I know everyone's probably a little tired of the swine flu hype, but here are a few stories about the efforts to use technology in addressing pandemics in schools:

Japan pilots program to track student behavior using cell phones.

In an effort to gather more information about students who might be at risk in the event of an epidemic, Japan has announced plans to track student attendance and movements using GPS-enabled cell phones. The government will stage an experiment in the coming months which will pilot the use of these phones in a Japanese elementary school, allowing researchers to track the movements of several "infected" students and determine what other community members might be in danger of falling ill.
Could this usher in a new era of student surveillance? Can't wait to hear the privacy debates if this reaches the US.

Based on the seminar "The greatest summer of your life" by Gary Natriello last week and his call on every individual EdLabber to set a goal to develop some (different) skills this summer, I was wondering what kind of skills I want develop. I skipped the idea of becoming a pilot and saved that for later, but I just came back from a seminar about Adobe InDesign. Actually, I registered for all Adobe CS4 seminars at Noble seminars from Noble Desktop in SoHo.

The good thing, they are all in the evening and for free. The bad thing, they just give an introduction to the CS4 tools like InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks and so on.
I just came back from my first seminar and had a really good experience. The lecturer was well prepared and did a very good job.

The reason I want to develop my Adobe CS4 skills is because these are not only just great tools for any webdesign, graphic design or print/online design work, but I think it is also important to speak the language of designers to communicate better with them. And it´s also considerable to actually value the work of any designer. Last but not least - it´s fun to learn some new tools and broaden the own horizon!

To bounce off of Arianna's explanation of the changes in Westport, CT schools:

As reading digital texts becomes commonplace for academics and trashy summer novel readers alike, it appears that now even students (Kindergarteners and beyond) may be wanting a Kindle...or, at least some easy and portable way to complete course readings (coming from a non-parisan tech gadget user).

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced that for the coming school year, high schools in California will have their math and science texts online. Governor Schwarzenegger argues that this will not only cut costs on textbooks but will also enable students to have access to the most current information, as the online textbooks can easily be updated. However, California and Connecticut are not the only states who have implemented such tech-savvy tools for their students.

Shout out to my alma mater-UMich
The University of Michigan will soon have all of its libraries' books and journals (about 8 million in total) available digitally through the Michigan Digitization Project, an agreement with Google. Other instutions will also be able to subscribe to this service and too will have access to UM's library collections. Other universities are also in the process of forming such agreements with Google and soon we may see all published written works available online. What this means for researchers (i.e. students) is a single, comprehensive means of performing literature searches. Say goodbye to the days of searching through library stacks and trecking to specialized libraries. Go blue.

An eye-catcher: EdTech in Practice

An article on today’s NYT, “Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online,” covered a story on how frustrated math teachers decided to rewrite the algebra curriculum, cutting about half of the concepts that have been taught in the past. They did so to help students develop a deeper understanding of key topics. What’s actually more interesting is that teachers in Westport, CT have started replacing textbooks with their own custom-designed online curriculum.

The lessons are typically written in Westport and then sent to a program in India, called HeyMath!, to jazz up the algorithms and problem sets with animation and sounds.

This 50-sec video shows how it’s done:
http://www.heymath.com/main/testimonialusavideos_04.jsp

The end of Peterson's guide to colleges? How about this excellent reference for prospective Archi students?

If anyone's interested, here's another sample blog I've been working on for the Teaching the Levees website:

What's the current situation in New Orleans? It seems the news media can't agree. While the Chicago Sun-Times recently published a sunny article describing how recovery money has steeled New Orleans against the recession (leading young, laid-off workers to flock to the area) and the Times-Picayune suggests that the 2013 Superbowl (recently awarded to the city) would spark an "economic engine," other reports were not quite so favorable. The Economist labeled New Orleans a City of Sickness, describing a persistent lack of medical services and a preponderance of vacant homes, while The Nation suggested that putting taxpayer dollars towards luxury Superbowl improvements was the wrong kind of spending for a city with little stable infrastructure and high poverty rates. Furthermore, Mayor Ray Nagin in his recent State of the City address discussed the continuing racial divide within New Orleans, and the Los Angeles Times published a story indicating the distress of the city's black population over unfavorable housing regulations.

The effort about Re-Designing the EdLab Atelier brought me to these existing ideas of computer chairs:

iMedia ergonomic chair

Netsurfer

PCE Personal Computing Environments

I wrote an eMail to G-Tech International Co., Ltd. in Korea and they send me the following description of their model: PC Chair NEBER. They could ship it for 845 Dollar/set.

For the EdLab, I could see two possible options for the chair. The first one is a "Welcome Visitior Chair". One or two chairs could be placed in the EdLab tower or the entrance of the Atelier for visitors who have an appointment with an EdLabber. They could enjoy some introductory videos of EdLab and some background information, do last minute preparation before their appointment or just check eMail and relax.

I recently attended the Games4Change (G4C) conference in New York, to present a poster that was part of the advanced video game design course I took this past semester. Our class wrote grants for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation challenge Games for Health. The group I was in came up with a mobile intervention game which uses breath therapy as an alternative treatment for smoking cessation. Our poster for G4C was featured during expo night. There were many other games and posters featured that night and I wanted to share some of them, so below is a small description and a link to the projects website. Enjoy.

Budget Maze

Gotham Gazette's Budget Maze challenges players to make their way through the maze of the city budget as the calendar ticks down to the budget deadline. The game has three levels: the first is a fairly simple level where the player must procure funding from a discretionary pool. The third level requires the player to travel to and from the state capital organizing support for their budget proposal. The goal of the game is to illustrate a complex policy issue with the ultimate aim of arming our readers with better tools to bring it with them into policy debates.play it here.

Hurricane Katrina : Tempest in Crescent City

This web-based game recognizes local heroes that emerged during the disaster while educating its players about the essentials of disaster readiness and of reporters. It is set in New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina Disaster of 2005. The game's main character is Vivica Water, a young woman from New Orleans who moved to New York after surviving the storm. The games takes place in a dream Vivica has where she searches for her mother and helps her neighbors as the hero she wishes she could have been. play it here.

Real lives 2010

This is based on the latest version of the Real Lives simulation that enables you to live life in any country of the world, all based on real world statistics. This new version features an entirely new user interface, animated 3D graphics, family trees, graphs of personal statistics, the ability to create a business, integrated good maps and Flickr phones as well as other features requested by users. The purpose is to increase awareness of, and empathy for people living in different situations and the opportunities and constraints they face as they make life decisions.
play it here.

Caduceus

This game transports kids to a virtual world where they take on the role of young healers tracking down the source of a mysterious plague. As they solve scientific puzzles, tweens experience the same hurdles that real doctors and scientists face in their work. They are challenged to track down the source of the disease, isolate its causes and miss and match ingredients to find a cure. As kids conquer each of the games levels, portions of their sponsors' pledges are unlocked and donated to Children's Hospital Boston. If they complete all five, they cure the virtual plague, earn the title "Master Healer" and win the full donation amount to advance to real-world cures for kids. All funds raised go directly to research to find cures and treatments for debilitating childhood illnesses.play it here.

Homeland Guantanamos

This is a game designed to spotlight the inhumane conditions being faced by 300,000 people in an immigrant detention as a result of unfair Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies. Players assume the role of an undercover journalist doing an investigative series who must uncover the true story of Boubacar Bah, an immigrant who dies in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody under questionable circumstances in 2007. The purpose of the game is to broaden awareness of the deaths and inhumane detention conditions that are the result of a DHS that lacks oversight and codified standards, in order to build support for legislative change. more information is available here.

MILLEE
mobile and immersive learning for literacy in emerging economies

Literacy levels in poor countries remain shockingly low, and this game aims to address this issue by providing learning tools on more widely accessible platforms such as cell phones. This allows people to learn in more places and instances which are more convenient than only in schools. MILLEE, now in its 6th year, is taking a scientific approach to the design of immersive enjoyable language learning games on cell phones. The project is expanding to an amazing next level by conducting a controlled field experiment with 800 rural children in India and validation against standardized school tests. The lessons will permit the project to be scaled nationwide and replicated in other developing countries for other languages.
more information is available here.

PlayPower.org
8-bit learning games on $10 computers

People need affordable learning games. There are 4.1 billion people worldwide who earn under $3,000/year meaning that even a $100 computer is often out of reach. Playpower is targeting a $10 platform that makes learning games affordable. It is so affordable because it uses an existing TV screen and comes with a full keyboard, mouse, game controllers and several game cartridges. These are currently available in street markets in India, China, Pakistan, South America etc. In the USA it is available through MAKE magazines Makershed.com.
check it out.

A few weeks ago at the EdLab (Re)Design Seminar, we reconsidered the EdLab from an outside perspective and brainstormed new visions for the EdLab space. The transparencies have been transcribed, the configurations considered, and this Wednesday morning our ideas will come to fruition.

This morning-long event will ask all EdLabbers to step away from the screen and lend a hand in transforming the EdLab to a fluid, organized space we can be proud to call home. Much can change: arrangement of desks and workspaces; disposal of out-of-date technology or broken, disused furniture; establishment of new meeting spaces; and tackling the wiring conundrum.

The clean-up will be suspended at noon and we'll convene in the *new* seminar space for lunch and the "EdLab on Display" seminar. With all the room we'll make by eliminating that which the EdLab is not, we will think of ways to convey what the EdLab is through our projects.

Despair, Inc. provides a little psychoanalysis on what should probably be the next addition to at least a few EdLabbers' wardrobes: the Social Media Venn Diagram T-shirt.

As Gus suggested, "It's funny 'cuz it's true."

For the past few days, as part of a project to design a new online research tool for students, I've been scouring the web in an effort to survey existing tools and see what's currently out there. I've written up a little report about what I've found, as well as a spreadsheet that lists the existing tools along with their features and my evaluation (both are attached here).

Now, I'm looking for some feedback as we try to figure out what the next steps in this process should be. Is a new tool even necessary or valuable? Should we put together focus groups/surveys of students and/or consult existing research? What age groups/stages of the research process should a hypothetical tool address? Are there creative ways to use the information I've collected about existing tools? (Hui Soo was suggesting a series of YouTube videos)

If anyone has a few minutes and would like to take a look at the report/spreadsheet and provide some feedback, that would be great. Even if you don't get a chance to read it, any musings on online research in general (especially from a student perspective) are very much appreciated!