TEDActive Education Projects @TEDActive #TEDActiveEDU

I’m getting really excited for TEDActive 2011 – “The Rediscovery of Wonder”!

Here’s why:

This spring, a unique group of people will convene in Palm Springs, California, to exchange ideas, inspire one another and experience a live simulcast of TED2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder. TEDActive brings together global innovators – the doers of the world making a difference in their communities and their professions – to interact and learn from one another while absorbing TED2011.

Plus I’ll be participating in one of the TEDActive Projects – the Education Project, of course.

The TEDActive Education Project will explore how children can make an impact on the education system. We hope to come out of this project with fresh ideas for ways kids can start an education revolution.

Be sure to click all 3 links above and watch the videos there (I can’t embed them here).

If you want to connect to the TEDActive Education Project, you can:

• Use the hashtag #TEDActiveEDU on Twitter
• Comment on the Education thread of the TEDActive Blog
• Add your voice to the ideas, questions, and debates on TED Conversations
• Take action on IfWeRanTheWorld
• Add questions and answers to the  ThePurpleList

A Clever Inspirational Video

Two New Videos; Well, They’re New to Me Anyway

Saw Lucy Gray’s tweet about her Global Awareness and 21st Century Skills survey.

Hashtag #ITSC pointed me to the ITSC 2011 conference.

Mining the results of Lucy’s survey led me to this video about 21st Century Skills from the University of Washington’s TRIO Training and FableVision.

Watching the live stream of the opening keynote: David Zach, futurist – “An Educator’s Guide to the Future” – led me to this video. A short by filmmaker Bruce Branit in which a strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves.

Digital Citizenship – Us Now

Today, I participated in the political process – using my iPhone.

I signed a digital petition asking Congress to continue funding NPR and PBS via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This act of mobile citizenship reminded me of the documentary Us Now.

Us Now takes a look at how [the participatory culture of distributed networks] could transform the way that countries are governed. It tells the stories of the online networks whose radical self-organising structures threaten to change the fabric of government forever.

Us Now follows the fate of Ebbsfleet United, a football club owned and run by its fans; Zopa, a bank in which everyone is the manager; and Couch Surfing, a vast online network whose members share their homes with strangers.

The founding principles of these projects — transparency, self-selection, open participation — are coming closer and closer to the mainstream of our social and political lives. Us Now describes this transition and confronts politicians . . . with the possibilities for participative government as described by Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky amongst others.

It also reinforced the realization that digital citizenship is not just about teaching students to be good citizens in the digital world . . . It’s about teaching them to use their digital literacies to become active citizens and positive contributors to the political process in the real world!

In addition to CREDO Action (“more than a network. a movement.”), where you can find the Defend NPR and PBS campaign, another site for online petitions is Change.org where you can “Start, join, and win campaigns for social change.” Their causes include: animals, criminal justice, education, environment, gay rights, health, human rights, human trafficking, immigrant rights, poverty in America, sustainable food, and women’s rights.

The Right to Research Coalition

Last fall I learned about (and blogged about) the Right to Research. Today, a newsletter from Creative Commons highlighted an interview with Nick Shockey, the Director of the Right to Research Coalition (R2RC). A student at Trinity University, Nick became inspired by MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, and this eventually led to his joining the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). You can read the full story on the Creative Commons blog, and follow Nick on Twitter.

The Right to Research Coalition