No Child Left Thinking – Dr. Joel Westheimer

Jan 222010
 

Dr. Joel Westheimer is presenting a public lecture at the University of Regina on Monday, January 25th, 3:30-4:45 (CST). I will doing my best to stream the event live via this Ustream channel.

Details of the session are found below.

“No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools”
Dr. Joel Westheimer from the University of Ottawa will be delivering a free public lecture to the university and broader community on Monday, January 25th, 2010 3:30pm-4:45pm Education Auditorium (U of R) on the topic of social justice, citizenship, and democracy. His talk is provocatively entitled: “No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools” .

Dr. Westheimer’s bio:
Dr. Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in the Sociology of Education and Professor of Education at the University of Ottawa. He is co-founder and executive director of Democratic Dialogue. Westheimer teaches, researches, and writes on democratic engagement, social justice, activism, service learning, and community in education. He has published books such as Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (2007) which Teacher Magazine called “this year’s most important education book,” What Kind of Citizen? Schools, Civic Education, and the Promise of Democracy (forthcoming, 2009), and Among Schoolteachers (1998). He also publishes widely in newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals and addresses radio and television audiences on shows such as Good Morning America, More to Life, The Agenda, NBC TV News, C-Span, NPR, and CBC radio. Westheimer has received numerous awards including:the 2009 Canadian Education Association’s Whitworth Award; an award for Education Research that honours an individual or research collaboration (research team or organization) who has made a noteworthy contribution to educational research in Canada, the Daniel E. Griffiths Award for Excellence in Education Research, the Jason Millman Award, and Outstanding Research of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association’s Division on Teaching and Learning. In 2005, he was named John Glenn Service Learning Scholar for Social Justice by theJohn Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy.

Update: The recorded session is available below.

The Machine is (Changing) Us – Michael Wesch

Jul 212009
 

Watch this. Trust me. This video is well worth your time.

Beggar Robots

May 022009
 

I am not sure if this is authentic, but the concept is fascinating. It seems to be the work of Slovenian “contemporary visual artist” named Sašo Sedlaček.

The Beggar Robot has access to areas normally off-limits to beggars, such as shopping malls and community events, where the richer members of society more often frequent. The hypothesis is that this part of society is only able to show some sympathy towards the marginalized if they communicate from a safe distance and via a technological interface. The project tests and exploits the advantages of robotic interface by bringing the Beggar Robot to public spaces in different countries and adapting it to the local context and local language, to beg in the name of the poor.

A Busy Week

Nov 292008
 

The last seven days have been very busy for me, especially with presentations. Here are some of the highlights, and a few things to come.

Last Friday (Nov. 21/08), I presented Academic Integrity and the Culture of Sharing to instructors of the Faculty Certificate Program with SIAST (in Saskatoon). View slide deck.

On Saturday (Nov. 22/08), I presented on the use of technologies in the research process for the Learning From Practice conference. I created a wiki to support this presentation.

On Monday (Nov. 24/08), I co-presented with Dean Shareski on The New Interactive Classroom: Education, Teaching & Globalization for the Talking about School & Society series. Related to this, there was something quite interesting that happened earlier that day. My colleagues, Patrick Lewis and Marc Spooner, were interviewed for a local CBC Radio program called Blue Sky. While this was going on live, I asked people from Twitter to call in and ask questions and email the program. Before we knew it, we had calls from Virginia and Massachusetts, and an email was reported from Holland. Not bad for local radio, and I really have to want to do more with this idea. The radio program is well worth listening to, so here’s the link.

On Wednesday (Nov. 26/08), I spoke to a group of undergraduate students about social justice and technology. We were INCREDIBLY lucky to have had Howard Rheingold join us from California to speak about the concept of smart mobs and technology for political action/activism.. Howard is a pioneer of online communities, has been doing great stuff recently with the Social Media Classroom, and is one of my heroes. I put together a wiki to support this presentation as well.

On Thursday (Nov. 27/08), I presented from my office to Manitoba for Awakening Possibilities. I was joined by a list of terrific presenters as we were tasked with “5 minutes to make a difference.” These presentations have been archived, and are available here.

And now, after this busy week, it is time to switch gears as I will be leaving to Ukraine next week. A colleague and I are involved in the project “Youth Development of Democratic Citizenship” funded by a Partnerships for Tomorrow Phase II grant. My role will be to look at how technology can mediate long-term partnerships in the Ukraine, and focus on concepts of democratic media, digital citizenship, and social justice.

And when I get back … I have a week to finish my annual review forms, and write a chapter on the concept of open teaching.

I am happy (and lucky) to be busy … but I’m just a little stressed.