The Influentials: How many are non-white?

The Influentials: Read with me and we can discuss later.

Who listen? - When community members voices speak -

Dear Congress,
It is no surprise that federal cutbacks causes local consequences and disappointments. Although many stress that digital divide relates to access and usage, I personally realize and advocate that it means more including  communication liberties. When deficit thinking models are allowed to oppress communities the consequences are damaging for generations. Please review this post http://17307thstnw.blogspot.com/2011/06/digital-media-literacy-dml.html#links. It was posted by a member of our Digital Media Literacy - Empowerment, Enrichment and Employment Development (DML E3D) curriculum. In may opinion, the voices will get louder unless policies and politics are not changed to be more inclusive.

Paul Allen a critical digital literacy idea man?

On 60 Minutes, billionaire Paul Allen talked about the long list of companies he’s suing for patent infringement. Leslie Stahl teasingly called him “The Bitter Billionaire.” But stop and think. How bitter can Paul Allen really be?

Let me introduce you to the The Brokenaire Club of DC which is full of Rotten Brokenaires.
Now, I don’t mean to insult anyone. DC is an economically thriving city. But it’s also a city of glaring inequities, full of what could be called – if 60 Minutes was paying attention – “Rotten Brokenaires.”
What’s a Brokenaire? The opposite of a Billionaire. A Brokenaire always wants to take you somewhere. They’re always talking about how good it was in the past or how great it will be in the future. But presently, they don’t have anything. You see them every day.  Some of them are so broke that they’re carrying flyers, signs, banners and cards. Brokenaires often carry these items to pretend they are awaiting a signed contract.” I don’t have a signed agreement, but these items a sign that I’m living the life.” Is it a good, bad or ugly life? It’s ugly.


Continue reading on Examiner.com: Paul Allen receives an invitation from The Brokenaire Club of DC - Washington DC Urban Technology | Examiner.com

Personality 2: digital technology critic

The promise of digital technology is impresssive, however, some believe their are limits and others believe humans need to set limits. For example, nanotechnology proponents claim that if researchers could design and build structures at the scale of single molecules, the world of possibilities would be metaphorically huge: drug factories the size of pinheads, computers in the brain to aid memory, robots moving through the bloodstream to repair internal injury or disease. One opponent stated; "It would change what it means to be human,"
Can you name this critic?,
Do you agree with the critic's view?

References:

The Khan Academy: Try It, You Might Like It!

Free online learning sites are a great idea - at least I think so. But I've never run into one with as much "wow" impact as Khan Academy, which claims to be the fastest-growing, open-course project on the Web. Having watched and been involved in the production of online classes and webinars in higher education, I'm truly impressed by this relatively new site. Instead of elaborate productions that seek to reproduce the formal lecture or class experience with a few interactive modifications (so radical at the time!) , the Khan Academy feel like a friendly tutoring experience - which, in essence, it is.

Sal Khan, who is from New Orleans, began the Khan Academy by tutoring his cousins long-distance. The tutoring eventually evolved into more than 2,100 short YouTube videos, all free and easy to access. Most of the videos are in challenging subjects such as basic mathematics, calculus, organic chemistry, physics, statistics, etc. There are also "softer topic" videos in plate tectonics, banking and money, brain teasers, the French revolution, etc. What's great about them is they are all sequenced - you start at the beginning and progress bit-by-bit in a logical fashion.

Sal Khan jokes he is "the founder and faculty of Khan Academy." His philosophy is, 'No one is a genuis, or everybody can be a genuis.' He has been featured on national TV, and has received $2 million from Google's Project 10 and more recent support from Bill and Melinda Gates. You can see various presentations and interviews with Sal for yourself on the Khan Academy site. I watched a presentation he made to the MIT Club of Northern California. Here are some highlights:

• Sal claims he is getting more than 70,000 views a day, more than MIT's 30,000-40,000 views for its open-course videos.
• Sal is anti grades. "Grades are ridiculous... everyone should be forced to be an A student."
• Everyone has gaps in their knowledge. Even A students who got 95% correct on a test got 5% wrong.
• K-12 schools are "huge filtering systems... the fundamental model is bizarre." The K-12 model should be reversed - homework should be done in school, and lectures watched at home.
• Continual assessment through digital data collection is key, along with differentiated learning (i.e., inductive versus deductive approaches, etc.).
• The Khan Academic doesn't currently offer videos in different learning styles, but Sal sees opportunity.
• Ditto for incorporating bio-feedback.
• People like informality - they like to see when he makes mistakes.
• Sal breaks his information into nuggets (i.e., not more than 10-minutes videos) but makes sure the information is part of a comprehensive picture.
• Sal thinks some K-12 teachers will be able to scale up in the future, but the majority will become human mediators.
• Sal thinks 80 to 90 percent of students would not have discipline problems in the Khan Academy - in other words, he believes the site is not limited to a small, self-selecting group of students.
• Everyone should start with "one plus one" - most people have superficial understandings of academic topics, and teachers are products of the same failed system.
• Sal thinks his model can eventually tackle complex questions - such as the impact of slavery - through meta data analysis and collection.
• Others are welcome to potentially collaborate and contribute videos - although in his experience it's hard to get people to put themselves publicly "out there" and make a sequence of around 50 videos.

I'm not sure I agree with everything. But I'm going to start self-experimenting. I'll report on my Khan Academy experiences as they occur. I've got my eye on statistics. The one-plus-one lesson sounds good too, if I can find it. Let me know if you try out any of the videos, and what you think of them.

Personality 1: Not enough energy critic

The energy required for digital technology has caused concerns from the beginning and future projections of energy consumptions have force many to suggest aborting digital technology development. For example, a opponent has stated; "It's a mistake to extrapolate exponential trends indefinitely, since they inevitably run out of resources to maintain the exponential growth. Moreover, we won't have enough energy to power the extraordinarily dense computational platforms forecast, and even if we did they would be as hot as the sun."
Can you identify the critic that made this statement?
Do you accept this energy limit perspective?


References:

Convergence of human beings and machines

If both Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, are correct with their future predications that there will come a time when the world will be unpredicable to humans due to an inability of humans to imagine the intentions or capabilities of superintelligent entities, then the included recommendations are critical digital literacy. These entities will roam the earth because of digital technologies that renders the necessary superintelligence. To further explore the possiblities, I recommend reviewing the following;