Magical Moments Around the World

I received this wee note during teh week and I thought I’d kjsut pass it on to anyone interested in Peace Education.

The Note is from Gal Kleinman and reads:-

Dear Martin,

My name is Gal and I’m an iEARN member.
I would like to invite you and your students to participate in a global educational project called Magical Moments Around the World.

Magical Moments Around the World is a continuous uniting of youth from schools all over the world sharing their magical moments. A global online book written by people for people. A testimonial to the great human spirit that connects us all. And just like the sun shines on us all it portrays a human spirit that’s within us all.

In its essence the project aims to provide every child in the world the right to be aware that we are all connected by one human spirit. This is done by writing magical moments in a global online book on an ongoing basis for generations to come. Students can also interact and upload videos, photos, drawings and other creative work using the collaboration center.

Showing youth that their personal magical moment is part of a human web that transcends borders, continents, race, religion and gender is of incredible human value. And promotes values such as compassion and tolerance.

I would be happy to elaborate and hope that we can work together.
For more information visit the website at:
www.magicalmoment.net/EN <http://www.magicalmoment.net/EN>

Best wishes,

Gal Kleinman
Magical Moments Around the World
Email: contact@magicalmoment.net

Sure you could do worse taht give the site a wee look! Maybe you can help Gal out!

City of Derry Golf Club: Corporate Partner Scheme

It’s new! It’s innovative…. it’s available now!

Serious Games on the Move: International Conference: 23-24 June 2008

The mobile Games-Based Learning Project is mounting this exciting conference at Anglia Ruskin University’s Cambridge campus during June 2008. The project has been doing ground-breaking work in creating learning games in the fields of e-health, e-commerce and careers education. Not content with that as a difficult task the international team, for a touch of added excitement, have been concentrating on producing these games for use on mobile devices! The results so far are three prototype games, now in user trials, but, more importantly, the team has spear-headed a growth in games theory in an area currently dominated by lightweight games trivia. When the project is successful we’ll have taken great strides forward in the use of games on mobile devices for learning purposes.

The conference call for papers document says:-

This conference seeks to bring together leading researchers and developers who are movers and shakers at the cutting edge of their field with interested professionals in education and training. Our aim is an exciting and compelling conference that will stimulate debate on the design and deployment of serious games, including mobile learning games. Submissions are invited on all aspects of serious games that are relevant to learning and teaching.

This is a real opportunity to bring together everyone who is working to use innovative technologies for gaming with a serious learning purpose. So, if you see a use for games on mobile devices, beyond that of mental chewing gum on boring train journeys, then this is a must attend conference.

Submissions are being sought under three fairly broad heading:

1. Designing learning games and virtual worlds;

2. Embedding serious games and virtual worlds within learning programmes;

3. Tools, technologies and platforms for game-based learning, including mobile game-based learning;

The dates you need to be aware of are:-

• Submission deadline: 15 February 2008
• Notification to authors: 15 March 2008
• Early registration: until 15 April 2008
• Late registration: after 15 April 2008
• Author registration: 30 April 2008
• Final camera-ready submission: 30 April 2008
• Conference: Cambridge, UK, 22 – 23 June 2008

Take this link to read more about the Serious Games on the Move Conference.

Take this link to the submissions template.

And download the call for papers here:- sg-call.pdf

For more information contact the conference organiser here: Alice Mitchell

See you at the conference but in the meantime feel free to raise any interesting projects you know of in this discussion.

Anti-Bullying Week.

Over at Intuitive Media they have been busy looking at the problem of bullying. The difference is that the team have been working for many years to reduce the problem. Here Bob Hart reports on the success of IM’s safe social networking sites in creating a cyberspace where young people are less likely to experience the trauma of bullying.

In his piece, Extending Horizons: It’s Anti-Bullying Week – EVERY WEEK , Bob says:-

Recent research into bullying worryingly reveals that 70% of children suffer some form of bullying and that cyber bullying is dramatically increasing. Children are more likely than ever to suffer nasty or aggressive texts, emails, and messaging, as well as bullying in chat rooms.

However, a recent survey of 3,000 children aged 6 to 14 carried out by Intuitive Media reveals that members of its safe social learning networks are far less likely to be bullied than other children.

The survey asked members of SuperClubsPLUS.com and GoldStarCafe,net, aged 6 to 13 if they had suffered any bullying and found that less than 1 in 6 children had suffered any form of bullying. Half of these 500 children had experienced face-to-face verbal abuse, a quarter suffered physical abuse and a negligible proportion had experienced any cyber-bullying.

Quite an achievement and one that demonstrates the effectiveness of facilitated online communities.

Check the link above for more information.

Pangea Day: May 10th 2008

This is a great idea coming out from TED – if you haven’t looked at this site and listened to some of the talks then you’ve missed a lot!

Now Pangea Cinema Day, the day the world comes together through film, was called for by Jehane Noujaim – an interesting film maker who has a vision that film can be used to break down community, culture and national boundaries. Jehane outlined her vision for this day at the Ted Conference in July 2006 and now… it’s a reality. It’s going to happen on May 10th 2008.

Check out this YOUTUBE advert for the day:

Now a circular from TED tells me:-

The project is taking off, and its ambition level is spectacular. On May 10, 2008 – Pangea Day – Jehane’s wish will come to fruition as sites in New York City, Rio, London, Dharamsala, Cairo, Jerusalem, and Kigali will be video-conferenced live to produce a 4-hour program of powerful films – supplemented by visionary speakers, and global musicians. The purpose: to use the power of film to promote better understanding of our common humanity. A global audience will watch through the Internet, television, digital cinemas, and mobile phones.

A powerful advisory board has come together to support the project. It includes:
JJ Abrams
Lawrence Bender
Nancy Buirski
lan Cumming
Ami Dar
Cameron Diaz
Goldie Hawn
Vik Muniz
Clare Munn
Eboo Patel
Alexander Payne
Meg Ryan
Deborah Scranton
Jeff Skoll
Philippe Starck
Yossi Vardi
Kevin Wall
Will.i.am

If you’re interested learning more and/or helping out, please send an email to Pangea Day executive director Delia Cohen (delia@ted.com). More details are available at the project’s beautiful website created for us by Avenue A/Razorfish: www.pangeaday.org.

So ….. pretty powerful stuff for anyone interested in using film/video in a unique way. I, for one, plan to be involved…. let me know if you’re interested.

Oh… The website for full details is:  www.pangeaday.org

A Wee Slide Show!

Illustration?

I’ve been writing another wee blog for a while – www.talkingni.org - and I

think the visitor pattern tells a wider story. Now since a picture is worth a thousand words…. here we go:-

Where is the rest of the world?

Where are we all going wrong?

Sugar…… I know I ain’t that popular but… hell’s bells someone in Africa and South America should have found me at this stage if they had any connectivity at all! Yes.. yes.. I know that would have been their ill luck if they had found me! But do you get the point?

But what does the graphic tell us about internet penetration?

Never mind the fabulous stats….. this is a real illustration.

PS… by the way – the BIG RED dots are multiple visitors!…. and I’ll enjoy having your visitor stats recorded!

Opera Mini

Anyone who knows me will tell you that my taste in music runs from Irish Traditional through Blues and stops somewhere around Rock ‘n’ Roll. I’m not renowned as an opera fan…. Until now that is!

I’ve been playing around with the Opera Mini Version 3 browser for a year or so and it is really very, very nice indeed. But …. (drum roll) now.. along comes the ..(drum roll)… Beta of Version 4. At 120kb it is packed with features… WOW is about the best thing to say here!

You can have a peek at the various features here before you download it to your mobile phone. Suffice to say I found the new version a really cool piece of kit! Fast.. fast …fast.

Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Broadband Growth

Richard Wray’s informative Guardian article- 14.6.07 , China overtaking US for fast internet access as Africa gets left behind, is a great piece of work outlining exactly where we have got to on the global broadband rollout.

And a pretty long way we have come in a short time but…..the biggest problems are still all about inclusion.

Richard points up in his piece:-

“There are more than 1.1 billion of the world’s estimated 6.6 billion people online and almost a third of them are now accessing the internet on high-speed lines. According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million. The statistics, however, paint a picture of a divided digital world. While there are high levels of broadband penetration in western Europe, North America and hi-tech economies such as South Korea, usage in developing countries, and especially in Africa, is pitiful. Many of these emerging economies lack telephone services, let alone the sort of broadband internet access that has become available to every household in Europe.”

Again Africa is being left behind – what massive problems will that cause for the world in the future? We left much of Africa behind in the economic progress of the 20th Century and we’re still doing it with the telecommunications progress in the 21st century. Can’t we learn anything?

This handy map – courtesy of the Guardian – shows where we have got to and the massive task that is still left to be done. It’s well worth studying closely.

map_broadband_1406.jpg

I have another major concern here. Richard says:-

“Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the internet using fast broadband connections, fuelling the growth of social networking services such as MySpace and generating thousands of hours of video through websites such as YouTube.”

Yip…. (those who know me are already running for cover )… here we have a world that is spending it’s time on the pointless pap that is the bulk of the content of YouTube. Okay..okay… so it’s not all pointless -and now and again some of it can be funny – but is this the best that we can do with a massively powerful resource like the internet? If filling the world’s bandwidth with videos of spotty teenagers posturing to popsongs of anorexic pop stars is the best that we can come up with in a world that needs health and wealth creation education delivered to a great number of the population – then we are doomed as a civilisation!

Perhaps it is time to organise the talented youth we have in developed countries with an electronic version of Voluntary Service Overseas? Our young people with their massively creative potential may be labouring under a heavy burden of stock examinations but, when they escape to their bedrooms and dive into their computer alternative spaces, can we not find a way to employ their potential, creativity and energy to educate the world? At the moment we leave a huge empty space which is then filled with the total inanity of much of the Myspace content or taken over by the morally corrupt peddling pornography.

It’s the 21st Century…. we can do better with the expanding internet than this. Can’t we?

Away and Scratch……

I’ve been having endless fun this last week playing with a newly released MIT Media Lab program called Scratch. It takes me back to the old days (play old honky-tonk piano here…) of struggling with Logo trying to program mechanical turtles with classes of 5-10 year olds! But Scratch is quick, easy and fun to use. It also helps that it is free and comes with access to a very nice website for sharing all those wonderful creations!

If you are still locked into Logo programming you could do worse than to download Scratch and give it a go with some kids. Oh.. and if you don’t have any kids available …. just download it for yourself and enjoy!

Why not have a look in this video at what the team say about the program and then visit the MIT website here: Scratch