My sister in-law, Melody Whitehead, ran the torch in Woodstock on Dec 27, 2009. It was very exciting and she looked great.
My sister in-law and my nephews at the relay
Everyone at the relay got a big kick out of my dog, Katie-Kate wearing my hockey jersey.
Many people took her picture and then the official video guy came around. Once Katie walked toward the camera, my sister Linda commented that action would get her on TV. Well close enough, it got her on the official Olympic Torch Relay site. Visit the official site here.
Check it out. She appears around the 1 minute mark. about 2 seconds of fame… I love it!
We live in a subject truth based on our cultural narratives.
Devdutt Pattanai does a wonderful job discussing the cultural narratives through our mythologies. He uses mythology to explain the different business practices of India and the West but this can also help us understand the many other practices of our cultures. Can we use this understanding to help the communication between cultures on a global stage.
We are becoming a global society with more informal conversations between cultures, we can create a new narrative that could include the preservation the planet. Our Western culture is all about concur and take what you need NOW before your death. Other cultures, like India, belief in multiple lives therefore you have to preserve the earth for your next life. (I might be wrong here)… but it is exciting to learn about how other cultures view ‘the world’.
Technology can help facilitate the communication between cultures. Social media and social networking allows all voices to be heard. Educational Technology can connect students from differently countries to discuss and learn from each other.
Will we transform/change our Western narrative if we listen to other narratives? We will become a melting pot or a tossed salad of cultures. It may be our digital generation that moves our cultures together to create a new narrative.
Social media (the sharing web) is growing at a exponential growth. Gary Hayes decided to put together this little Flash app (which is in constant development) showing how active & dynamic the Social Web is.
Below are some of the key data points that the ‘Gary’s Social Media Count’ is based on (many will be updated!).
20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)
Facebook 600k new members per day, and photos, videos per month, 700mill & 4 mill respectively (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)
Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)
iPolicy UK – SMS messaging has a bright future (Aug 09)
900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)
UPDATE: YouTube 1Billion watched per day SMH (2009)- counter updated!
Second Life 250k virtual goods made daily, text messages 1250 per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)
Money – $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)
Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)
Mobile social network subscribers – 92.5 million at the end of 2008, by end of 2013 rising to between 641.6-873.1 million or 132 mill annually (source Informa PDF)
SMS – Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (source Everysingleoneofus sms statistics)
A TED video on the physical world interacting with the world of digital data. No longer will we need desktop computes or laptops. No longer will we have to sit for hours in front of a machine interacting with a machine (computer). We can get information while interacting with our physical world.
Pranav Mistry, an MIT graduate student has created a device called the SixthSense that uses our physical gestures and interactions with real-world objects and integrates/combines them with data (digital information) for ‘just in time” knowledge building.
He hopes that this will solve the digital divide. All equipment needed is extremely cheap and the software is open source. You only need a wireless connection to the internet.
Near the end of the video he shows how his device makes working with digital data the same as working with information in a physical form (on paper)
I love it. I can hardly wait until it becomes the norm.
We will still need digital literacy, like what is a pixel, but the confinements of desktop and laptop will no longer exist.
It’s not just western society that is using social media to influence politics.
Cynthia Schneider looks at two international “American Idol”-style shows — one in Afghanistan, and one in the United Arab Emirates — and shows the surprising effect that these reality-TV competitions are creating in their societies.
Less is more
KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid
We have all heard it before but how do you apply it to a PowerPoint? Below is a PowerPoint on the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of PowerPoints.
I often have instructors asking how to make their colourful PowerPoints available to students. I advise them to make 2 presentations. One for the delivery and one for printing. Better still, create a black and white print (pdf) of your PowerPoint with 3 slides per page. I have found that students prefer 3 slides per page. It saves paper and gives enough room for notes, if students take notes.
