findingDulcinea

FindingDulcinea Fan Poetry

The first ever poem about findingDulcinea has been published. The Web Laureate found us via a nice review written by Mashable. A poem on the Web Laureate blog soon followed.

"My Quest"

My librarian,
Yes, all’s mine,
Sitting over there,
Reading, definitely wise.

My librarian,
Who helps me,
Finding — I need found,
Showing, just what I seek.

My librarian,
A wave - I shout "Yahoo!"
Hearkens to days of past,
Organized, structured too.

My librarian,
Clearly, new around here,
Finding and sharing each,
Dulcinea, my sweet love, I beg, I do beseech.

Read more poems from The Web Laureate.

YouTube in the Classroom

Widely used for killing time, entertainment and procrastination, YouTube is now being used to supplement instruction in the classroom.

As an educator, you can upload, share, view and comment on video clips, ranging from self-produced or professionally edited short films to clips from television and film. For the uninitiated, one of the site’s biggest boons is the ease with which it can be navigated and operated.

Like all emerging technology, the value of YouTube depends on how the content is used to support learning. Chris O’Neal offers guidance on how to effectively use YouTube in the classroom in his piece, “A Teacher’s Tour of YouTube.” O’Neal believes that YouTube is an extremely “robust classroom tool,” and although he’s somewhat discouraged by the vacuousness of certain user comments and video submissions, he feels the negative aspects can be channeled into positive discussion. “One critical issue to keep in mind when sharing and discussing these videos with your students is media literacy, including general Internet reliability. Are the videos truly what they say they are? Might some of these clips violate copyright? What constitutes a ‘good’ video?”

If you’re not convinced yet, look at how other teachers are using YouTube in their classrooms. With more than 70 million videos being viewed, YouTube is a gold mine of educational material, and students will love it.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

Talking with Mary Lyon

Mary Lyon is unabashedly in love with politics. While she was in high school, her best friend’s father was the undersecretary of commerce to President Kennedy. Her friend’s family invited Lyon and her four-person rock band to play at their home for important journalists and politicians: it was there that Lyon’s interest in journalism and politics began.

She worked on political campaigns throughout high school and developed a news program at her college radio station. “What was really fun was because we were a college station, there was no department. There was no faculty moderator. As long as we kept it clean, we were all right,” she tells me. “There was this guy who wandered into the station with a record he had called ‘The Power 18’ that he was hoping to get around to various college stations, and ours was an especially good one. So he brought it around to us and we immediately put it on the air because we knew it was good. And we broke it as an underground FM hit. It was about rallying 18 year olds for the right to vote. We were part of that movement to change the law. It just went from there.”

After college, Lyon worked at LA Radio and her journalistic career flourished while her political convictions intensified. Today, she views the Internet as the media’s saving grace. “People used to say that radio was very intimate. Well the Internet can be very intimate. Because the attitude was, when you were on the radio, you’re supposed to just be addressing one person,” Lyon explains. “You can kind of take that approach to the Internet—that you’re writing just to one person.”

So who does Lyon listen to and admire? She’s proud of the “nobodies” who have made journalism accessible to everyday people, via blogs like The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and Politico.com. Lyon likes these independent reporters because they “don’t have an axe to grind.” The journalistic freedom we have today is the result of the Internet, Lyon believes. Not only does the Web help everyday folks have a say in the political landscape, but it also helps spread the word—fast.

“Everything is viral,” Lyon notes, recounting a story of seeing a group of college boys huddled around a computer screen watching Keith Olberman bash Bush. They were “watching with rapt attention and laughing at all the right places, and shouting, ‘right on!’ That shows you how powerful the Internet is—that all of a sudden, a clip is everywhere, and everyone is talking about it and everyone is playing it multiple times,” she said.

Isabel Cowles
Senior Writer

The Coming Flight to Safety

Ten years ago, a handful of top Web sites garnered the vast majority of page views on the Web, and their positions of dominance appeared unassailable. Those of us in the industry yearned for the day when users would begin to discover more Web sites, but year after year, market share numbers changed very little.

Today, the largest Web publishers struggle to make their content visible in vast distribution channels that didn't exist 10 or, in many cases, three years ago. And Yahoo, AOL and MSN are trying to figure out what comes next.

Aggregators have become the “start page” for many Internet users. We are Googlers, DIGGers, Del.icio.users, Newsers, Stumblers, MIXXers and whatever similar services have launched since I began writing this article. Many users read 3 dozen news stories in an hour, but can't recall the name of any of the publishers and would have difficulty retrieving it a second time. Who wrote the story is less important than how many people recommended it.

Read the rest of this column by findingDulcinea CEO, Mark Moran, on DMNews.

Staying Cool with Cyber Summers

It might be the middle of summer, but it’s not too late for kids to sign up for summer camp. Cybercamps Academy is in session on college campuses throughout the United States. At Cybercamps, students age 10–18 can take courses in areas such as game design and modeling; graphics, Web and flash; and programming and robotics.

At first glance, a day at Cybercamps Academy seems to follow the traditional day camp model, offering an array of outdoor activities like soccer, basketball, four-square, and touch football, along with indoor activities such as Risk, Mafia, Matrix and drama games. Where Cybercamps diverges from convention is in computer games; Cyberspace integrates aspects of the tech world, encouraging kinds not just to play computer games, but also to learn how to design their own.

The camps are broken down into the gamer, user and coder sections, where kids can choose between the options of game design, Web design, or “digging into the brains of technology.” Find out more about the courses offered and see what Cybercamps Academy is offering in your state.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

Facebook for Teachers

Social networking platforms such as MySpace and Facebook are so popular that they’ve broken generational barriers, attracting a diverse audience that includes friends, parents, and…gasp…former middle school teachers. Most of my friends are on Facebook, and many of them are educators.

For a long time the notion of teachers on social networks perplexed me, given the difficulty teachers have maintaining separation between their personal lives and “teacher personas.”

When a friend of mine who teaches high school mentioned that he uses Facebook in his classroom, I cringed. He went on to explain that his school district doesn’t allocate funds for technology in the classroom, and for him, Facebook is a catalyst in overcoming this. It turns out he’s not so innovative in his thinking after all; with so many students, teachers, and librarians on Facebook already, the social media site has become a platform to support learning communities for many educators.

Ultimately, Facebook is like having a virtual classroom—one where the teacher is in control, and students can contribute hyperlinks, videos and comments to continue their in-school conversations. I am now convinced that the open source classroom is the way to go; it’s where education continues past the bell. For ideas on setting up Facebook in the classroom, take a look at Didactalab, one teacher’s blog that provides the good, the bad and the ugly of Facebook applications for the open-source classroom.

Jen O'Neill
Education Writer

Talking with Tanna Frederick

Tanna Frederick left Iowa for Hollywood, but she often looks back. Raised in a creative environment where parents encouraged their children to explore their imaginations, Tanna grew up with a strong artistic sense and a lot of confidence on camera. By the ripe age of 6, Tanna was sure she wanted to be a serious actress.

But first, Tanna became a serious student: she graduated from The University of Iowa with honors in both Political Science and Theater Arts. Tanna was valedictorian of her liberal arts graduating class and president of Phi Beta Kappa. Despite her academic success, Tanna was still convinced that Hollywood was where her dreams would be made—though payoff took patience. “It was very shocking to come out here, having two degrees and not even needing to use them at all. And not even being able to use them to get a waitressing job or a bartending job let alone an acting job. It was a really tough road for a good four or five years,” she explains.

Despite constantly hearing, “How old are you? What’s your bust size? What are your measurements? You should color your hair blond,” Tanna says she found her social niche and overcame the limitations of Hollywood’s standards. Meeting playwright and filmmaker Henry Jaglom was an important event for Frederick, as it changed her experience in Hollywood completely: “All of a sudden I was confronted with a filmmaker who doesn’t follow the rules and doesn’t conform and makes amazing, breathtaking, heart-wrenching films,” she explains. “And I felt for the first time really confident in myself and really confident in my work. I thought, ‘if this great director is doing this, then surely I can make a place for myself.’”

Although Jaglom had never seen Tanna act, he was immediately drawn to her ‘quirky’ style and personality. Shortly after they met, Jaglom asked Tanna to star in a stage production of his 1971 film, “A Safe Place.” From there, the relationship blossomed. Tanna has since become the recurrent leading lady in several of Jaglom’s projects, including “Hollywood Dreams” and the upcoming “Irene in Time.”

Tanna’s roots in Iowa are very much part of her success in Los Angeles. “Now that I’ve found my niche of people, I realize how important it was for me to come from a large family and such a strong community. I think because I come from good stock I’ve found good stock,” she says. To pay homage to her home state, Tanna established the Iowa Independent Film Festival in 2007. One of Tanna’s favorite parts of bringing Hollywood to rural Iowa was “seeing Karen Black walking through the cow fields in her Manolo Blahniks.”

Isabel Cowles
Senior Writer

Is the Long Tail Endangered?

A few years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote an article (that later became a book) in which he claimed there was a growing market online for niche content and services. Consumers, Anderson said, had long been choosing popular mainstream items because alternatives were not readily available. The Internet and the development of digital media made specialized products and content easily accessible, and in turn made selling that niche content profitable. This is referred to as the “Long Tail” theory. (Check out his blog for an illustration and explanation of the Long Tail.)

Recently Harvard Business School’s Anita Elberse challenged Anderson's Long Tail idea using the example of online music and DVD sites. Though they offer a seemingly unlimited supply of niche merchandise, compared to the selections available at brick and mortar DVD and music stores, these sites are still seeing a concentration of sales among a few hit products. According to Elberse, the tail is getting longer and flatter and the number of top performing items is getting smaller, which would perhaps endanger the Long Tail theory.

Then today, the Los Angeles Times wrote about how Demand Media is taking a Long Tail approach by combining lots of Long Tail Web sites to create a blockbuster of a network (and perhaps putting the ball back in Anderson’s Long Tail court).

At findingDulcinea, all this talk about the Long Tail got us thinking about the content we provide, and where our success has been—the mainstream or the Long Tail?

One example of a “blockbuster” story is our coverage of the life and death of Tim Russert. This story generated a large amount of traffic for us; it seemed that nearly every visitor to our site for a few days was reading about, and commenting on, Russert. However, we also generated a great deal of traffic with a story we put together about the rising price of ammunition, and another about a report about how transracial adoption affects children—both stories would be considered Long Tail because they aren’t related to events covered widely by mainstream news outlets.

It is important for us to cover the stories that everyone is talking about, not only because we can add value to what is being reported, but because users expect us, as a news source, to cover what is most popular each day. However, often the stories that bring us the most new users and the most references from other sites are those of the Long Tail variety.

I think, in the end, success comes from finding the right balance for your audience. For us, that means providing Long Tail stories and offering new angles to blockbuster content.

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

Apple's Latest Juice for the K-12 Education Community

Though I spend most of my day writing and researching, I also go to school. For a while I beat the silence of my surroundings by making music the soundtrack to my work life, mixing it up with the occasional podcast or epic novel (complete with faux-British narration, of course).

Yet this routine got old, and I searched out something new. In my search I happened upon iTunes U. At iTunes U I can virtually sit in on a Stanford University lecture about “The Growing Pains in China’s Reform,” or brush up on my conversational Spanish in a DePaul University tutorial. I can even fulfill my dream of experiencing a class in the honors program at the School of Visual Arts—an institution that, for my utter lack of artistic aptitude, would have never let me in its doors.

Over 75 colleges and universities worldwide have opened their lectures to the public through iTunes U, affording multitaskers like me the chance to continue our education whenever time permits.

But it gets better. Until recently iTunes U was geared toward college and adult learners. However at the National Education Computing Conference the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SEDTA) announced that it collaborated with Apple to help seven states launch free content for K–12 educators. The second part of the announcement was that iTunes U had launched a channel for high school, middle school and elementary school students.

Through its trademark innovation, Apple has created a place where curricula, lesson plans and education resources can be shared in the digital world. Visit the Apple Web site for free downloadable software for Macs and PCs, and “sit in” on virtual classes, which are always in session.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

Search Engine Spam

 
Recently I was looking for an image bookmarking tool—something I could use to quickly save and organize images I find on the Web, in the way similar to how Delicious and Diigo save my Web sites. So I searched for the phrase “image bookmarking” on Google, and was, of course, faced with about 6,550,000 results. I was familiar with the top result and knew it wasn’t what I was looking for, so I tried the second site.

It’s easy to think that any site found in the top two results on Google is a good site; “good” meaning it provides the information it claims to, and is popular among Google users looking for the same information.

The site I found was not good. There were no clear directions about how to use it, all of the informational pages said “coming soon,” and there were very few users. Instead of providing any useful information about the site, there was a list of outbound links to Web sites that were unrelated to image bookmarking. To top it all off, I decided to explore the page of popular images and encountered an offensive pornographic image. That really pushed me over the edge.

Why should I waste time investigating a site that only has enough information to make me think it might be real? And again, this was the SECOND Google result.

If you find Web sites like this in a Google query, you can report them as spam. You need to fill out a form that requires the search term you entered and the URL for the result page. If you have access to Google Webmasters Tools, make your complaint that way—they take those reports more seriously than anonymous reports and will react quicker.

You can also report search engine spam to Yahoo and MSN.

Visit findingDulcinea to read about other suspicious sites, and learn how to determine the quality of Web sites yourself.

Katie Hartsough
Audience Development & Interaction

Talking with Jose "Chencho" Alas

Jose “Chencho” Alas has led a dramatic life, which is more than I can say for most Catholic priests I know. But then again, Chencho is an ex-priest, forced to give up his vocation for his allegedly Marxist dealings. He’s been kidnapped, beaten, left for dead. Not the case with my local clergyman.
Chencho is a peace activist from El Salvador who has worked hard to gain land-owning rights for peasants. His vocation brought him into communities inhabited by both the rich and the poor, though he has a special affinity for peasants, having grown up as one himself.

Chencho is a learned man with a background in theology, cultural anthropology and economics. When I ask him if he’d like to go back to school, he laughed heartily. “I am 73 years old!” he said. “Besides, I am too busy.”

After completing his studies in El Salvador, Canada, Rome, and Belgium, Chencho moved back to El Salvador to preach the message of peace and economic rights for the poor. But when his close friend the Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot in the heart while saying Mass, Chencho was forced to flee the country. Threats to his life made his mission in El Salvador impossible.

Chencho moved to the United States and worked in Washington, D.C,. as an officer of financial operations at the Inter-American Development Bank. While in D.C., Chencho also found opportunities to speak with political leaders, explaining the economic and land ownership problems in El Salvador and across Central America.

Today, Chencho lives in Texas, where he serves as the head of the Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America. Chencho’s greatest hope is that people can organize themselves and mobilize on behalf of their own economic and political freedom; sustainability and cultural understanding are key aspects of his mission. Despite relinquishing his role in the Church, Chencho feels closer to the work of God than ever before. During our conversation he explained, “Once I realized that I couldn’t be a priest, then I really could do the work of God. I was really free to do what I wanted.”

Read the findingDulcinea interview with Jose “Chencho” Alas

Isabel Cowles
Writer

Students, Social Networking and Education

We’ve all seen students flee the schoolhouse at the ringing of the day’s final bell. The priceless looks on their faces display relief, and excitement over their impending freedom. What do students do with their after-school free time? Study? Go to a job? Participate in a co-curricular activity? Sure, it’s likely some of these are part of their routines, but it’s even more likely that students are partaking in another favorite pastime: social networking.

Parents and teachers sometimes worry about what goes on in children’s obsessive electronic worlds, yet a new study suggests they might not need to. Researchers at the University of Minnesota conducted a six-month study on the educational benefits of social networking for students aged 16–18, from 13 high schools in the urban Midwest. The findings revealed that the majority of participants practiced “safe and responsible use of information and technology.” Moreover, the study found that the benefits of social networking included enhanced technology skills, creativity, openness to diverse viewpoints, and communication skills—important attributes for today’s professionals.

One of the researchers involved with the study, Christine Greenhow, believes the Web is a gold mine of educational potential. View Greenhow’s conversation about the findings of the study and its implications for educators.

Jen O’Neill
Education Writer

'Growing Up Online'

During Internet Week in New York I had the pleasure of meeting Rachel Dretzin, the writer and producer of PBS Frontline’s documentary, “Growing Up Online.” The film focuses on the impact of the digital age on kids, and covers the benefits and dangers of Internet use among children. It tackles tough issues like cyberbullying, child predators and the lack of parental supervision, and lighter ones such as self-expression online and the impact of the Internet on education.

Rachel Dretzin now invites viewers to offer their ideas for an update to “Growing Up Online.” What do you want to learn more about? If you have any thoughts or would like to read the blog created for viewers to interact with the producer and post their thoughts on the documentary, please visit the PBS Web site.

Kate Davey
CoFounder and Outreach Development

The Biggest Winners

Back in March I had the luxury of spending an entire day with Bill Germanakos and his brother, Jim, both of whom triumphed on Season 4 of NBC’s weight-loss reality show, “The Biggest Loser.” FindingDulcinea teamed up with the twins to launch National Recommit to Your Resolutions Day.

We spent a whirlwind day around New York City, visiting the Fox & Friends morning show, Joan Hamburg’s Morning Feature on WOR Newstalk radio, and Neil Cavuto of Fox Business News.   Everywhere we went, Bill and Jim were gawked at and approached by strangers as if they were long-lost friends. To say that they handled this with ease and grace is an understatement.  

Bill and Jim love to tell their story. They truly want to “pay it forward” and inspire others to better their lives. These twin brothers continue to amaze me with their generosity and spirit. You truly cannot meet them and not be inspired to do better things with your life.

As a fan of “The Biggest Loser,” I naturally wanted to know all about the show. Did they really work as hard as they appeared to on the show? The answer: they worked harder, sometimes training 7 hours a day or more. It surprised me to learn that they were not starving themselves at all. They really had to eat to have the stamina to work hours on end at the gym. I questioned them about how they are keeping the weight off and what they eat on a daily basis. I even brought them to Starbucks, where they ordered skinny lattes, and Bill ate almonds to tide him over until lunch.

At lunch, Bill filled up on oysters, mussels and other fresh seafood before devouring a huge salad at Artisanal, a restaurant best known for its rich, cheesy delights. I, of course, was very conscientious of what I ordered at lunch. Did I want the cheese fondue? Yes. Did I order it? No. I got a salad, and pretended that it was how I ate every day.  

Both brothers had nothing but great things to say about their experiences on the show and life in general. And why wouldn’t they? They both look and feel fabulous.

Sushene Leitch
Chief Operating Officer

Meditation on the NECC

As the NECC comes to a close, marking an end to the world’s largest gathering of education technology advocates and practitioners, I’m left with a few valuable ideas to ponder until the next convention comes along.

First, there are a tremendous number of professional educators out there who are intent on bringing technology into the classroom, and keeping it there.

Second, and more importantly, there are innumerable ways for these professionals to do just that. From class Web sites, to classrooms connected across the globe, to interactive digital whiteboards, the tools and possible solutions are endless.

However, while the platforms and frameworks are endless, the actual content seems to be lacking.

With the exception of the free Library of Congress, which has worked towards digitizing their entire collection, and the subscription Britannica, the convention was largely free of individuals offering real, live information.

I guess that may be where we come in.

Still, it’s heartening to see so many, working so hard, for the future of education. Their passion for their jobs is only surpassed by their curiosity about how to get the job done.

Thanks to Jeff Utecht for his insight into the EdTech community and James Surowieki for his keynote speech Sunday evening. I look forward to keeping in touch with everyone I met in San Antonio, and hope to see you all again next year, or sooner.

We’ll be talking a bit more about the NECC event in San Antonio in the coming weeks, so look for our interview with Hillary Goldman, the director of government affairs for the International Society for Technology in Education.

Chris Coats
Senior Education Writer

Interested Humans

“Interested Humans”: that was the title of an e-mail sent out to our staff by our news editor. Sometimes our news stories can be difficult to categorize. Most stories fit easily into categories like sports or health, while others are more difficult to define. One category that seems to give us trouble is “human interest.”

Below is the message sent out to the findingDulcinea writers to remind them what constitutes a “human interest” story. Hopefully you will find this educational and as amusing as I did.

1) The category IS NOT simply for stories that humans will find interesting. That would hopefully describe ALL our stories.

2) The category IS for stories centering on people who are not otherwise famous. E.g., a story about Barack Obama is NOT a Human Interest story, but a story about the guy who declared independence for the tiny Scottish island of which he is the only resident IS a Human Interest story.

3) The category generally IS NOT for stories about sociological studies. Finding out what prevents cancer is a Health story, NOT a Human Interest story. Teenage girls agreeing to all get pregnant together IS a Human Interest story.

4) The category often IS for oddball stories, like the ambidextrous pitcher, or the doggie weddings or the mysterious Canadian feet.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Katie Hartsough
Audience Development

Impressions from the NECC

Sitting amid the few thousand technology leaders who packed the convention center in downtown San Antonio, and listening to James Surowiecki discuss the ideas in his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” I felt inspired about the future of education.

Here were thousands of people, some who had traveled from as far afield as Shanghai, all gathered to discuss the future of education, and the role of technology in it.

Yet the experience was also a little overwhelming.

Billed as the largest gathering of technology educators in the world, this weekend’s National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in the Alamo City witnessed over 18,000 educators and vendors descend on the famous River Walk to shop, trade philosophies and most importantly, talk about what comes next.

The ideas were huge—simultaneously moving and confounding. With so much information out there, great and terrible, how do you make sense of it all, especially in an education or classroom setting?

There was no shortage of people trying. While their approaches varied widely, the consensus seemed to be that the future lay with those who wanted to make the process easier without sacrificing the excitement of discovery.

In the coming days and weeks we’ll write much more about the NECC and everything we learned while there. We will also provide an interview with Hillary Goldman, the director of government affairs for the International Society for Technology in Education. Goldman has been a part of the collective effort to put technology at the forefront of the debate over education reform in this year’s presidential election.

Chris Coats
Senior Education Writer