Tryangulation

Back in a few days

We've started our 2-week semester break now, and I'm off to show off one of our favorite places to visitors from the US. I'll be back here in another week or so. Meanwhile, check out some of the blogs on my blogroll (on the left side of the screen), or in my Bloglines news feeds.

resist good advice

"A heart is to be spent."

-- from a poem by Stephen Dunn on turning 60, posted by Bruce Schauble.

You click, Microsoft gives

Until 31 March 2007, every time you perform a search from Microsoft's Live Search, Microsoft will make a contribution to ninemillion.org for the support of educational programs for refugee youth. 

To encourage Microsoft's generosity without giving up your beloved Firefox, here's how you can add a Live Search plugin to your Firefox search box.

1. Click here to jump directly to the Click4thecause search plugin

2. If that doesn't work, go to the advanced plugin search here: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ and type "click for cause" in the search box.

3. Click on the Click4thecause link and the plugin will install automatically.

Bugün ben de Ermeni olayım

Sometimes the best thing to learn is to discover that which we need to unlearn; to undo what we have learned wrong.

Hrant Dink, a famous writer and intellectual Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, was assasinated on Friday by a 17 year old man. The entire country has been shaken by this, and in the face of peaceful demonstrations across the country, there are still the voices of those who blame the victim.

The photo is from the newspaper Hürriyet and shows one of the demonstrations held after the news broke. The banner displays what has become one of the key slogans in subsequent demonstrations and in the headlines of several news articles, "We are all Hrant Dink. We are all Armenians."

One of the first analyses I have seen in English can be found here. I'm not endorsing this or any other interpretation; this is just to help my non-Turkish reading subscribers understand a little more about the situation here. Click here for a longer - and frequently updated - article in Wikipedia.

I write this blog to contemplate the convergence (and divergence) of education and learning. In consideration of that, one thing I take away from this sad event is that neither guns nor laws must ever prevail in the attempt to control what we think or learn or imagine.

As I wrote in the title of this post in Turkish, "Today, I too shall be Armenian."

UNICEF releases report on the state of the world's children

Children with uneducated mothers are at least twice as likely to be out of primary school as children whose mothers attended primary school. That's just one of the ways in which gender discrimination becomes one of the root causes of poverty, disease, and armed conflict.

UNICEF has released the 2007 edition of its annual State of the World's Children report. The focus of this year's report is on gender equality, explaining the relationship between gender discrimination and underdevelopment, and offering examples where an investment in women's rights is a major step toward achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

The website for the report includes, in addition to the full report as pdf, video biographies of women around the world, fact sheets, materials for young people, and a quiz to test your own knowledge of gender equality issues.

Link: The State of the World's Children 2007

Ice and light

We had a beautiful snowfall earlier this week, but for many days the landscape was shrouded in dense fog. Only yesterday as the sun came out could we see how the school grounds had been transformed.

I took a one hour vacation to walk the perimeter of the campus and out among the trees to take in the clean air and enjoy the sunlight against the ice. Here are some souvenirs I brought back for you (thanks to Flickr):

Add notes to del.icio.us without typing

As a result of sharing del.icio.us with nearly 150 people at school in the last year, I have a growing fan base and lots of networked buddies who are passing bookmarks around. Awesome!

While I'm really pleased to see so many happy new users of del.icio.us, I'd like to gently point out the usefulness of the notes box when you post a new bookmark. You can type anything you want in this box to help you remember why you saved the book (or to give your friends a hint when you share bookmarks). 

If you don't like typing notes, just do this:

1. Before tagging a website, first use the mouse pointer to select some text.
2. Tag the page as you usually do.
3. When the posting box opens, the highlighted text is already pasted into the note box!

Presto! Notes without typing!

Fast language learners' brains shaped differently

The University College London has published a report about research showing that people who are faster at learning languages have more white matter in the left auditory regions, and in a different position of the brain than people who learn languages more slowly, and also a greater volume of the parietal lobes in the left side of the brain.

I believe research like this supports the demand for more individualized, learner-centered instruction. We've known for a while about different learning styles and people have argued for instruction that is tailored to the ways an individual can best learn. However studies like this suggest that we are different not only in our temperament and upbringing, but that we may differ biologically in ways that affect what and how we learn.

The news article from UCL can be found here.
 

Happy and Creative New Year!

While other bloggers are telling the world their New Year's resolutions, I want to pass along one more interactive toy tool for stimulating creativity.

Ze Frank has one of my all time favorite websites, and it is full of his own funny videos, songs, and some participatory performance art, but I recommend that you spend most of your time in the interactive toys department.

For example, his Build Your Own Kaleidoscope lets you click and drag colored shapes to design your own animated kaleidoscope effects. Start at this link for practice, and then move on to his advanced model here.  Here's what the tool looked like while I built the one in the image at the top of this post:

If you want to give regular outlet to your creativity, maybe you'll want to treat yourself to a few minutes each week as one of your New Year's resolutions. Or you could just browse the rest of my creativity+cool tags in del.icio.us.

Enjoy, and have a great new year!