Category: geography
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Construction Engineers and Concrete Masons can save MILLIONS of lives (Haiti earthquake story)
Did you know the February earthquake in Chile which followed the devastating quake in Haiti in January this year was 500 times stronger, but caused only 1% of the loss of life which was attributed to the Haitian earthquake? Why the difference, when the earthquake in Chile was so much stronger? In the eight minute…
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China, Democracy, Charter 8 and Liu Xiaobo
Students in your class are likely to know at least a little bit about China and the concept of democracy, but do they know about Charter 8 and Liu Xiaobo? They should, and so should we as educators. Liu is this year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and his courage to publicly sign Charter…
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Safely in Shanghai – Behind the Chinese Content Filters
After 24 hours of travel in airports and in airplanes, I’m pleased to report my safe arrival in my Shanghai hotel in advance of the Learning 2.010 Asia Conference which starts on Thursday. My wife dropped me off at the Oklahoma City airport on Monday morning just after 10 am, and I arrived here at…
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Bring on the EVs (electric vehicles,) EV Conversion Kits, ZERO Emissions Cars and Plug-In Hybrids
This evening, after having the physical DVD from Netflix at our house for several months, I finally watched the outstanding 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” This is an excellent film, which can inspire audiences to activism much like the 2003 documentary, “The Corporation.” I have several thoughts as well as links I’d like…
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Convergence Media Examples from Mike Koehler of Smirk New Media
This afternoon I’m learning with educators participating in the week long “Oklahoma Multimedia Teachers” workshop on convergence journalism at OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism. This is the third year of the workshop here in Oklahoma, which is part of the High School Broadcast Journalism (HSBJ) Project. Earlier in the week, Mike Koehler shared a host…
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Podcast354: Behind the Curtain of the NORAD Tracks Santa Program
This podcast is a fortuitous interview recording with Stacia Reddish, who was the US Air Force Public Affairs officer in charge of the “NORAD Tracks Santa” program for five years. Stacia was responsible for getting Google involved with NORAD Tracks Santa and taking the program (which dates from the 1950s) to the next level with…
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River Rafting in Colorado with Buffalo Joe’s on the Arkansas River
Yesterday, as the culminating event of our week in Colorado for Boy Scout camp, our troop went river rafting near Buena Vista, Colorado, with Buffalo Joe’s. My son, Alexander, is sitting to my left in the second row of our raft. It doesn’t look like we were enjoying this at all, does it?! What a…
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More book recommendations about the Middle East and Islam
This week I visited with some of my friends and others in the Washington DC area who are Middle East area experts (in the USAF) and I asked them for recommendations for books about the Middle East and Islam. I recently finished “Faith at War” by Yaroslav Trofimov and enthusiastically recommend it. These are other…
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Mining could transform the economy of Afghanistan
If you were concerned the U.S. doesn’t have compelling economic reasons to remain engaged militarily in Afghanistan, this NYT article suggests you might want to reserve judgement: “The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals…
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Resources from today’s #icil2010 presentations
Week 1 of the 2010 iConnect, iLearn Conference came to an end today in Colby, Kansas. Next week the conference moves to Salina, Kansas. These are the session resources from the morning’s keynote and two breakout sessions I shared. I did record audio for the keynote, and may share that later as a podcast and…