Call for YPulse Youth Advisory Board

Anastasia Goodstein is an award-winning blogger and expert on how American tweens, teens
and twentysomethings consume technology, new media, social networks and life on the web.

She is also the creative genius behind the Ypulse blog and Ypulse Mashup conferences. She is the author of a book about teens and technology called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online.

In her book Anastasia explores what Gen Y is doing on the Internet and with social media and mobile technology. She also delves into issues around cyberbullying, MySpace (and other social networks), as well as how all this technology is impacting schools and educators.

Today Anastasia announced that YPulse is forming "a Ypulse Youth Advisory Board made up of 10 young people between the ages of 13 and 24 from diverse backgrounds and geographic locations."

This is an excellent opportunity for teens to share their ideas, insight and feedback on what it means to be a teen in the 21st Century. It's also a big opportunity for college-bound teens to list one of the leading youth media organizations on that college admissions form!

So if you are a teen, or know a teen who's interested in joining the YPluse Youth Advisory Board, send them here for all the details.

Related Resources

• YPulse
  
• Totally Wired
  
• Video > Anastasia Goodstein

Linkage: Social Media, EdTech4Obama & Mobile Web

Social Media Hits Critical Mass: "Although age is the driving force behind usage patterns of these technologies, it is clear that a fundamental shift has taken place in all of our lives about what it means to communicate in the 21st Century." -Media in Mind (MiM)

Meet Mr. Basler: Check out my interview with an award winning teacher and expert at integrating social media into the science classroom.

EdTech4Obama: If you're going to NECC, come join us!

Call for Papers: This year’s conference is scheduled for October 20-24 and October 27-31 of 2008, and will include a pre-conference keynote during the week of October 13. The conference theme for 2008 is "Amplifying Possibilities."

Gen Y & Mobile Internet: ""The children of the mobile internet generation are getting used to being connected – to their music, their videos, their social networking sites – wherever they go. And that means we are all going to have to think hard about how we rewrite the rules."

WebSlides + Diigo

Here's a good idea for a 'lesson' to work on this summer while you have some free time.

Go to Webslides

Open an account and start saving a few Web2.0 sites on Diigo that you want your students to use for a project. Maybe there are sites you want your students to use for a video project or maybe they are news sites with articles that you want students to read for a 'current events' class to write an essay. Bookmark any sites of a particular interest for an assignment or project.

When you have saved the bookmarks you want for the 'lesson' begin narrating each site in Webslides. Virtually take your students on a web tour of web 2.0 tools, tell them what you want them to know about each tool for the project they will be working on. If it's news articles you saved record a brief synapses of each article.

Keep bookmarking and narrating the sites until you feel you have provided enough background or technical information for your students to begin the assignment.

By the end of your Webslides presentation your students should have gained the knowledge-base needed to begin the project or write the essay without you even being there. That's called constructivist learning.

This might be a good 'lesson' to save for a day when you need a substitute teacher, your students might not even miss you....Go get started now.

Wikimania 2008

Do you want to learn how to work with the collaborative tool "WIKI" and meet Wikimedians throughout the world? Then plan on attending Wikimania 2008, the annual conference for Wikimedians.

July 17-18 at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.

AACE - ED MEDIA 2008

If you're not attending NECC in San Antonio, Texas then plan on attending AACE - ED-MEDIA 2008 World Conference on Educational Mutimedia, Hypermedia, & Telecommunications in Vienna, Austria June 30- July 5th. ED MEDIA 2008 will be hosted by the Vienna University of Technology.

This annual conference gathering is the perfect conduit for the exchange of informational research on the latest topics in new media, telecommunications and distance education.

Attendees can choose from a large selection of workshops, panels, round-table discussions, corporate showcases and demos. Be sure to attend the poster demonstrations where a very large number of presenters will be presenting their latest research and projects.

Keynote speakers include:

• Alan Amory, University of Johannesburg- "Playing Games: Hegemony as Enemy"
• Geetha Narayanan, Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology, India "Moving beyond the Plentitude: An Indian Fable"
• Peter J. Scott, Open University, UK "Where is the Mentor?" New Ways of Supporting Learning"
  
• Patricia Manson, European Commission, Luxembourg- "Technology Enhanced Learning in the 21st Century- The Role of European Research"

Invited Speakers include:

• Peter Purgathofer- Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• James Dalziel- Macquarie University, Australia
  
• Rob Koper- Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands
  
• Rob Phillips- Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia
• Lizbeth Goodman- University of East London, UK

Follow the Ed-Media Blog to keep up-to-date on conference events.

ED MEDIA is truly a gathering of great minds in the world-wide Educational Technology Community. Learning is social; you will learn from the company you keep at ED MEDIA 2008.

NECC 08 Workshop

If you plan to attend NECC 2008 (National Educational Computing Conference, June 29-July 2 in San Antonio, or if you are working with any teachers who plan to attend, the following may be of interest to you or to them.

WIPTE (Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education) is sponsoring a series of mock classes that will be taught in Tablet PC classrooms at NECC on June 30.

The goal is to show, in a hands-on-manner, how Tablet PCs and supporting software can provide an engaging classroom experience while also sharing information about the annual WIPTE conference. There will be ten classes in total. The content will range from computer science to foreign language.

If you or anyone you know would like to learn more, you can see the sessions times posted on the WIPTE web site.

Related Resources

• NECC 2008
• Flickr NECC 08
• NECC on Ning

Linkage: Web Predator Myths, Twitter & Oprah

Study DeBunks Sexual Predator Myths: Sorry Chris Hansen, but a new study reveals that much of what people "know" or report about social networks and sexual predators is, well, just wrong.

Twitter and NASA: The Mars Rover is sending live updates to Twitter.

Virtual WWII Exhibit: The online collection features items and stories selected from a collection of World War II materials housed at the Lee Library at Brigham Young University.

Constructing Modern Knowledge '08: The Constructivist Consortium is sponsoring a four-day institute focusing on "intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty." The conference will be held at the Radison Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire.

O Ambassadors: Oprah Winfrey, in partnership with Free the Children & Oprah's Angel Network, have announced the launch a new social change organization for youth called O Ambassadors.

Want to Reach Teens? Think Mobile: Teens are already totally wired, so it's natural that teens will use their mobile devices as a way to connect with the brands they love. And advertisers are all too happy to oblige.

Acrobat & Buzzword: Move over Google Docs

Earlier this week Adobe launched Acrobat.com a new suite of web-based services that includes, Buzzword, an online word processor that will--especially in the education 2.0 community--go head-to-head with Google Docs.

According to the Acrobat blog the new Acrobat Suite is comprised of three distinctive applications:

• Adobe Buzzword for creating and reviewing documents together.
• Adobe ConnectNow for holding full-fledged online web conferences/video conferencing with up to three people.
• The Acrobat.com organizer for sharing 5GB of files with others online, including the ability to convert 5 documents to PDF and embed your documents in blogs, wikis or other web pages.

Read more about Acrobat and Buzzword by clicking here.

WWII: Online Exhibit

Medals, newspaper clippings, video, letters, and the story of an American flag created by Clarance Bramley, a survivor of the Bataan Death March—all this and more can be found in an online exhibit, “Remembering World War II: Pearl Harbor and Beyond."

The online collectionfeatures items and stories selected from a collection of World War II materials housed at the Lee Library at Brigham Young University.

Related Resources

• Wikipedia > Bataan Death March
  
• National WWII Monument
  
• American Experience > FDR

Moodle on the Web

NineHub-a social learning network where people teach & learn online.

Teaching and learning online just got easier. NineHub provides a social community setting for learning while hosting your Moodle course site for teaching. Now there are no more excuses for not web-enhancing your classes or moving your content online.