Fair Tech | Tecnologia Justa 2011 is a week long service/participatory learning trip to San Ramon, Nicaragua in early January of 2011. The primary focus will be on the issue of the fair and appropriate use of information technology in emerging economies. You can learn more about this upcoming tip at: http://fairtech2011.wordpress.com/

I'm doing an "educational" activity here this Friday morning with some co-workers. I'm tired of powerpoints and yapping at people. As dazzling and engaging as that may be for my audience, lately I've been trying to diversify, to deepen my bag of tricks and find better, more interactive and engaging ways to talk about technology. So, I've contemplated theater - which has some promise but I haven't pulled that off yet - and games.

A major crisis has developed in the Indian Ocean, on the island of Sheylan. We’re sending in a new team to step up the World Food Programme’s presence there and help feed millions of hungry people.

This is the premise of  Food Force, a suprisingly popular  game developed by the UN World Food Program.  I have often wondered why there weren't more games out there that address socially relevant issues in an engaging way...most of the previous educational games I've tinkered with have been less than captivating, but the World Food Program seems to have gotten it right, with millions of downloads to prove the point that.....if you make it engaging they will play.

I'm in the process of digesting some survey results from a group of users who just went through an online course and once again I am being made aware of the fact that folks who use technology may not understand nearly as much about what they are doing as we assume when we set things up for them. (Kind of a run-on sentence there, sorry...)

Technology is not intutive for most people. I think those of us who work with computers, the web, etc... forget that often. (And, as another aside, I realize this is hardly the first time these things have been said....) And if we step back and really objectively look at what we assume our users can do, we assume way too much.  

One of the issues I am encountering lately is how do I interact with some of the sites which offer me personal blog space? Over at the Digital Divide network I can pull from the blog I maintain with most frequency and not have to craft seperate entries into that system. That seem like a winning approach because, as it is, time is somewhat precious and it's hard enough to create the content I need to create as part of my work life.

http://treadwell.cce.cornell.edu/elearn/

 Is my main blog, the one I maintain to document current work and thoughts.