A history of multimedia | xtimeline
Here's another approach at a timeline.

Uruguay buys first '$100 laptops' BBC
Of course, they aren't $100 anymore, and orders are behind the efficient production curve, but,...the first 100,000 are on order.

What will you do to teach these kids?

IBM - Overview | Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs
The other day we linked to Ascent Stage, the blog of John Tovla. Mr. Tovla actually works for IBM, and is paid, of all things, to bring cultural and historic learning to the web. (Plus, he does RubyonRAILS!) The National Museum of African American History and Culture is his baby.

This site summarizes some of IBM's work in corporate citizenship. You might be interested in their Reinventing Education initiative. You can't yet see the Forbidden City online exhibit, but it'll be here soon. The Open Source research center focused on K12 education in partnership with China might pique your curiosity. And they did The Hermitage.

Plus, www.eternalegypt.org!

The Supply Side of School Reform and the Future of Educational Entrepreneurship
Thursday we'll be off to Paradise on the Potomac for the 3rd time this month. Hopefully next month will see more work done! This looks to be an interesting topic. Wonder who will be there.

shifthappens 2.0
Seven years ago, armed with a photocopy of Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, we started this idea that people should work together to build educational media. It hasn't happened much. But, here is one.

This video has been around more than a year now. What
s exciting is how it has morphed over that time. Want to add to it? You can...the source files are right on the wiki.

A List Apart: Articles: Findings From the Web Design Survey
We rarely talk of money and related matters here, but some of you may actually want to have an income to supplement the joy of helping others learn. Interesting survey.

A Vision of Students Today YouTube
I'm gonna add this. A lot of our friends in the tech ed and other places think it says volumes. Personally, I find it somewhat artistic, but not particularly additive to addressing the problems at hand.

Ascent Stage: The National Museum of African American History and Culture

This functionality, called the Memory Book, permits site visitors to compose and upload their own “memories” about anything having to do with the African American experience. The posts can be tagged and are plopped into a visualized web of topics and other memories, forming what is hoped over time will become a rich, dense tapestry of interconnected stories.

Is this a good resource for your project? I was surprised at the technical and artistic quality of the first item I tried: Timba and Teletha, an audio piece.

Pancakes at the Algonquin Mill Fall Festival
Too late, another year at the Festival is in the bag. Three 11-hour days of cooking pancakes, taking orders from customers, and washing dishes...all nestled in the historic circumstances of the Algonquin Mill and the surrounding valley.

Can you tell stories? I mean, sit down, or stand on stage, and tell them to marginally interested kids and their parents? That's what this history thing was all about. His...Story. Abe Lincoln used to be a regular visitor at the Mill. He'd come into the pancake house, and I often would chat with him on the grounds. Most people, however, stood for one of his talks. Can you get any better than that? Having Abe spin a yarn about how hard he had it in his boyhood, and how he worked his way forward to be, among other things, the man who ended slavery?

AUSA 07 America's Army: The Strength of the Nation
This morning brings us to be among history makers; to hear from the soldiers and leaders who are changing the world. The Annual Meeting of the Association of the US Army is a tremendous event. Yesterday's opening remarks by the Secretary of the Army were quite moving, as is the courage, conviction, and creativity of so many here.

Would that the nice ladies from code pink demonstrating outside had taken the time to come inside and learn a little.

It looks like the CSS for this page has been broken by some Blogger or Firefox software changes. Hopefully we can get that fixed later this week.

Oh, yeah: Go Tribe!

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
One of the nice teachers at Classroom 2.0 recommended this set of games. I played the Blood Typing Game.
Do these teach a lot? I know my reaction is first that it looks great, then that the depth of knowledge gained is not worth the time it takes to learn and master the game. All the more frustrating in that it surely took a great deal of time, effort, and probably cash to put the game together. But then maybe I'm way off base. Maybe if I'm a digital native with lots of free time, this is a great learning tool.

Isn't anyone out there doing studies on these?

Twitter-Like Projection Bombing

Some new friends from the Columbus Ruby Brigade and FindHomes.com will be doing this creative thing with SMS messages and building sides tonite.

A Thousand Veterans of The War die Every Day
THE WAR PBS
We write tonight from Fredricksburg, VA, site of the Civil War engagements. 'Tis quite an amazing thing to stand at rivers edge, at the spot the Union Troops so longed for as they viewed it from across the seemingly narrow waterway. The 'heights' above held the defending Confederate troops, heights that are really only a few steps. The peaceful park there now gives little feeling for the world-turning confusion, terror, and violence endured that December of '62.
Today was spent at Quantico in the company of Marines and their vendors. After an extended happy hour sharing beverages with an elder Marine, we slid into the hotel room in time to catch an episode of Ken Burns' The War.

The quote heading this post appears in Burns' title credits. If you were 18 on Dec. 7, 1941, you'd be 84 today. A pretty long life by most standards. To have begin that adult life in such tumultuous conditions, then seen the changes wrought by the technological and social revolutions seen since....and now to see grandsons again engaged in a world war.

Someone asked me if I'd watched all of The War. No, I didn't. Partly because I knew a lot of it, and partly because I had a backlog of work. But mostly because this is what is now called social history. It's about individuals, and those back home, in communities, in factories, and affected families.

Learning that stuff doesn't help us prevent wars.