Adam Nossiter posts an excellent story in the New York Times on the "slow moving coup" in Niger. The situation is basically this: after a decade of democracy, President Tanjda (-->) is refusing to relinquish power when his term expires. In the process, he is subverting a number of state institutions, like the supreme court, to push through a referendum to change the constitution to extend presidential term limits. (Sound familiar?).
I've played around with Multipoint and the mouse pointers work simultaneously. The SDK also knows who clicked where. For example, a map is displayed with the question, "where is London?" and students are awarded points in terms of closeness. Programs also can divide the screen into areas for group work. In most activities, the control area can be clicked by only the teacher's mouse.
I think the iPod Touch offers a somewhat similar experience, though as an iPhone and netbook user, I do prefer the "real" keyboard and larger screen of the netbook. In fact, I'm looking for an external iPhone keyboard after this comment. But I don't think you should assume the iPod Touch doesn't have phone-like distractions. Skype works quite well on the iPod Touch and would offer more, not less, opportunities for distraction than an SMS-only mobile phone.
In Walter Bender’s previous post, For Real Learning, Mobility and Saturation Matter, one of his concluding statements was:
“I echo Dukker in being supportive of whatever means we can deploy to get great software into the hands of children, inexpensively.â€
The UN humanitarian chief should be relieved; Pakistan is beginning voluntary resettlement of the 300,000 or so displaced civilians living in camps (yet only a small fraction of the 2 million total displaced, most of whom have found refuge in the homes of other families).
Cynthia E. Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, recently wrote a post about the Ashoka - Lemelson partnership and our Fellows.
She writes: "Ashoka is now partnering with the Lemelson Foundation on a new initiative to support social innovators. The initiative AshokaTech now has over 70 fellows, individuals who are effectively aligning social entrepreneurship with technology."
Speculation is running high about what secret CIA program Dick Cheney told the CIA to deny to Congress. Experts say, based on timing, that they've ruled out the possibility that the program had anything to do with torture.
Fresh off the BHTV presses is this absolutely fascinating discussion between Evgeny Morozov and Ethan Zuckerman about new media technologies, foreign policy and security. Both gentlemen are pioneers in this emerging field. Morozov is one of the only journalists covering this field and Zuckerman is the founder of Global Voices Online. This is a gem of a diavlog. In the clip below, they compare social media's role in recent events in Iran and Urumqi, China.  Enjoy.Â
