a few gems, but as soon as you were too old for Sesame Street or Mr.Rogers you were stuck watching toy commercials disguised as cartoons.

Reading Rainbow was one of the real gems on television because there were no commercials any toys to buy. Hosted by LeVar Burton, Reading Rainbow was all about reading and it’s only goal was to get the viewers excited about reading. There aren’t enough shows on TV in my opinion that direct you to your public library instead of the toy story. All things must come to an end, but this does make me a little sad. Reading Rainbow was a show that reviewed and discussed books and made generations of kids excited about reading, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

Disney Buys Marvel For $4B from Slashdot, Ars Technica, Neatorama, Clutter, and boing boing

Facebook, Creeping, Parents And The Future Of Online Social Networking’s Growth from Six Pixels of Separation - What does it mean now that your mom is on Facebook?

Make: Education A new community for makers and teachers from the folks at Make Magazine.

Are you addicted to the Internet? Boston.com thinks you are, and has list 11 signs that you’re addicted to Internet.

TFTF 116: Comment Line 1-(973) 404-0606

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:00:00 PDT

Mp3 Audio

Voice Mail: 1-(973) 404-0606 or email TeachingfortheFuture@gmail.com

Facebook acquires FriendFeed from the San Francisco Chronical

College textbooks available as iPhone download from the San Francisco Chronical

No More Pencils, No More Facebooks from the ABA Journal

Herd Mentality To track Internet censorship, a new tool relies on the power of numbers from Harvard Law Bulletin

TFTF 115: Facebook Photo Ads? It's Complicated. - Comment Line (973) 404-0606

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:45:00 PDT

Mp3 Audio

If you have checked facebook status you might have seen something like “Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.” and might end with “Help your friends…cut and paste this into your status.” Is this true? Would Facebook let their advertiser’s use user’s photos?

(Thank you xkcd!!)

There are even posts that address how to prevent your photos from being used on well known sites like About.com (http://personalweb.about.com/b/2009/07/26/keep-facebook-photos-out-of-ads.htm) or CBS News (http://cbs5.com/local/facebook.photos.ads.2.1100466.html). It wouldn’t be the first time Facebook has dove face first into a privacy grey area, with it’s Beacon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_(Facebook)) that let 3rd party sites broadcast what you were doing on other websites. It would make sense that same company would use users’ photos for advertisments on facebook.

According to Facebook’s own blog in a post entitled Debunking Rumors about Advertising and Photos Facebook staffers state that these claims are false and that they have “made no such change in our advertising policies”.

“The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.”

In that same post they try to set the record straight and explain how they do use users’ photos in the advertisements on Facebook. Even the way Facebooks admits to using photos in their ads gives me pause.

“How We Use Photos

We’ve run advertisements from our own advertising system for more than a year that let your friends know if you have a direct connection with a product or service, in the same way that your friends learn through your News Feed if you’re connected with another friend or an organization’s Facebook Page. For example, if one of your friends becomes a fan of a Page, you may see an ad, like the one below, with your friend’s profile photo that indicates the action that friend has taken.” Facebook

This means that if you interact with a company or brand that advertises on Facebook, you become an unwitting spokes person for the product or service. For many of you who follow this podcast this is obvious. Facebook is an information service and it’s users submit their personal information so they can find and interact with friends. In a way you pay for your interactions on Facebook with the currency of your info.

For the majority of Facebooks user base this is probably a new concept. Most see Facebook as a walled garden where they can interact with friends and selected loved ones. They often don’t feel the need to hold back with their friends. That is until it gets more complicated and something they didn’t want out becomes public.

Background Music:

RJD2 - 2 More Dead

Built to Spill - Untrustable/Pt. 2

Teaching for the Future 114: Free, The Future of a Radical Price.

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:53:21 PDT

Mp3 Audio

In today’s podcast we are going to talk about some confidential Twitter memos that were leaked to the web, how the Guardian newspaper was able to leverage Twitter for better converstaions, and I’ll review and discuss Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

*Twitter’s confidential memos on TechCrunch

Reblogged from soupsoup:

The documents include employment agreements, calendars of the founders, new employee interview schedules, phone logs and bills, alarm settings, a financial forecast, a pitch for a Twitter TV show, confidentiality agreements with companies such as AOL, Dell, Ericsson, and Nokia, a list of employee dietary restrictions, credit card numbers, Paypal and Gmail screen shots, and much more.

*Curating Twitter

At their Open Platform Blog the Guardian recently discussed the power and the problems of using twitter to generate and participate in converstaion. To do this they created a tool that they recently released for their Activate Summit called TwitterFall.

“Twitter is becoming a very fertile backchannel at conferences and news stories. It provides a simple mechanism for those at conferences to discuss themes, to amplify topics of interest and to engage those unable to attend. We wanted to keep the immediacy of Twitter as a backchannel but also maintain some sense of respect for the speakers”

*Chris Anderson’s ‘Free: The Future of a Radical Price’

Wired Magazine’s Editor in Cheif and author of The Long Tail Chris Anderson has just released his follow up called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Like his first book, Free is a look at the changing nature of business on and off of the web. In is book he discusses how companies like Google or bands like Radiohead have leveraged free products and services into successful business models.

What Anderson feels makes this gratis econonmy possible is the economy of bits. Where companies like Verizon or Gillete sell their hardware at a loss while charging for service or marked up blades. Companies like Google or Facebook to give their services away because they can keep their costs low and don’t need to supply customers with any physical materials.

This idea has been implemented widely in the education sector for years. When I was in middle school in the mid-90’s my school recieved free TVs in every class. I’m not sure if this was part of Cable in the Classroom, but everyday the TVs would show Channel 1 during homeroom and lunch. The TVs were the cost of a captive audience of upper-middleclass consumers.

The most interesting part of this book is that Anderson is using the economic model he discusses in his book and is giving away the audio book and full digital copies of his book.

Free Links:
Wired: Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business By Chris Anderson
Dan Patterson’s Interview With Chris Anderson [Wired,’The Long Tail’] on ’Free’
Free Full Digital Copy of Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Chris Anderson’s Interview on Managing the Gray

Teaching for the Future 113

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:01:23 PDT

Mp3 Audio

*The Day Facebook Changed: Messages to Become Public by Default

From NYTimes.com:

“Facebook messages are about to be publicly visible. A whole lot of people are going to hate it. When ex-lovers, bosses, moms, stalkers, cops, creeps and others find out what people have been posting on Facebook - the reprimand that “well, you could have changed your default setting” is not going to sit well with people.” (Thanks to thekeri)

*How Teenagers Consume Media (written by a 15 year old)”

No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarized on the Internet or on TV.” - Matthew Robson (aged 15 years and seven months)

The report that shocked the city, or clever marketing from Morgan Stanley?

Also from the story:

Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert
Report on young people’s media habits written for investment bank by teenage intern causes huge interest in the City

*Using Game Systems for Something other Than Gaming:

“Today’s game consoles are essentially personal computers. They are at least as capable as the lowest end systems you can buy in the desktop category. What makes them distinct is in what their software takes away, they usually have a limited user interface better suited to use at ten feet and primarily for viewing content or playing games. And for what they add, starting with the Wii most notably but increasingly so from all the vendors, they boast an increasing number of physical interfaces, both for analog input and haptic feedback.” -Th. Gideon (aka cmdln)

Other Links:

http://www.smarthistory.org

Teaching for the Future 112

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:01:58 PDT

Mp3 Audio

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Show Notes:

* Nintendo sneaks out new school edition DS: DS Classroom will be teacher’s favourite little helper

“The Nintendo DS Classroom <original pressrelease in Japanese> features no new hardware, but instead consists of a package of several handhelds, a PC and newly developed educational software for the DS.” from TechRadar.com

Supposedly the DS bundle will contain no games and would use the DS WiFi and the PC to distrubute classmaterials. No word yet on if these materials will come from the teacher or Nintendo. Ofcourse this will be released in Japan first and then in other countries depending on reaction.

I’m still not sure why you would have to disable gameplay to make them educational devices. The games could really be a carrot on a stick for the right student.

Update: Does this seem like Nintendo trying to a tethered down version of the OLPC project?

* ‘Millionth English word’ declared: A US web monitoring firm has declared the millionth English word to be Web 2.0, a term for the latest generation of web products and services.

Global Language Monitor (GLM) searches the internet for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used 25,000 times, it recognises it.

GLM said Web 2.0 beat out the terms Jai ho, N00b and slumdog to take top spot. from BBC.co.uk

This is probably just an interesting bit of “non-news”, but I thought it was worth posting. It is frightening that anyone with a halfbaked idea and a press release can get on BBC news. (Thanks to Nelly Cardinale)

* Top French court rips heart out of Sarkozy internet law

France’s highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.

The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.

The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy’s scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web. from the Times Online

Though I’m not sure if I would consider web access a basic human right, this story does show how our view of the Internet is changing. The internet is no longer just a place for recreation and is becoming a basic utility.

* Sugar on a Stick brings sweet taste of Linux to classrooms

“The official release of Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) is a significant mile stone

for the Sugar project. In this release, the platform exhibits a much higher level of refinement and maturity than the previous versions, which were shipped on OLPC’s XO laptops. The user interface is

smoother, the individual components seem better integrated, and many impressive new programs that have been added.” from Ars Technica

Sugar on a stick was officailly released this week and I’m excited to try it out. I was never able to get the beta version onto a USB stick I am hoping to see if I can get this version to work. I’ve been running Sugar off the iso disk to mixed results and I’m excited to try the new version.

TftF 110: Thomas “cmdln” Gideon (Linux in the Classroom 3)

Open Source Alternatives for the K-12 Windows User

TftF 111: Facebook is Dead

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:27:00 PDT

Audio Link

Coming Soon: Facebook Usernames

Facebook’s Fatal Error by Douglas Rushkoff

Bing overtakes Yahoo in global search wars
In matter of days, Microsoft’s search passes Yahoo for No. 2 spot behind Google

http://mediasquat.net/

Raising Kids Who Can Thrive Amid Chaos in Their Careers. (thanks to @tonnet and AssortedStuff)

Evidence of the importance of media literacy

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TftF 110: Thomas "cmdln" Gideon (Linux in the Classroom 3)

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:07:00 PDT

Audio Link:

I had the chance to sit down again with hacker, programer, social media philosopher, and all around great guy Thomas Gideon. Thomas is the mind behind one of my favorite podcasts “The Command Line Podcast” where he discusses technology and it’s effects on everyday culture.

Links:

Tom’s Podcast - http://thecommandline.net
Flashbake - http://wiki.github.com/commandline/flashbake/configuration

If you want to contribute links, stories, ideas or comments you can leave me a message on any of the sites bellow.

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TftF 109: Atoms to Bits and Back

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 19:31:00 PDT

Audio Link

Textbook companies should make their material more accessible and affordable from Grown Up Digital “Textbook publishers today are where the music record labels were 15 years ago. They foisted overpriced CDs on to the public and made it impossible to buy just one song. Eventually consumers rebelled, and the industry paid a heavy price for its obstinacy.”

Ubunchu! episode 2:
The second in the Ubuntu manga series Ubunchu! has been released in English. I’m not sure the educational value of the comics, but they are fun to read and the art is done really well.

http://www.makeamixa.com/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/thumb-drives-storage/9bd7/

Next Episode: For the past few weeks on Teaching for the Future we have been discussing the use of Linux in the classroom. To give us a better insight on how Linux and other open technologies could be used to improve the way students are taught I have brought on an expert to guide us along.
Next week’s guest is a hackivist, programmer, philosopher, and podcaster who has inspired many of the ideas and research here on Teaching for the Future. also goes by Thomas Gideon.

Links:
http://thecommandline.net
http://thecommandline.net/2009/05/10/news_176/

TftF 108: Open Source and Open Ideas

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:31:00 PDT

Mp3 Link
Upcoming Interview with Thomas “cmdln” Gideon!!

On Thursday June 4, 2009 at 8:30pm I will sit down with hackivist, programmer, and media philosopher Thomas “cmdln” Gideon. We will discuss open source software and the role of open source technology in education and social activism. For more information you can check out http://www.teachingforthefuture.com.

Comprehensive Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/05/comprehensive-lesson-plans-for-teaching.html (Richard Byrne)

EFF gives copyright education a crack with new curriculum - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/eff-gives-copyright-education-a-crack-with-new-curriculum.ars

http://www.teachingcopyright.org/

Kick off your art class with this simple creativity test - http://blogs.learnnc.org/instructify/2009/05/15/kick-off-your-art-class-with-this-simple-creativity-test/

Open Source Banned - http://www.web2learning.net/archives/2946

Portable Apps - http://portableapps.com

How to Stream Skype to Ustream on a Mac - http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/765

TftF 107: Education is Political

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:47:00 PDT

Mp3 Link

Today’s podcast is a newscast where I discuss some of the most interesting links of the week. Today we discuss a wider range of topics such as the legal implications of twitter, how to create student portfolios, how history is written with an agenda, and many other topics.

Inventing American Histor y via boing boing -This is just more evidence that information and education is political.

Guatemalan Twitter User Arrested for “Inciting Financial Panic,” First Arrest of its Kind in Central American History

An Achievement Gap Report Unreported by the Mainstream Media from Clay Burell

MPAA suggests teachers videotape TVs instead of ripping DVDs. Seriously. via Engadget

iPhoto your Portfolio from the Thinking Stick

~~Open Video Conference, NYC Jun 19-20 via boingboing~~ (Not Mentioned on the Podcast)

If you want to contribute links, stories, ideas or comments you can leave me a message on any of the sites bellow.

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TftF 106: Auto Tune Our History

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:17:34 PDT

Mp3 Link

Martin Luther King Sings on YouTube - MLK’s I have a dream speech turned into a song using a little editing and autotune. (via zefrank & buzzfeed) I am not totally sure how educational this is, but I think anything that turns an important historical moment into a media snack is an idea worth discussing.

This podcast is more of a test for tommorrow’s podcast interview with the cmdln! Feel free to check out the video stream on Ustream.tv. I didn’t get the youtube video to work during the recording, but they worked fine afterward while broadcasting (which I should have seen coming).

Martin Luther King Sings -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0F4iXEzOqY

Upcoming:
Interview with Thomas “cmdln” Gideon - 05/14/2009 8:30pm EST

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TftF 105: Tux Paint (Linux in the Classroom 2)

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:35:00 PDT

Mp3 Link

This podcast was recorded through the magic of Utterli and hands free cell phones.

Tux Paint is a Linux based painting/drawing program for kids. Similar to programs like KidPix, Tux Paint has all of the funuctionality of MS Paint, but for kids. Tux Paint is a lot of fun to use and allows a good deal for teacher modification. There are a number of “stamps” that are available online or you can create your own based on what you are doing in your class.

Tux Paint is based on Linux but is available for Windows 95 through Vista and Mac OSX. What is even better about Tux Paint is that it is completely free.

Tux Paint - http://www.tuxpaint.org/
Screen Shots - http://www.tuxpaint.org/screenshots/

In Other News, Dan Flannery has won the 2008 John Lennon Song Contest for best children’s song. So now we can say we have an award winning song writer to come on the show and produce the music for the Teaching for the Future podcast.

You can go to Dan’s site to see what he and Mike are up to and listen to more music by the Flannery Brothers. Congratulations Dan!

If you want to contribute links, stories, ideas or comments you can leave me a message on any of the sites bellow.
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Teaching for the Future 104: Linux in the Classroom part 1

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:57:00 PDT

Mp3 Link

1. Linux can replace most of the functions of your Windows and Mac computers.

2. There are a lot of applications that are available for kids. Games, graphics, and learning programs all geared for the young and the young at heart.

3. You can easily partition Ubuntu so that you can still hold on to your copy of OSX or XP. Choosing linux does not mean you are not choosing another operating system. Have your cake and eat it too.

Links discussed During the show:

Teaching for the Future 101: Making due with Compujunk
http://teachingforthefuture.com/?p=167

Making do with compujunk (Makezine
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/03/making_do_with_compujunk.htm/ GeekDad http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2009/01/twenty-keyboard.html)

Slick New Ubuntu ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ Springs Onto Netbooks
http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Slick_New_Ubuntu__Jaunty_Jackalope__Springs_Onto_Netbooks

Ubunchu! The Ubuntu Manga is now in English
http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/ubunchu-the-ubuntu-manga-is-now-in-english/#comment-680

First taste: Sugar on a Stick learning platform
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/04/sugar-labs-releases-beta-of-live-usb-learning-environment.ars
from Ars Technica (Thanks Command Line)

The Command Line http://thecommandline.net/

Ubuntu Forums - Linux and schools http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-728373.html

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Teaching for the Future 102

teachingthefuture@gmail.com (David LaMorte) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:00:00 PDT

Mp3 Link

Today I spoke with comic artist, podcaster, and teaching artist Jerzy Drozd. I first became a fan of Jerzy through his podcast Art and Story, which he produces with fellow teaching artist Mark Rudolph.

For the past few years Jerzy has been leading classes and workshops for both teachers and students. Jerzy and I discussed his work in the classroom, including the workshops he recently led at the John F. Kennedy Center. We talk about visual literacy, comics in the classroom, and how teachers can use comic book making to turn their students from consumers into creators.

Finally we talk about his upcoming comic confrence for kids called Kids Read Comics coming up June 12th-13th in Chelsea, Michigan.

Find out more about Jerzy from the links bellow:

Jerzy Drozd’s Personal Blog - http://jdrozd.blogspot.com/
Kids Read Comics - http://mlatcomics.com/krc/
The Art and Story Podcast - http://www.cvcomics.com/artandstory/

If you want to contribute links, stories, ideas or comments you can leave me a message on any of the sites bellow.
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