findingDulcinea

Talking with Stephen Chao

 
Stephen Chao has his mother to thank for his career path: instead of studying ancient Greek and Latin texts, he spends his time watching online videos. Before inventing the Fox reality TV series “Cops” and cofounding the video Web site “Wonder How To,” Chao was all set to accept a full scholarship to Yale to get his PhD in Classics. That is, until his mother insisted he take a break from academia and go work, “At least for a little while.” So, Chao took the first of many quirky jobs: he became a UFO tracker in Bolivia for the National Enquirer. He was also hired to chase Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors, though they were apparently nearly as elusive as unidentified flying objects.

When Chao returned from South America, he found his job prospects stark, and decided to go to Harvard Business School. “I was a pariah,” he explained, “No one would hire me.” After graduating, his prospects improved, and he became a major executive at Fox. His tenure ended with a misinterpreted prank that embarrassed Rupert Murdoch in front of Dick Cheney.

The unusual path that led Chao to where he is today is very much reflected in the type of work he does now. His understanding of the “how to” video as an “anthropological window on the world,” didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at first. How can instructional clips ranging from “Hacking a Nerf gun for superior firepower” to “Conning people into buying you dinner” really reflect a cultural zeitgeist?

But when I checked out the thousands of videos available on the site and saw the excitement and knowledge of many of my would-be instructors, I understood exactly what Chao was talking about. These clips aren’t just about what you can learn to do. Instead, they’re a reflection of how delighted and enthusiastic people can be about nitpicky details. The “wonder” part of Wonder How To is equally important as the instructional element.

After hearing about all of Chao’s adventures and experiences, and his capacity to appreciate a wide variety of things, (from dead languages to smut magazines to corporate media) it became clear that his latest endeavor is simply an extension of his zeal for the zany. And, by offering Internet users a platform to express their own gusto through clips that range from the extraordinary to the inane, he’s turned his love of online video into a shared adventure. Wonder How To is a trip into the imagination of anyone who cares to contribute: an anthropological experience, indeed.

Read the interview on findingDulcinea.

Isabel Cowles
Writer

International Society for Technology in Education

Eighteen thousand teachers and industry leaders will descend on San Antonio this weekend for the country’s largest education technology gathering—the annual International Society for Technology in Education conference.

And findingDulcinea will be there for the fun.

In its 29th year, the ISTE conference sets the stage for the nation’s largest discussion of how technology can and will transform and improve the classroom experience the world over.

Teachers, exhibitors and education leaders will come together to “convene, connect and transform” and the findingDulcinea education team will be on hand to join the discussion.

Our trip to San Antonio is just one part of a larger effort here at findingDulcinea to reach out to the wider education community and let them know about our education initiative.

With panels, workshops and featured speakers planned throughout the weekend, it’ll be difficult to catch everything; however, we’re really looking forward to Monday’s session on Connecting Students, Technology and Learning in Afterschool programs; the presentation on the lauded One Laptop Per Child Project and most of all, the conference’s kick-off, a keynote speech from New Yorker columnist and writer James Surowiecki.

Author of the book “The Wisdom of Crowds,” Surowiecki is going to talk about whether better decisions come from the individual or the collective, and how this debate applies to how we find and share information online.

We’ll be around all weekend, so we hope to see you in San Antonio.

Chris Coats
Senior Education Writer

Daily Dulcinea

Since the site went live in October 2007, we have been brainstorming various ways to showcase the rich content offered by findingDulcinea. So when CEO Mark Moran suggested producing a Daily Dulcinea video, we jumped at the chance to offer a more personal interaction with our users.

In each video, we discuss On This Day, Happy Birthday and one noteworthy news story with our writers and outreach members. As the host, I try to ensure that the star of our show, our content, remains center stage at all times.

We hope that the Daily Dulcinea will explain how and why we pulled these interesting and important historical events, birthdays and news stories from the flood of information available to you on the Internet.

Please visit us every morning and let us know what you think; we’d love to hear from you!

Watch more Daily Dulcinea!

Kate Davey
CoFounder and Outreach Development

Technology: Teachnology!

I recently visited a teacher friend’s high school English class. This is what I observed during the 47 minutes of allocated instruction time: 17 minutes dedicated to classroom management; four interruptions, including two separate visits from guidance counselors, who pulled five students out of the class; and a continuous, high-pitched ring from a phone in the room.

The class ended with students requesting that their exams be returned to them by the end of the week (which would allow their teacher two days to grade all 33 of them). The bell rang, the students fled, and my friend’s minute of downtime was spent picking up a stack of student assignments that had toppled over. The period came to an end with my friend darting down the hallway and around the corner to conduct his duties in the lunchroom battlefield.

We all know teachers are stretched to the limit, but when do they find the time to actually teach? When I posed this question to my friend, he responded with a harsh, blank stare.

Today’s students, who have been described as having an information-age mindset, may help teachers find the answer. Current students are members of the Net Generation, and the technology and media they use during their formative years influence how they learn. So, as one of my favorite Edublogs, The CoolCat Teacher, suggests, let the technology do some of the teaching.

There are lots of Web sites containing lesson plans galore, with interactive features to promote a media-rich classroom, but I’m going to let the teachers do the talking, as they relay tips and tools for teaching and technology:

1.Speedofcreativity.org has handouts with an overview of integrating technology into the classroom.

2.Successful Teaching has clever teaching ideas for all grade levels.

3. Teach and Learn will inspire you to “think outside the box,” and outside of the classroom, in order to create an inspirational environment for learning.

4. Teach42 is a comprehensive resource offering practical advice for using technology to facilitate teaching.

5. And for those teachers who experience internal dissonance from time to time, Artichoke gives you some food for thought.

I realize that technology can’t do all the teaching, but it’s important for 21st Century learning … and it can cut teachers a little slack.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

Best Lists of the Best Sites

While we consider every guide, news story, or feature on findingDulcinea to be a “best of” list of links, there are some other sites out there that do short and sweet lists of great sites. So, for your surfing pleasure, we present the best of the best lists of Web sites.

Awards for the Best Sites

Webby Awards are like the Oscars of the Web. Awards are presented for sites, online video, online advertising and, more recently mobile. Here's a link to this year's winners.  You'll also want to check out photos from this year's award ceremony, you might be surprised at just how may famous faces you recognize.

Time  releases a "Best of the Web" once a year. While most of the sites listed in this year's list are more entertaining than educational, Time's "best" are definitely worth a peek.

Best Oldies-but-Goodies Lists

Forbes' Best of the Web is not the most up-to-date "best of" list; rather, it works almost like a directory of all things Forbes (think Gourmet Food, International Investing, Fine Art, and many other categories necessary for fine living).

PC MAG divides it's "top" list from 2007 into classic sites (howstuffworks.com, ebay.com, imdb.com, and many other familiar favorites) and "undiscovered" sites.  Because the list is outdated by Internet standards the sites may no longer be as "undiscovered" as they might have been a year ago, but you'll probably still find a few you've never seen.

Not Willing to Wait for a List?

Try searching a social bookmarking site to see what other users are recommending (we've got a list of social bookmarking tools) and land on great sites before they make it to any lists.

Visit sites and blogs that feature beta (new) sites - try the Museum of Modern Betas, Go2Web20.net, or KillerStartUps to get yourself started.

Also - check out Netcetera's  "Site Spotlight" to find a noteworthy site each day. If you want to know what each member of the findingDulcinea staff thinks are the best sites, take a look at our employee profiles.

Think I forgot some "best-of" lists?  Please let us know!

Haley Lovett
Audience Development

Talking with Stephen Francis Jones

Stephen Francis Jones’s path to architecture began when he discovered his talent for drafting. “I just kept taking drafting classes, because they were easy A's,” he told me. One thing led to another, and Jones now owns his own architecture firm in Marina Del Rey, near the California coast.

Before heading to the office, Jones spends an hour sculling at the UCLA Aquatic Center. Once he arrives at SF Jones Architects, Jones oversees a twelve-person firm. He is directly involved in all of the contracts his firm handles, a total of twelve to fifteen projects per year in the hotel, restaurant and spa industries.

Jones’s interest in designing for the hospitality industry came from his desire to work closely with his clients and complete his projects in a manageable period of time. He started his career at a Boston based firm called Jung / Brannen Associates, where he designed high-rises. But the time it took to see the projects completed, and the number of other people involved in the design and implementation left Jones wanting more.

An opportunity to work for Wolfgang Puck gave Jones more control over his projects. After witnessing the design of Spago from start to finish, Jones realized how rewarding small-scale projects could be.

By working on intimate spaces for specific clients, Jones gets to focus on the design element of architecture, rather than on the mechanics of building a space. Design, he tells me, is one of the most value-adding elements of architecture today.

Jones’s favorite clients are the ones who have concepts for their space, which he then implements. Every restaurant has a different appeal and a unique aesthetic. Jones’s job is to raise the client’s expectations from the moment they step into the space. He wants them to feel sexy, comfortable and cool: from the threshold to the bathroom. Integrating the front and back of the house and the cuisine type with its environment are two pivotal elements in Jones’s work.

Wherever he goes, Jones’s eyes are open, scouring the world for inspiration. Jones keeps a personal notebook that includes sketches of everything that pleases him aesthetically, whether or not it fits into a current project. He’s collected a small library in his notebook, with drawings of everything he likes: from pebbles he’s picked up on the beach to steps he’s walked in Rome.  

To find out more about Jones’s inspirations and his thoughts about architectural design, read his findingDulcinea interview.

Isabel Cowles
Writer

The Internet: It's Where We Live Now

Last week, a few of us went to a Internet panel at the Kitchen, which is not a kitchen at all, but a nonprofit organization offering performance space to all types of artists. The Kitchen has been especially innovative in its choices of media and literary artists, so it was the perfect place for n +1 magazine  to host its panel, “The Internet: It’s Where We Live Now.” The panelists were all going to “present reports from the online world.” Topics included porn, blogging, and commenting and commenters. It seemed particularly applicable to us (well, not the porn) as a window into the way information is digested online.

They certainly delivered invaluable information, even if as a group, they are not fans of the Internet. The first panelist, editor Mark Greif, made his reservations poetically apparent in his discussion of the aesthetics of the Internet. He mourned its two-dimensionality, suggesting that unlike even channel surfing, the Internet couldn’t provide a well-rounded, soothing experience. As someone who surfs the Web all day, I understand what he means: the constant clicking, loading and closing creates a disconnected feeling, for sure. But I like to think of findingDulcinea as a sort of TV guide to the Web: here are the programs you can explore to have a cohesive, fully formed experience.

 The second panelist, author Caleb Crain, provided a somewhat less intense critique of the Internet. But he still felt like everything online—headlines, advertisements, blog posts—is a one-second-sales pitch. “Hey! Have I got a ___ for you! Give me a minute, and I’ll give the best darn ___ you’ve laid eyes on.” I definitely agreed with this. But my work on Beyond the Headlines allows me to break through the more shallow offerings on the Web and fill in information beyond the catchy, alluring and scandal-based headlines.

But not every Web surfer has the chance to do the kind of thorough exploration I do. For example, Moe Tkacik, an editor at Jezebel, confessed to humiliating herself on a daily basis to get hits on the blog. Anyone who works with me knows that I do in fact humiliate myself on a daily basis, but this is free of charge, and not published online.

The role I do fill online is one described by the last panelist, Benjamin Kunkel, a former editor at n +1 and the author of the novel “Indecision.” He argued that not all anonymous commenting was bad, that some users were “information angels.” He was talking about the people who moderate and contribute to sites like Wikipedia, but I feel I can include myself in this group of people as well. The Internet may have paved the way for blasphemy, pornography and a truckload of bad grammar, but it can be a beautiful, rich and intensive resource. It provides the wings that enable information angels to fly.

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Cut Yourself Off

Every day I ask myself where the Internet is going. Picture me holding my hands over my eyes and crumpling my mouth in horror as I ponder a Web teeming with nasty, anonymous commenters, specious user-generated content and RSS feeds up the wazoo. My only consolation is that it is possible to ignore the frightful aspects of the Web—social network upon social network; ad-ridden music lyric resources; fake Bank of America e-mails; videos of people sitting around—and look for only the best. It does exist. Every day of work at findingDulcinea is a quest for that site that no one knows about; that video that will bring tears to your eyes; that blogger who may be the coolest culture vulture you’ve ever “met.” And for even the most übermodern Web ventures—your Meebos, Bebos, Twitters and Revvrs—there's a findingDulcinea guide for that.

Roger Cohen, longtime foreign correspondent from London, recently started a new column in The New York Times. He also has a blog called Passages on the International Herald Tribune site. In his June 16 column, "In Praise of Being Cut Off," Cohen talks about field journalism, an increasingly passé mode of reportage that gets its kicks from being out in the technological wilderness with only a telex machine for company:

I worry about stories dying, replaced by stuff. Content for platforms does not a story make. Today, you arrive anywhere and surf the Net. Being “always on” is being always off, to something.

British journalistic output remains incredibly thorough and utilitarian; sensitive to what is real, as distinct from what is reality; from what is far away, as opposed to what is “meta.” Certainly, Britain still has "Big Brother," Twitter, tabloids and texting. But I never feel left out reading British news sources: I feel smarter. It’s so easy to feel left out on the Web. It’s even easier to feel dumb.   

Perhaps I'm actually admiring the baby boomers here, not just the English:  I mean those for whom the Internet is a professional necessity, but one with spiritually negligible value. These journalists prefer to be out in the field, and when asked to post their story to the Web, say, “Oh, all right, then, but I haven’t got a clue how to get it up there.” For journalists like Cohen, clever tools, sharing capabilities, RSS feeds and such may bring more readers, but they won’t confer spiritual value. These Webby gadgets may actually be more distracting than useful. Readers should be able to find online all the purity, adventure and knowledge they find in a documentary film, newspaper or magazine. Everything else is, as Cohen puts it, just “stuff.”

U.S. columnists may be embracing the fast-paced, casual structure of the Web because they think this is what we want. I can only hope that the impending election is what’s making everyone so feverish, but I doubt it. Some online news portals believe they have to ride the wave of social networking and the emotional nakedness of blogging to keep their page views up. If this is true, it’s unfortunate. All news really needs is to get out more, and take us along.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer

Teaching Through Edublogs

Teachers have the ability to revolutionize the educational experience using the blogosphere.

“Edublogs,” put simply, are blogs that discuss matters related to the classroom. They can be instructional, discuss educational policy, and be read by teachers, administrators and even parents.

They enable teachers to publish their likes and dislikes, as well as insights and discoveries they’ve made on their teaching journeys. Edublogs encourage collaboration by providing a forum for teachers to share lesson plans and advice.

Not all schools embrace the use of blogs by their faculty members; in fact, many want nothing to do with their staff maintaining personal blogs. But despite the occasional instance of misuse, most teachers who take up blogging do it to benefit their classrooms.

Another simple use—and possibly the most effective use of teacher blogs—is to share classroom stories. This includes successes and frustrations. To view some exemplary teacher blogs, check out Edutopia’s Top 10 Edublogs. Hopefully they’ll inspire you to start your own. Finally, don’t forget to take into consideration the things not to do when edublogging.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

FindingDulcinea Wants YOU to Talk Back

 From the day we launched findingDulcinea, we have wanted to involve our audience in a conversation with us. Users want to have a dialogue, and they want to be heard.

However, we weren’t quite sure of the best way to make that conversation happen. Because our content goes through various levels of editorial review, we didn’t want to allow just anyone to alter or add to our content, as it would undermine the consistent, high-quality content our remarkable (and fabulous) full-time editorial staff creates.
We decided that the most effective way to create dialogue was to provide user commentary and forums for each article on our site. But I didn’t know how we could moderate these forums if we were to receive hundreds, or even thousands, of comments per day. Where could we find a tool that would allow our users to comment and engage one another, but still keep the discussion free of meanies, pervs and spam? The answer was a site that refers to itself as “the largest news aggregator that no one has heard of”: Topix.

I heart Topix. I can’t say that enough these days. We came across Topix a while back when we did a Site Spotlight feature on it. What we didn’t know was that it offers publishers a forum technology with a built-in moderating function that eliminates profanities, spam linking and just downright bad comments. What a joy it was to discover this! Not only could we have our cake, but we could eat it too! 

So, today, we are announcing that you can now post comments to user forums for all of our daily articles. I truly hope that this ability will prompt our users to have meaningful discussions and healthy debates about the issues that affect their lives, and will bring them together to create a fruitful community.

Click here to visit findingDulcinea forums.

Happy posting!

Sushene Leitch
Chief Operating Officer

Talking with Carole Brody Fleet

When my hour-long interview with “Widows Wear Stilettos” author Carole Brody Fleet ended, I was excited to transcribe all of the juicy details I’d gotten from our discussion. Unfortunately, due to a technological glitch, all I could hear was the sound of my own voice asking questions, intermittently laughing or saying, “uh-huh,” “wow,” “that’s amazing!”

My stomach sank. I would have to ask Carole to do the interview all over again. After listening to my voice on the tape, I managed to recreate the structure of our conversation on paper. I emailed it to Carole with a humble plea: “Please, could you respond to nearly a dozen personal questions … all over again?”

A few days later, she sent me back the questions, complete with the same thoughtful remarks she had offered initially. I felt instantly relieved; the piece would still run on time. In her reply e-mail, Carole assured me she was happy to help.

All I lost was a sound bite. I can only imagine what it would be like to lose a friend, loved one or husband. But if I were to lose my life partner, I would certainly find solace in Carole’s spirit and the project she has created to share her experience and offer help. Her upbeat and accommodating response helped me understand why so many women rely on “Widows Wear Stilettos” as a source of support and encouragement.

Carole generously communicated the essence of her message to me, as I’m sure she does to everyone she encounters—widows especially. Her intention is simple: to keep women who have faced loss from feeling hopeless and purposeless. Not only is she there as a source of support for grieving women, but she’s also created an entire community to encourage women to stay inspired and excited about life, even in the face of tragedy.

Carole Brody Fleet made me promise to keep in touch. I have no doubt that if I showed up at her doorstep, in need of a good meal and a gossip fest, she’d offer me a chicken turnover and some great tips on how to embrace life more fully.

Read the full interview.

Isabel Cowles
Writer

A Wiki'd Dilemma

Today, thanks to the wiki format, anyone can be a published author. A wiki is a collaborative Web site that allows a community of anonymous editors to shape the site’s content by writing, editing and deleting text as they see fit. Wikis have helped the Web make good on one of its main promises: to be an interactive, community-driven medium. When done well, wikis can become a central repository for a diversity of knowledge (as evidenced by Wikipedia). Yet, they receive as much criticism as they do praise, because not all information is equal.

To assess a wiki’s role in research and learning, let’s consider some pros and cons:

Pros:

-Users can contribute their knowledge and share information

-Wiki articles are useful for providing introductory information about a topic

Cons:

-The anonymous, largely unregulated nature of editing articles can lead to the publishing of incorrect information

-Though intended to be unbiased, author opinion often creeps into articles

For educational purposes, wikis can be a powerful tool—a starting point to obtain insight and knowledge—but by no means are they the ultimate research and learning instrument. To learn more about using Wikipedia, visit the findingDulcinea Guide to Understanding Wikipedia.

Jen O'Neill
Education Writer

Variety Is the Spice of Sites

The beet gnocchi was just a prelude.

As if our editors don’t drill it into our heads enough already, I’ve been confronted twice over the past two days with the importance of variety—it’s the spice of our site at findingDulcinea, and, it seems, the way of the world.

Beyond the Headlines, Web Guides and Netcetera pieces are expected to include the most eclectic mix of sites possible, with sources large and small, authors casual and formal, and opinions pro and con. Appropriately, while searching for the best Web sites on sandwiches for a Netcetera Foodie article, I came across this nugget of information on the site of a trade magazine called Progressive Grocer:

“New research from foodservice consultancy Technomic found that though preferences for traditional sandwiches remain strong, consumers are looking for greater variety in sandwich ingredients available from limited- and full-service restaurants.”

To me, a writer immersed in the throes of research, it was achingly reminiscent of findingDulcinea’s concept: to present a solid base of information, decorated with insight, trends, emerging ideas, controversial studies and general eye-openers.

The tricky part is keeping the ingredients fresh and the ideas flowing. Supplementing broad basics with specifics seems to be the best way to establish an audience—one that returns, knowing something inventive and thought-provoking awaits. According to the blogger at Skelliwag, coming up with your own great idea could be as simple as finding twists on someone else’s.

Such as banh mi thit nuong, a Vietnamese version of a meatball sub, and perfect example of an innovative twist. (Look for it in findingDulcinea’s feature article on sandwiches later this summer.)

But it all comes back to beet gnocchi: that’s what I ate for dinner last night at a restaurant next to a subway station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It also featured a wood-burning pizza oven, had its own grape vines, served house-made buffalo mozzarella and somehow managed to create the most perfect dessert of poached pear with raisins and vanilla gelato in a red wine sauce. It was the ultimate in variety, and for a moment, it made me content.

Sarah Amandolare
Senior Writer

A Different Kind of Literacy

Literacy in the 21st Century is much more than reading and writing. According to the American Librarian Association, information literacy is the ability to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate and use effectively the needed information.” The concept of information literacy has been around since the 1970’s, but has taken on a new life our contemporary, information-saturated world. How do we look at information to distinguish the good from the bad? On that note, how do we restrain our urge to use the first twenty search results as our primary information base? After all, we’re living in an era of instant gratification.

Being information literate means knowing where to start your research—this is where the role of the educator comes in. In the meantime, information literacy isn’t a skill that can be acquired by osmosis, or taught in one, two or three lessons. The best way to look at it is not as a destination, but a journey—an invaluable one at that.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

Big Brown's Shocking Loss: They Forgot the Horse

In "And Justice for All," Al Pacino plays Arthur Kirkland, a criminal defense attorney. In the climactic scene, he explains to the jury that the prosecutor "wants a win so badly today, it means so much to him, he is so carried away with the prospect of winning, that he forgot something absolutely essential to today's proceeding. He forgot his case. He forgot to bring it."  And so it was with Richard Dutrow and Mark Iavarone, trainer and principal owner of Big Brown. As soon as the Preakness was over, a triumph in the Belmont was a foregone conclusion. Cracked hoof ? No problem. Four days of missed training? Won't hurt him a bit. A new, talented opponent ? He has no chance. Thirty years since a Triple Crown?

Trainers don't know how to train their horses.  And they held discussions about a ticker tape parade and mused about how hefty merchandise sales might be.  Big Brown faced some serious obstacles in the Belmont Stakes.  And his trainer had no plan to overcome them, and his owner was on the same joy ride. And when the gates opened up on Saturday, it was revealed that they wanted a win so badly they had forgotten something absolutely essential to the day's proceeding: their horse.

No matter how talented a horse may be, he needs to be healthy and happy to win a 1 1/2 mile graded stakes race. This race was over before they entered the first turn.  Big Brown, so placidly professional in the Derby and Preakness, was very rank and his head was not in the game; after settling down a little bit, he again began to get rank as soon as the serious running started, and his rider wisely eased him.  And there was Dutrow in the stands, wearing a Trump hat and preparing his acceptance speech. As Arthur Kirkland would say, he was out of order.

Read more about what happened to Big Brown.

Mark Moran
Founder and CEO

LAMP Spotlights Kids Online

On the evening of June 4, I attended an event offered by the LAMP (the Learning About Multimedia Project) at the Brooklyn Public Library

DC Vito, the executive director of the LAMP, introduced the panelists: the LAMP’s education director and CUNY media studies professor Katherine Fry; Rachel Dretzin, co-producer of the PBS “Frontline” documentary “Growing Up Online”; and attorney Kevin O’Donnell, chief of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Cyber Crimes Unit. The discussion focused on the dangers and benefits of kids being online, and in particular, how to keep kids safe while they are online. 

O’Donnell has spoken to several teen victims of cyber crimes. The one factor shared by these teens: “they knew the [Internet safety] rules, but they don’t think ... the danger … actually applies to them.” 

O’Donnell also shared three short, but powerful ad campaigns on Internet Safety from the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children, one of which was “Don’t Believe the Type”. 

O’Donnell had horrific stories to tell about abused children and teens; I am not sure how he does his job every day, but I am certainly thankful that he does.

Rachel Dretzin then showed part of her documentary, “Growing Up Online,”  which explores the impact of the digital universe on kids. Dretzin showed a particularly moving part of her documentary about cyberbullying, which concerned the case of Ryan Halligan, a seventh grader from Vermont who committed suicide. 

In an effort to find out why Ryan had done it, his father signed onto Ryan’s AIM account, discovering that more of his son’s friends were willing to talk to him online than they were in person; they told him that Ryan had been cyberbullied.

Mr. Halligan also found a file of conversations his son had saved with an AIM friend; they were all about ways to commit suicide and encouraging one another to do it. Dretzin said that while everyone needs to teach their child about Internet safety, it’s “not only about telling our kids ‘don’t speak to strangers,’ it’s about spotting our kids’ vulnerabilities.”

Katherine Fry, the panel moderator, then opened up the floor for questions from the community. Kate, one of the two teenagers in the group, and a LAMP volunteer, offered one of the best ways to keep a child safe online: “Tell your children ‘Don’t do anything online you wouldn’t do in person.’”

Kate Davey
Outreach Development

Talking with Ellen Geer

Ellen Geer has a special connection to acting. Not only has Ellen worked in the theater since childhood, her father Will was also an actor, and her daughter Willow continues the family tradition.

Pursuing the family profession wasn’t always easy for the Geers. In 1951, Will Geer was forced to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) to testify about his alleged ties to the Communist Party. 

HUAC ultimately blacklisted Mr. Geer, and the Geer family became homeless, relying on friends for support. Eventually, Will Geer returned to the craft, starring as Grandpa in the 1970s TV series “The Waltons,” and establishing the Theatricum Botanicum, which stages productions outdoors in a garden setting. Today, Ellen Geer continues her father’s work at the Theatrical Botanicum, as well as teaching at UCLA and appearing on the big and small screen.

Talking to Ellen about her own career was an enlightening experience, free of any of the pretense you might expect from a famous Hollywood actor. During the fD interview, Ellen was soft spoken, thoughtful and succinct.

During our conversation, she expressed a deep concern over the fast-paced and increasingly one-dimensional milieu of rising actors. With each incoming class Ellen teaches at the UCLA theater department, she notices that students are less and less versed in general acting talents. She explained, “When we grew up you used to have to know how to sing, dance and play an instrument. Because you wanted to be able to get jobs any way you can. And I’m finding that with the young people it’s just not as varied. You don’t have as many Renaissance actors.”

Despite the changing nature of the profession, Ellen is constantly inspired by the work of her pupils, and frequently employs them to play in the pieces she produces and directs at the Theatricum Botanicum.

One of the things I found most inspiring about talking to Ellen was the profound connection she feels to her family and community through acting. Her commitment to theater is absolute, though she’s had some extraordinary film opportunities: most notably in one of my favorite films, Hal Ashby’s 1971 “Harold and Maude,” in which Geer plays the luminous Sunshine Doré.

Ellen’s work in film and television is only her “bread and butter,” she says, and she prefers to work at her family playhouse. The pieces she produces, directs and acts in at the Theatricum Botanicum ranges from the Greek tragedies to Chekhov to modern day renditions of “Dracula.” And always, Shakespeare in the garden.

Read the interview here.

Isabel Cowles
Writer

Internet Week: There's No Such Thing As "Free Content"

For one of our Internet Week outings, we attended Tuesday’s panel discussion at Columbia Business School, entitled “The Mass Media in Transition: How Digital Technology and the Search for Content are Transforming the Industry.” Moderated by Ava Saeve, panelists included Lisa Hsia, Jeremy Kagan, David Rogers and Sree Sreenivasan. Here are a few of the intriguing issues explored by the panelists.

•    How has online media changed the skill set required for a journalist? Has the increasing number of smaller media outlets made jobs at “mainstream media” companies less desirable?

•    Is the creation of sites such as hulu (the NBC/News Corp. site that offers free television shows and clips) a better strategy for the television industry and its viewers than the approach taken by the music industry (refusing to provide free content while attempting to prosecute piracy)?

•    How should companies deal with losing control of their brands to viral videos, bloggers and citizen journalism? Kagan gave the example of the Mentos/Diet Coke viral video; Mentos took advantage of it as a marketing opportunity and Diet Coke ignored it.

At the end of the discussion, a member of the audience asked the panelists to provide some “required reading,” and we thought their list of books, sites and podcasts was worth sharing.

Books

“Brand Hijacked: Marketing Without Marketing” by Alex Wipperfurth
“Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
“Emotionomics” by Dan Hill
“Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky
“Personality Not Included” by Rohit Bhargava

Blogs and Sites 

Micro Persuasion
BuzzMachine
All Things Digital
AdvertisingAge
paidContent.org
eMarketer
TechCrunch
Engadget
Lifehacker
brite
The Technium
Influential Marketing Blog

Podcasts

Future Tense

Haley A. Lovett
Audience Development

Technological Immigrants

At some point, nearly everyone has had the experience of feeling like an immigrant, being a stranger in a new place. Today, a new immigrant group is taking over classrooms across the world. These immigrants are teachers who have newly entered a virtual landscape of social networking, text messaging and blogging, where the natives speak a seemingly unfamiliar language. Anyone who was not born into a tech-savvy world (i.e., anyone born before 1983) can be labeled a digital immigrant. Marc Prensky believes that the generation gap separates today’s students (the digital natives) from their teachers (the digital immigrants). This comparison can be used to help understand the differences between those who are comfortable with technology and those who are not. Prensky believes educators must change the way they teach; postulating that digital immigrants must learn to communicate with digital natives, because the natives are essentially unable to understand the immigrants’ old ways of getting an idea across.

With all due respect, Mr. Prensky, we disagree. Bridging the gap between immigrants and natives should be a mutual, not a one-way, process; it involves merging and building upon the language each group speaks to engage digital native learners and to empower digital immigrants. With training and experience, digital immigrants can learn to use the Web and technology to enhance  the way they teach.  For example, Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet Technology  believes that we can use digital natives’ technological fluency to strengthen social institutions. We think that’s a step in the right direction.

In our next blog entry, we’ll talk about how students, despite being digital natives, are actually not all that great at using the Internet effectively.

Jennifer O'Neill
Education Writer

The Cure for News Fatigue

Young Internet users have every excuse to be tired; we’re at the helm of a multi-tasking, 9-tabs-open-in-Firefox world, where nothing stops us from checking our e-mail once a minute while streaming a musician’s MySpace page, updating our Twitter account and working on that project our boss wants by the end of the hour.

Never mind the obvious evidence that multi-tasking is a “menace” we should try to avoid; we seem to instinctively know this already. Young people polled by Context-Based Research Group, who just released a study on news consumption for the Associated Press, said that they crave deeper news stories. They continually refresh headlines and seem to get no further. It’s not for lack of trying, many said.

In 2006 I was on a phone interview for this job. As findingDulcinea’s founder, Mark Moran, explained the concept of the then-nascent site to me, I was immediately struck by the idea of comprehensive news that was, above all, inclusive—not of information, but of people. If our generation becomes culturally illiterate, I thought, it will partly be because old media does not shake hands with new media and start a partnership. If findingDulcinea.com isn’t a way for me to inherit my father’s 30-year legacy at Reuters, I don’t know what is.

The 71-page report for the Associated Press uses an anthropological and ethnographic approach to uncover how young people use news. It profiles many of the survey participants, whose diverse backgrounds and career paths affect their relationship to news in different ways. There was a common thread among these people, all aged 18 to 34: their desire to find more and know more via digital news. This has been findingDulcinea’s mission from the beginning. It’s our approach to every avenue of the Web.

Appropriately, we covered this news milestone in our Beyond the Headlines section. Beyond the Headlines doesn’t tell you what to read on a particular story, but it does give you a range of options for reading that includes a story’s headline, lead (or lede, as news reporters know it), background, and context. We use many sources to gather our information, and these sources aren’t just hyperlinks; they’re concepts, opinions, details and facts. Beyond the Headlines is the section of findingDulcinea.com where, we hope, people in every age bracket will visit to go beyond merely refreshing their favorite news-headline site. That habit, the AP report found, is a “sign of boredom,” but the abundant Internet shouldn’t ever make us bored.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer