education & tech

I haven't really paying much attention to the Olympics. Yes, they are on no fewer than 14 channels and as you all know summer prime time television is a waste of time (exception for public television as channel 13), but as we spend many hours in front of the computer screen, we feel as we know what went down even before it airs live.

China did pretty good at the initial illusions but no so good in the PR department. The only truth we al know is that Michael Phelps has no competition on the quest for eight golds. The China organization of Olympics started with the colorful explosions during the opening that actually were faked by computer graphics, then came the 7-year-old girl with her lip-synched because the real singer wasn't cute enough as to sold out Chinese. Now is the Chinese women's gymnastics team, which took the gold medal from the American team and they continue to fight agressively the plague of fake news, reporting that at least two of the girls were younger than 16.

So, what else is real? The horrific accident Janos Baranyai had last Wednesday. The silver medal for Ecuadoran marchist Jefferson Perez and the sad participation Alicia Sacramone had in the finals but ignite the attention of males. According to Google Trends, she reached # 1 position confirming that no matter what happened with those two mistakes, she is for many, real hot!

Until we have something to write on education. Have you all, a great weekend!

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"A valid source is a valid source, forget which news organization came up with it. In the linktribution environment, you link to content."

This is part of a post buzzed about Monica Guzmán's (Seattle) incident where her The Big Blog couldn't link to the competition, because editors haven't agree on this matter.

One time Guzman wanted to link to a Seattle Times story because Seattlepi.com didn't have the story. At first her editors didn't want her to do so because that was the competition's work, but she insisted. Her editors eventually said if the PI doesn't have a story, she can link to the Times as a last resort.

She dropped out from the group blog experience! We are glad she acted her own way, because as she established, "It's about the collaboration, not the scoop!"

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When I was going to the University, I remember our teacher was asking for us to read many books on Philosophy and while visiting the Public Library last month, I just happen to grab a great book written by Arthur Herman, How Scots Invented the Modern World.(or How Scots Contributed to the Modern World, as some claim, the title of the book should be. We don't write reviews on books but that way he presents History is pleasant and we were refreshing our memory on Enlightenment, not the French that most of you had learned but the Scottish.

Scottish immigrants were poor but more educated and skilled than their European counterparts. Herman makes the case that the American system owes more to Scotland's revolution than to France's. And then, Scottish Enlightenment deserves more credit than it gets. John Knox, a writer and strict evangelical preacher pursued as goal, turn Scots into God’s chosen people and Scotland into the New Jerusalem. He wiped out Catholicism and embraced Calvinism. So, Scottish society enveloped these principles. The author claims that Knox is for Scots what Luther meant to Germans.

The formula for democracy is own to Knox and Buchanan, rather than John Locke, as many assure. They believed that political power ordained by God was not vested to kings or nobles but in the people. What American Constitution says, We the People. For these two Scottish, "all political authority ultimately belonged to the people...The people was always more powerful that the rulers they created; they were free to remove them all" (pg. 18)

Enlightment Scotish people explained better than anyone else has ever done, why British market-oriented (or Whig) notions of liberty allowed both freedom and prosperity to flourish. In justifying the Whig theory of liberty, the Scots prepared the way both for the framers of the American Constitution and for the classical liberalism of the last two centuries -for free trade, The Edinburgh Review, the Manchester School, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

And we've stopped to read attentively the reference to the Act for Setting Schools, it was in 1696 that Scotland Parliament passed this act. Adam Smith and David Hume wrote not only for intellectuals but for a reading public. "Library's records show books were loaned to the local baker, the blacksmith, the cooper, farmers, stonemasons, quarriers, tailors and household servants."(pg. 25) And that's how Robert Burns become a respected poet in Scotland.

The Middle Ages in Scotland were represented by great universities like Glasglow and St. Andrews. The problem of faith between Episcopalian (English) and Presbyterian (Scottish)made almost impossible to interchange universities for students. Only Episcopalian were allowed in Oxford, Cambridge or the Trinity College in Dublin. That's why the University of Edinburg, Aberdeen's Marischal College and King's College, like Glasglow and St. Andrews were international centers of learning but they never became the ivory towers as the eighteen century Oxford and Cambridge did.

Smith in the Wealth of Nations certifies that almost the whole common people was taught "to read, and a very great proportion of them to write and account." It was the beginning to universalize education. So, they had seated basis to literacy and numeracy as fundamental skills for living in a complex modern society as today we have.

Here you can read a summary of the book chapter by chapter.

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It's being a way long since I wasn't able to read a post like Chris Lehmann's wrote last week. He's been reading Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody and looks at how some of those principles can be applied to facilitating change in schools; Lehmann is sure that some of the frustration about change shows up when you compare it to the blinding speed of change in so many other facets of our evolving society right now.

A continuation we reproduce a paragraph we think, calls everyone to take action, because as Lehmann says, 'hard' shouldn't be the reason we don't do it!


"We could use the tools we have to start a call for change. We could look to set up a core set of principles for school reform that harnesses the best pedagogies and the new tools. We could look to build a coalition of administrators, teachers, parents and students to take action in the upcoming campaign. What might it look like? Shirky points out that for collective action to work, the action must require enough effort on the part of those taking action that decision-makers take notice. We could all go to used bookstores and look for old, beat-up textbooks and send them to our Congressmen with a flyer saying, "Is this how students should learn in 2008?" and a list of our core principles and goals. We could coordinate it all with Web 2.0 tools. We could follow up with an online petition to the McCain and Obama campaigns asking for a presidental debate on educational issues."

That's not a secret, the rapid pace of technological innovation has affected virtually every sector of the American marketplace – except education. Today’s schools look largely the same as they did a century ago. There may be more Internet access and more computers in classrooms, but the traditional public educational model – one teacher guiding a large group of students through a lesson – has not changed, at all.

What are you waiting for?

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Last week, you read a a post on Wired (Science) on "internet searching for scientific articles is bad for researchers" in reference to an article published in Science by University of Chicago sociologist James Evans ([not yet available online). What are the aspects touching educational researchers? What have you gained -or lost , from the internet's rise? asked Bradom Kein, the author of Wired's article.

Researchers and investigators are against Evan's conclusions and we've collected the most significant from the thread of comments in Is Internet Bad for Science?

"Science is self correcting when properly practiced. Plagiarized or improperly conducted research will lead to improperly formed and incorrect conclusions. The internet is no worse for science than the calculator is bad for math."

"There are some old articles which are referenced and cannot be found online and one must make the occasional trip to the musty section of the library - usually the dank basement - something to be done on those rainy Sunday afternoons when one can indulge in reading about the exploits of those who did the gritty pioneering work.. But it is not that much of an annoyance, as one can use the time to ponder in a different mental gear - a faculty often underused these days. Also, there's something to be said for the value of "classic" papers that aren't yet available online. My grad adviser could find insights that we would never have thought of in work published in the 1940's or earlier."


"The way that google structures its listing makes it difficult to find the more obscure texts. Couple that with the laziness of users who no longer wish to browse further than the top 10 in the listing, and it makes for very bland academic readings." In other words "Separate the wheat from the chaff."

And speaking of Educational Sciences: "The knowledge is general, but encourages people to pursue certain topics in depth."

Now, how will researchers will be affected with the outsourcing editing and translation of research database papers?. I was touched by a post written today by Roy Peter Clark, taking to copy editors: "I need copy editors to know that Eva Longoria is not the wife of Tampa Bay Rays baseball phenom Evan Longoria. I need them to know that a Florida cracker is not something you eat, and that it may or may not be offensive to some readers. I need a Rhode Island copy editor to know that you don't dig for clams; you dig for quahogs, a word of Indian origin -- American Indian. I need copy editors who know that Jim Morrison of The Doors went to St. Pete Junior College, that beat writer Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Fla., but is buried in Lowell, Mass. I want them to know that Lakewood High School is different from Lakewood Ranch High School. I want them to know that 54th Avenue North in St. Petersburg is 108 blocks north of 54th Avenue South."

Do we still have language barriers to talk about science? How research gets influenced with those resources re-elaborated by people, others than native speakers?

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Technology has changed the way we used to perceive the notion of science. Before, everyone was reverent to this concept and mathematicians invented ideas, notions and axioms to explain their science, thus it became the scientific method and asked to demonstrate what mathematicians can hardly show.

It's been a long way until everyone accepted what should be called science. In this century although, kids and youngsters don't want to read (a premise to comprehend science), they are more interested in the solutions more than in the problems. In other words they bypass something that is a requirement to build science, the object.

Humble postdoc, Duncan Rilley has brouht up a very trivial question, Who owns the science? If nobody wants to hear about science now, except those who started their research before 80's or went to college as babyboomers, then we are not developing science. Funds to scientifical research are not being poured and the government is the only one to fund national security researching. Is it estrange we cannot solve yet the highest cause of mortality, a cure for cancer?

Is there anyone reading this post who thinks, science still is ahead of technology as it used to be or is it that we are making research only to serve technology and in its only direction. As for me, it's necessary to reinvent the concept of science, first of all, and secondly, put investigation up front as top priority. Science was made to solve the object of a problem, not just to built the most infinitesimal silicon's chip or alter the DNA, which by the way has been the most revolutionary finding of the last century.

I will close calling Riley again, he closed his post diligently, "If you would like to join the debate, and you are anywhere near Manchester, UK, you might be interested in Who Owns Science?, a public lecture and debate. Join Anna Ford chair a discussion lead by Nobel laureates John Sulston and Joseph Stiglitz on just who the hell is it who owns this crazy little thing called Science?"

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A group of aerospace engineering and computer science students gathers once a week in Atkinson Hall of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) to learn designing technology for the developing world. But their lecturer Derek Lomas never quite shows up in the classroom, at least not in person. He prefers to take classes of the popular ‘Design for Development’ course from his desktop in Mumbai — through videoconferencing that is.

They are using what sciencedaily.com calls  instructional technology.  "University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance researcher finds that students in a "hybrid class" that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average than their counterparts who took the same class in a more traditional format"  they wrote in its Science News column, today.

Practice of hybrid classes are growing so quickly and practicality for students and professors, at UH  and on campuses across the U.S., because of the advantages for students , in presentation of material as accessibility and flexibility. Brian McFarlin, was the researcher at UH and he can testify for example that an upper-level business law and ethics class in the UH Bauer College of Business reaches more than 1,000 students each academic year because of its flexible, hybrid offerings.

But what is the linking between those students at California Institute and the University of Houston?  No secrets. It's technology applied to the education. Same as Mumbai or Australia, students and teacher are able to learn or re-learn at the same time, even being so far away. In this case the use of the videoconferencing is vital and the good handling of PowerPoint files helps these students to obtain grades, on average a letter grade higher than those in the traditional format

Houston students attend class in classrooms, but students as far away as Australia also take and participate in classes. To date, there has been limited literature addressing the effectiveness of such classes.  McFarlin has comments on the advantages in timing of hybrid class: "That means two courses could be taught in a classroom that would normally be dedicated to one traditional lecture course [and] The key to success with instructional technology is to keep the focus on student-related outcomes and learning. This was my objective."

Findings were published in the journal "Advances in Physiology Education."

After you've set up your blog it's important to know what your niche is, what I am  sure everyone who stars a blog is familiar with, but as myself, you can find some days hard to publish something of your own interest, after all, you don't want to be repeating everything else other small and large blogs are already saying, you want to write original content, thinking on your particular audience. After reading these 10 Top Design Tips that will take your blog to the next level, we thought it was a good chance to complement it with this our post. We are going to talk about content, we respect the work of SEO and SERP people but as many other times has been said, if you don't have quality content, who's going to read it and most importantly (for a blogger) who's going to link to it?  Afterwards, let google do its job.

When writing a book for example, it would be easier if you start cranking  out one well-developed chapter than it would be to write an entire book. Same applies for bloggers, you want to write interesting, appealing and quality content but at the same time you don't want to be too short or get on the nerves of your readers and get them tired or bored of reading such a long post. Writing short stories gives you a sense of completion.

One of the benefits of writing a short story is the amount of time it takes to complete. You might sketch out a rough draft after three sessions at your computer. Then you set the story aside for a few days before revising and editing. Next, you present the story to a friend or critique group to get other opinions. You again revise and edit, add those finishing touches, and—Voila! You have a completed story. This process takes weeks instead of years.  - wow-womenonwriting.com

This is certainly true, because our posts now a days,  need to be long enough and engage our readers in a pleasant reading. One of the authors of widget slab.com, our dear friend Avatar, once told us: "people is getting lazy, they don't want to read large posts"  and  as the annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows,  people are becoming much less patient when they go online. "Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave." says the BBC.

So, we have to write post for our 'selfish users'.  And that's where prime advice comes handy form people that really knows about this matter.  The authors of dailywritingtips.com are among them. Go and read  their daily topics.

Back to our matters. We write about education and in this field  Miguel Guhlin who describes himself as a learner and educator, has published a post on how to write a List Article,  that I suggest you read in its entirety:

1. When writing an article for publication, I start out with an engaging question, quote, or scenario.
2. A list of follow-up questions off the main topic (these are the ones that get answered)
3. A short summary conclusion or make the conclusion the final question.

Hope this post complies with what I am saying and for those living in the U.S. I wish a nice Memorial Day!

Fields turn green and flowers bloom, birds return from their long winter migration. The sounds of summer soon begin, with children laughing and enjoying the most popular pastimes. Are they? Unless your kids count on organized football leagues, pee wee baseball, swimming, kids just don't seem to play 'pickup' games or get involved in elderly family conversations like before. The reasons can be as different as families we have, but taking away the enjoyment of summer and the freedom that allow kids to create, invent and discover new games and sports, we as teachers and parents, are preventing our children from discovering themselves and acquiring life skills that can ultimately improve their chances of future success.

It has often said that television is the modern day babysitter, and more and more heads of households are relying on the 'boob tube' to entertain youngsters and keep them safely indoors. As if the hundreds of channels available on cable TV aren't enough, most children now have access to computers, entertainment consoles and handheld video games.

Many (even ourselves) are choosing to play virtual sports rather than get together in the park, school playgrounds or visit your family or friend('s) for a quick game of ball. Before it gets completely out of hand and after we lose more obese children or have shootings and killings in the educational world, parents and teachers as well, should limit and encourage kids to use less time spend on using the most current technology and if necessary, encourage them to go out and play. Kids just don't do it anymore.

But once they find the computer or TV are off limits and the Playstation is put away, they will quickly realize that the best way to enjoy this summer is to play outside and have old fashioned fun. What do you think?

Technorati: kids, sports, summer, school, health

Heavy Sounds and The Abstract Truth, guides me to an interview of Junot Diaz who's been awarded as first place in the Pulitzer Fiction category. His book, for now in English only, will available in Spanish to the ending of this year. The author recognizes have been raised in NJ, in a poor latino neihgborhood and that The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was inspired on her mom. Even though, he's a professor right now and many Dominicans living around tri- state area are very much happy.

Our congratulations to all latino residents in the U.S. and particularly two fellow bloggers: Planeta Atavex [es] and B@b@ [es].

Technorati: pulitzer, dominican, junot+diaz

Video produced and distributed by UTPL under MIRADAS

This is the story of a foreigner in Loja, who discovered that growing older not necessarily means being invisible to the opposite sex.

She went to a party where, for the first time, she received not a glimmer of attention from any man there. She was happily married by then, but still, she remembers how stunned she felt to go unnoticed. Suddenly, she was out the game. After years, she confess, she loves male attention as much as ever.

This was an experience in Loja's (not far from Vilcabamba) not much crowded immigration office. Holding her ticket, she sat for about one hour, resigned to a long wait. A young man, half her age had completed her paperwork and asked her if she was married or single. She said 'single' and watched as he checked the box marked 'divorciada'. Wait. "Actually, I am a widow" she pointed out.

"Oh, seniora", he said, "I am so very sorry. Please accept my profound apology. I have made the most egregious error". Now here he was, spotting her in the back of the room and waving me up to his window. The bunch of visa-seeking gringos parted, then, she floated by, to be received by a courteous Ecuadoran male who took his time explaining the final steps in the visa renewal process. She will be able to come back into two weeks to pick up the visa, he concluded. "Until then", he said, taking her hand in his and cocking his head ever so slightly. "que le vaya muy bien, seniora".

This expression in Spanish means, "I hope that all goes well for you" and it's a standard good-bye in Loja and Ecuador. To the 70 and something old American woman, it feels like a resurrection from the dead. It hasn't been too long ago that she waited in a store in the States and her testimony goes about a middle-aged, balding clerk, who helped a 20-something, long haired blonded pick out a flat TV screen. The clerk was all charm with all information on every set in sight. When she finally got her turn, the employee barely made eye contact and offered minimal data on only the sets I asked about. Of course, she didn't buy a TV and walk out feeling upset and humiliated.

In Loja and the little town of Vilcabamba, She is born again into a world of easy-smiling men who give her a two handed hello or a peck on the check and people who always take the time to chat. Part of all this is custom; regardless of their sex, people stop and exchange pleasantries. A typical "hi, How are you?" flyby is a bad form for Ecuadorean culture; you learn at least to stand still and wait for an answer.

What you can experience down South Ecuador is more than good manners. Men you don't even know smile openly at you, make eye contact and say, "Buenos dias." Occasionally, they will give you a sly up-and-down glance as you pass on the street. The top video, at the beginning shows you the point of view of people living in Vilcabamba and this story reflects how nice and polite Vilcabamba residents are and continue to be.

The other day in Vilcabamba, the man behind the counter at a small hardware store felt free to place some extra gaskets on the hand of the history's woman and declare, "No charge , seniora. I ask only that you return soon to look at me again with your beautiful and rare green eyes around here". She had to laugh at this nonsense.

Remember, if you happen to come to Ecuador, go Loja and ask to be driven to Vilcabamba, you won't see only ancient people but surely you will feel younger as ever!

This post was inspired on the video shown up here and in Remember Sweet Things by Ellen Greene.

Technorati: vilcabamba, loja, ecuador, latin+america

Yesterday, while I was reading our Google Reader subscriptions, I got knowledge of the decision of a fellow blogger about to quit blogging. BlogBloke, has been in the blogosphere many years now and while he's still looking around to make his final decision, we have to congratulate to have him around with such a good information and constant updates in his old and new web address. BB way ahead you will get to know, what's next for you.

Eduardo Avila, is the Regional Editor in Global Voices for Latin America and his advice when you don't have anything to write is to make an interview. Not that we don't have topics to write about but I want to share with you an old interview that Jamila Lopez wrote about Mr. R. back in September 2002. The Editor of this blog was working for St. Mary's HS and The Hilltopper is the internal newspaper for students and faculty in this institution.

The document was published in the Vol. 6, No. 1 of The Hilltopper and started something like this:

Mr. R. is from Ecuador where he resided until just four years ago when he decided to come to the United States with his family.

In St. Mary's he teaches Math and Spanish. Mr. R. decided to join the St. Mary's staff because he wanted to do what he really likes, teaching. Since Mr. R. has been in St. Mary's he has been mostly impressed with the discipline of the students, the warmth of the teachers, and the way things are organized.

Mr. R's educational background consists of being licensed in math and physics from the Loja National University. He also has a Doctorate in Educational Science and a certificate in Secondary Education. Mr. R's teaching style is the Socratic method, which is basically quick question and quick answer. And, finally, he likes to research things scientifically and socially. He likes to find out what is within a person or action.

In his personal life Mr. R. enjoy hobbies such as reading books as well as write them; he even has five unedited books on educational research, which is his passion. He enjoys movies and likes to get acquainted with a lot of people. But, most of all, he enjoys the time he spends with his family and traveling to discover new places.

What he remembers mostly about his high school experience besides the learning, is trying to think of pranks for his teachers.

From this blog we want to greet Ms. Malko, Mrs. Sobon, Mrs. Paterek and Nick Maruschak for all their support and coaching during those days in the St. Mary's HS.

Technorati: St. Mary's, high school, hilltopper, tonnet, milton+ramirez

No matter how important articles are written by all bloggers worldwide, A-list bloggers who read each other and rarely will land on this blog, still argue on this affairs even when a judge back in the 2006 in Canada [es], determined for the very first time, bloggers are journalists.

Today, jkOnTheRun points out three reasons why the author doesn't care being identified or not as a journalism and we abide by those three points that we add as an excerpt:

1. Always tell the truth. It doesn't matter how trivial the topic or how serious. The truth will set you free and keep you that way.
2. Opinions matter but only if they are clearly identified as such. Don't pass opinions off as fact and your readers will keep trusting what you say.
3. Never quote a statistic without revealing the source. Bloggers are starting to fall into the same pit that MSM journalists often fall into by quoting some arcane statistic that is meaningless. Let the reader decide if the source means it's a reliable statistic or not.

Are you dear fellow blogger concerned about what the media or the A-list bloggers have to say on this business?

Technorati: A-list, bloggers, jkOnTheRun

No more taboos in the web 2.0 era even when consequences could make fall down people that in other times where example for Americans but no more here in New York. Wired brigs a interesting report about Brian Alexander's book America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction .

Alexander observed and interviewed people countrywide and he holds skeptical about critics who suggest personal experience may be necessary to present a really balanced chronicle of contemporary sexuality, and he backs up his skepticism: "If I'm going to cover a war, I have to kill people? " The author creates a powerful and entertaining look at what is really going on in the American bedroom, sex club and adult store and even church, and demands we should think about how to move ahead to create a sexually healthier society. Hope you read in the net an article it said teens in a very high percentage were infected by chlamydia, herpes and other related stuff.

Internet had changed not only that way we perceive life and human activities but it also had an impact in our dorms, not matter your young, adult or not living in a social recognized group. As Regina Lynn writes, "Over and over again, Alexander's subjects told him that the internet had opened their eyes, dispelled their fears, given them new avenues for pleasure, and provided support as they figured out what they really wanted from sex."

How we as parents or teachers are supposed to teach this intricated pathways to our kids or students? If they're learn not from us anymore, not even from their friends, they just have to sing in to a forum or type in the question in Google and they have they very own way! Can we still control what they are to learn in about sexual education and sex?

I will gladly read your answers.

Technorati: books, brian+alexander, sex, sexual+education, society

On March 1st, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what G.B. tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Mr. Uribe.

After the fact, Colombia justified its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US media snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to 'terrorists' quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export. What the US media did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, 'Listen, my password is ….') Does anyone knows computers around here?

G. Palast read them. While you can read it all in Spanish, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez is this:

… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

So, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line: “To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, you must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the 300 refers to? ¿Who knows? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US media, you won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claimed, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious 'Angel' is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.

Well, so what? We don't have to argue to what happened in Dominican Republic or wait until March 14th when the OAS hand out its report. This is what.

Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. And Mr. President just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but W. knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality.
Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations, however, he knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe. Do you like that?

Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.

Correa has flown from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.

For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, ecuadoreans will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of Palast's interview with Correa here.)

Front Runners Speak About Border Crisis

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?

I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists. Now comes a person who's doing well in the campaign, but as for me, it’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.” Didn't he attended Law School?

(G. Palast is sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then, McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told Greg to watch for the media naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the NYT, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadoreans - and relations continue to improve between the two.”

It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right. Nothing to be with the 3 a.m. Hillary is calling to.

Disclaimer: Newsletter received in my e-mail by Greg Palast and edited for publishing in this page.

Technorati: politics, ecuador, colombia, venezuela, greg+palast, tonnet

I want to resist to believing this story run in first place by 10news.com and then replied at a good place I've found today. Kool design and a very different way of presenting news and interacting with netizens. The story I am about to comment was written by Gimundo.

He's been appointed to the National Institute for Literacy by President George Bush, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and subsequently served on the Board of the Institute under President Bush and President Clinton. He's John Corcoran, creator of a Foundation under his own name, Jonh Corcoran Foundation.

What id can be explained by me, at least, is how such a prominent person can't read while in school and how he found his way around such as the history says. Put it in this way, we'll love to have students like Mr. Corcoran. The original post deserves to be quoted:

When I was a child I was just sort of just moved along. When I got to high school I wanted to participate in athletics. At that time in high school I went underground. I decided to behave myself and do what it took. I started cheating by turning in other peoples' paper, dated the valedictorian and ran around with college prep kids

He learned to read anyway when he was 48. And after his long run of cheating he's an education advocate and has two books written, "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" and "Bridge to Literacy."

Is this story embarrassing in any way or is it a motivator for the 'M' generation?

Technorati: education, Jonh Corcoran, stories, school

Edublogs.org was launched and as any start up the beginning was kind of slow, but as for right now is one of the best places to open a blog (free hosted). This is a niche dedicated for educators and all related matters; however there are not restrictions as for who can open a free blog. We’ve already made a reservation that can be seen in here but being this an educational blog we would like to recommend all teachers to open their blogs just here at Edublogers.org. What are the advantages? They just launched the Forums Feature which is generating a lot of buzz because this will change the approach many teachers were having while hosting their blogs in edublogs.org; now they are going to be able to attract student and not only make them open an account but get them to participate in any issue that will be showed in a particular forum. Isn’t that great, when we all know students enjoy spending time online?

These are some reasons why you should open an account in this Wordpress platform service:

1. Experiment with contemporary, customizable themes.
2. Simply embed videos, podcasts, images and a whole lot more.
3. Import from other blogging sites – or export back to them.
4. Great support and community.
5. These are not just blogs you know… it's a Wordpress technology.
6. It’s not (just) the technology, it’s the pedagogy too.

While you click away, please, feel free to drop any comments whether you know a better place to host free blogs in an educational commitment. Enjoy!

Technorati: edublogs.org, edublogs, schools, education, classroom, edtech

I spent this Saturday afternoon trying to catch up with my subscriptions and everything else online. Two websites both written by teachers in different states in the US, shows how seriously they are taking their jobs. We are talking about Annikeris, headed by a Social Studies professor in a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, Mr. Michael Ojeda. In the other hand we have Ms. Sandra Effinger, a Oklahoma English teacher, who in time has wrote a very interesting philosophical disclosure: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

The document was found thanks to OntheRadio and we will reproduce it without written permission:

"Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Mohammed Aldouri (Iraqi ambassador): The chicken did not cross the road. This is a complete fabrication. We don't even have a chicken.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

George W. Bush: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or it is against us. There is no middle ground here.

Bill Clinton: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken, please?

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically dispositioned to cross roads.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Emerson: The chicken didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Louis Farrakhan: The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken "crossed" the black man in order to trample him and keep him down.

Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook.

Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Grandpa: In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken had crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Captain Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

John Lennon: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the Chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Agent Mulder: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

Ralph Nader: The chicken's habitat on the original side of the road had been polluted by unchecked industrialist greed. The chicken did not reach the unspoiled habitat on the other side of the road because it was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Richard M. Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did NOT cross the road.

Plato: For the greater good.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

Colonel Sanders: I missed one?

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Jerry Seinfeld: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway? Where do they get these chickens?"

Dr. Seuss: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told!

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Oliver Stone: The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Thoreau: To live deliberately and suck all the marrow out of life.

Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Voltaire: I may not agree with what the chicken did, but I will defend to the death its right to do it.

Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side."

This transcription becomes handy to share Steli Efti's celebration. He has patronized a Oakland's student lunch with Jerry Yang, read more details here. Congrats Steli.

Have you ever realized why you and your company need to be in Facebook and MySpace? Read Charlene Li answers! Friend us in our networks: MySpace and Facebook.

So, Why according to your deep professional knowledge, the chicken crossed the road? Hmmm...

Pushing Writing Literacy from W. Richardson says all:

I always ask how many of the teachers in the room are teaching their students to read and write in different modes, in hypertext, with art and photos, in audio and video, using all of them combined. I’m surprised if I get more than a hand or two going up.

I've reading many blogs now and I've been there to see them grow or die but what I've also noticed is big conglomerates are shaded what we once called blogs. No idea exactly when we started blogging but since then our interest has being share knowledge, have some time to write and read and ultimately feed our ego.

Lately much people is talking about the TechMeme phenomenon and even when as said in other post the new ranking system of Technorati, what still makes very respectable is that this is a place where you'll find blogs to read and look out. What's going with TechMeme as Scoble pointed out, only twelve blogs showed up in their Leaderboard. "Not only does the list include many old media mainstays such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, along with top trade publications such as Computerworld, but it is also heavily tilted toward new media "brands" formerly known as blogs such as GigaOm, TechCrunch and Engadget."

So, it seems new Technorati CEO has a point when he says "...They don’t track 100 million blogs and they’re not nearly as embedded in blog community." Do personal blogs still count for streaming media? No, not anymore. You have to be in the blog circle or be a digital newspaper, did I say digital newspaper? Is this a mutation from blogs to digital newspapers?

Or as the person who ignited this conversation has noted: "That's far too many questions to lob at a reader, I know, but Techmeme's Leaderboard has, indeed, sparked a lot of doubt in my mind about whether blogging is dead or merely transformed. And the Huffington Post's acquisition of a major media company's top manager of online news publishing only further underscores that blogging is now a big business."

We still love and respect the opinion of plain citizens who has managed to create a blog and spend hours reading and lurking online in order to have a say and something to entertain with.

Turn me on in Technorati, right now.