Meaning, collaboration and wishes for 2009

In the last couple of days I spent a few hours completely hooked onto the internet, learning more about Professor Michael Wesch's work around education, meaning and collaboration. As an anthropologist and teacher, he realised school and learning were not the same thing (watch the video "vision of students today" for some insight). So he created spaces where his students could be protagonists, building valuable knowledge about subjects they cared about, also using digital tools.

One of his projects is exactly studying the anthropology behind You Tube. Take a look in two popular samples:





As this is my last post in 2009, I'd like to use some of the messages expressed in these videos and uncountable others. Although we often act differently, it seems to me there are some feelings and wishes that we, as humanity, tend to share

contagious GOODNESS

less prohibition

colourblind fairness

more creativity

less criminalization

less war

CONSCIOUSNESS

better future

LOVE

more connections

less authority

TRUTH

collaboration

more engagement

the value of (bio)diversity

various peoples, being able to bring along their uniqueness for an unity

one world, our home


May we be our true wishes in 2009!
Carpe Diem!!!

Education, websites & trends

As I've been developing some e-learning courses, I started to pay more attention to the present/future education features of internet.

Amongst my favorites websites stand the following:

Bestiario Videosphere
Created by the mathematitian Santiago Ortíz, it shows the future of interdependence and intelligent linkage of content in internet, inspired in the chaos theory

Story of Stuff
Great content, brilliant representation. If you haven't seen yet, you're missing!

Backstage at Accenture
The most conventional amongst the 3, it shows a much more interesting, informal and joyful way of passing the information

Do you have other suggestions?