The month of October plays host to the DonorsChoose.org BloggersChallenge.  Last year, the Challenge raised $500,000 and helped 75,000 kids in high-need public schools.  Which bloggers will raise the most and what projects will get funded is up to you!

About the Challenge

This morning saw a sharp rise in the markets - known as a "dead cat bounce" by financial analysts. After a spectacular crash, the stock markets often rebound sharply - but this isn't a real indication of improvement. Apparently, even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height.

As we have said in previous post the power of the video have no limits. Just think about the images that we saw coming from the Beijing Olympics ceremony, or the images we saw coming from the quick war between Russia and Georgia.  But there are other important issues that go uncovered. There are heart-breaking stories that go unheard. What news networks tend to cover are the political side of the issues, but hardly the human side. The reason being that they think they are not news worthy.

Mark Surman, expert on collaboration, community building and social technology talks to us about how the Shuttleworth Foundation is kick starting South Africa's knowledge economy by using the principles that have made open source so successful.

Mark A. Fairfield, LCSW, BCD
Los Angeles, California
April 25, 2008

Background

At the end of the last millennium, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that culture is a concept not limited to patients; clinicians view symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments in ways that sometimes diverge from their clients’ views, especially when the cultural backgrounds of the consumer and provider are dissimilar. “This divergence of viewpoints can create barriers to effective care. Clinicians and service systems, naturally immersed in their own cultures, have been ill-equipped to meet the needs of patients from different backgrounds and, in some cases, have displayed bias in the delivery of care" (Surgeon General’s Report, 1999).  

Happy St. Paddy's Day! In sunny FL, we've been up for hours waiting for you to wake up - we're hoping you'll spread the luck o' the Irish & vote for us here after reading more about our entry. Our original submission was a little less complete than we'd planned, but we've included many more details below, including examples, a use case diagram, an expanded list of potential data sources & shared services and many compelling statistics that illustrate why we believe this tool could have incredibly broad application & appeal, so read on:

THE WHAT?

Hello all,

 First, my deep thanks go out to the organizers of the hackathon and the Google employees who gave their time to us.  It was a fun, productive day.

Based on the fabulous feedback from the NetSquared community and the Googlers, I have updated my mashup challenge project description. 

I invite you to take a look at the project description and a mockup of the site.

 Your comments are more than welcome!

Andy Lieberman

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations. More information about podcast channels and conference web feeds is available!

Found via theFull Circle Interaction Blog

Teachers! Dig out that camcorder 'cause Quantum Shift TV has launched a video contest with social impact for students in the U.S. and Canada grades one through twelve: Be the Change! Share the Story! School Video Contest.

Student teams will work on social or environmental projects of their choice and document their progress in a series of two short videos. The first video, introducing the team's project, must be uploaded to QuantumShift.tv by December 15, 2007. The second, reporting on the project's execution and results, is due by March 31, 2008. Teams will be ranked based on Web metrics such as number of views on their videos, viewer ratings, puzzles completed and social network activity.

In May, the 25 top-ranked videos in each age category will be reviewed by a panel of 21 celebrity judges including Paul Hawken, Kenny Ausubel, Eric Utne, Van Jones, Howard Rheingold, Lynne Twist, Simran Sethi and John Wood.

Today is Blog Day, when bloggers are encouraged to find 5 new blogs outside of their culture, point of view or area of interest.

We don't post here much about how educators are using the web for their work, so here are a few education and technology themed blogs. Give 'em a little link love!