The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer & The Community of Friends

The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer Turns out that famous recording artists are people with all the flaws, failings and feelings of everyone else you’ve ever known. As much as that should be a “duh,” I was pretty disappointed after Melissa Etheridge’s jilted partner aired dirty laundry about how Etheridge saved her emotions for her songs. That disclosure, true

From Keyboard-Driven UI to Google Glass: What’s the Next Metaphor?

On the eve of the release of Google Glass we’re continuing to hear tech pundits go on about how nobody except wanna-be hipsters are going to wear Google Glass. Just for the record, many of these folks are the same ones who went on record in 2007 saying that no one is going to want to listen to music on

In Bad Faith 12: Happy Holy Friday: What Non-Believers May Be Missing

I’ve had wonderful conversations with my girlfriend, Tricia, over the past few weeks as she’s queried me about my faith status saying that after a year she still doesn’t really know what I believe in. Also, for me, this week has historically been significant as a time when I’ve reflected on my faith and more than a few times found

Video Wednesdays: Rob Reid: Copyright Math(tm)

In honor of my students reading through this week’s materials on Copyright issues…

Video Fridays: Jane McGonigal: Gaming Can Make a Better World

I guess it’s gaming week. This selection, game designer, Jane McGonigal, goes well beyond the idea that gaming isn’t just a waste of time, but a part of human evolution and should be tapped to actually save our future…

The Story of the OLPC: Kids Are the Mission Not A Market

At CES 2012 this past January the One Laptop Per Child foundation unveiled their newest model called the OLPC XO 3.0 tablet. The model shown seemed to have gained some weight and was much more boxy than the prototype hyped by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte in 2010. (see videos at the bottom of the page for CES 2012 coverage and

How Important Is Music Education? TEDxBoston – Benjamin Zander and the YOA [video]

I’ve been fortunate enough to have had many music educators as my students and they tend to respond very strongly to the book we read in my class, The Art of Possibility by Conductor Benjamin Zander and Psychologist Rosamund Stone Zander. The following video was brought to my attention via one of my students’ blog posts and speaks very specifically

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong [TED talk]

At TEDx Orlando 2011 we were shown the following video/TED talk by Eric Whitacre. I’ve been working in online education for over three years and earned my master’s degree and worked on a doctorate online, I know how powerful the connections can be. Far from being a weak substitute for “being there,” there is a powerful “being there” that we

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Why do we do what we do? Some might respond that asking such questions is a typical first-world problem, that it’s the modern equivalent to trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head because with so many people going hungry in the world and in our own country, how dare we waste time entertaining such things