openi's Xanga

Teaching creativity and creative thinking

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:28:00 GMT

"creativity isn't a specific activity; it's a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything -- in math, science, engineering, philosophy -- as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance." - Sir Ken Robinson

TED Blog: TED and Reddit asked Sir Ken Robinson anything -- and he answered

Communication revolution

Sun, 31 May 2009 21:46:27 GMT

For the last couple of years, Google has been developing a communication product, platform and protocol called Google Wave.

Other than the convergence of email, instant messaging and collaborative documents, what is remarkable about Wave is that Google has opened it to everyone. Wave is open source and the open protocol is designed for federation. This means anyone can create their own interface and hosting environment for waves and still communicate across servers.

Find out more at the Google Wave Preview

Future of education

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:51:56 GMT

Last week a conference called Hacking Education re-imagined how education should look in the modern Web 2.0 world. The #HackEdu Twitter Conversations lens has a lot of interesting snippets of discussion from the conference.

Localyte

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:32:10 GMT

I think I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Izmir, Turkey. The climate is great, the people are warm and friendly and there is a real richness to the history and culture here. If you enjoy traveling, why not consider visiting my city and use it as your starting point to discover how wonderful Turkey is.
See my Profile on Localyte.com!
Travel like a Local on Localyte.com!

Another lens

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:13:03 GMT

One of the great things about commuting is the opportunity to travel without the responsibility of driving. With a smart phone, I often use this time to write.

I have turned some of my latest writing into a new Squidoo lens: Living in Turkey : Housing. It is a guide to housing in Turkey, with particular focus on our own experience of living in inner city and suburban apartments in the beautiful city of Izmir.

Reliability of textbooks

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:19:35 GMT

I stumbled upon this interesting experience of a scientist involved in selecting school text books.

Corruption in textbook-adoption proceedings: 'Judging Books by Their Covers'

In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. "Judging Books by Their Covers" appeared as a chapter in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" -- Feynman's autobiographical book that was published in 1985 by W.W. Norton & Company.

Read the chapter here...

Resolutions

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:46:39 GMT

The New Year is the traditional time to review life and make resolutions. Setting goals and making self-promises to change for the year ahead. Why do we choose a specific day to make a new start or significant change? We might get better results if we are faced with a crisis point.

I have a mixed record of making resolutions, starting new habits or beginning commitments on 1 January. Some have fizzled out after a short time. Some I never started and am still procrastinating. Some are revived occasionally like writing this blog. Others I still keep up, like being happily married (now for 15 years, 0 months, 2 days).

This year I plan to multiply myself. Deliberately finding people who I can lead and delegate some of my work to do. I will need to invest in training people and sharing vision. I should re-read my leadership books. And some new ones. But I have a big pile of unfinished books to get through first.

Blogged

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:10:33 GMT

Click here to claim your blog on Blogged.com

One Laptop Per Child - New Design

Mon, 26 May 2008 15:28:03 GMT

The OLPC project recently revealed a new design proposed to be released in 2010 and with the economies of scale costing only $75. The original laptop designed for every child ending up costing $180 instead of the $100 intended, but even so cheap, well designed computing for everyone is great.

The new design is very cool and one major point of revealing the design early in the development is to encourage others to copy it and create supply and demand of the components. See more pictures at TED and more information and reaction at:

	Gizmodo – OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y
	Xconomy – Negroponte Unveils 2nd Generation OLPC Laptop: It’s an E-Book
	PC World staff blog – OLPC Announces Next-Gen XO-2 $75 Laptop
	Laptop Mag – First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0

Some of the people commenting on these articles seem to have forgotten that this is an education project, not necessarily a technology project.

18 minutes with an agile mind

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:06:13 GMT

I wish my teachers had been as cool as Clifford Stoll. This TED talk is full of life and passion for learning and sharing what you have learnt.

TED | Talks | Clifford Stoll: 18 minutes with an agile mind (video)