Category: News-Politics

DonorsChoose Challenge: Journalism students need a computer

A group of high school students in a rural community in South Carolina thought their school needed a journalism program and a school newspaper. They had no support or funding from the administration, but they went ahead with efforts to make it happen.

Raising money with bake sales, and using a computer and camera borrowed from the teacher, this group of enthusiastic students produced 8 issues of a student newspaper last year.

Their teacher turned to DonorChoose.org to raise money to fund a computer that the journalism class can call its own. The project is Computer Needed for New Student-Run Newspaper!. Here’s how the teacher explained what the students need:

In order to continue the success of the journalism program, it is crucial that the students have some technology to help them continue the creation of the newspaper. Many of them have expressed desire to explore careers in journalism after college, and I would love for them to have a laptop to call their own in the classroom so that they can make their dreams come true! We are asking for a HP Pavilion Widescreen Notebook Computer for the students to compose stories, complete layouts, and submit issues of the paper. The HP Pavilion Widescreen Notebook Computer would be the most integral part of the program, and it would be utilized everyday in the construction of the newspaper.

The total needed to make this dream come true for these future journalists (and future bloggers!) is $1057, almost half of which has already been raised. It’s a tax-deductible gift and amounts as small as $1 are welcome. This will help the 35 students currently in the program, as well as students who will use the computer in coming years. These students worked hard to prove themselves, and produced a school newspaper that benefits the entire high school. I want to help them keep the momentum going with a donation toward that new computer, and I’m asking you to help, too. Give a dollar (or 5 or 10) to provide the technology to keep the news alive in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.

The BlogHer Contributing Editors’ Challenge page has the give button. The project for Computer Needed for New Student-Run Newspaper! is on page 2. You’ll find a link to page 2 near the top of the list of projects on page 1. Please give. Even a single dollar will help. Click this ad, it will whisk you there. After you click Give, look for the “change” link to adjust the dollar amount to whatever you can afford to give.

You can learn more about BlogHer’s participation at Blogger Challenge in Support of Public Schools. If you can, give a dollar or more to other supported teacher requests, as well as to the one featured in this post. All the BlogHer Contributing Editor’s projects are listed on the BlogHer Contributing Editors’ Challenge, along with that all important Give button. Just look for the project called Computer Needed for New Student-Run Newspaper! and click that Give button.

If I tell you that my high school journalism teacher was a frumpy woman with her hair in a bun who tugged on her girdle all the time, you’ll realize how long it’s been since I was in high school. In spite of her appearance, that teacher and that class started me on a path than I’m still on today. Every word I wrote that was “published” in the school newspaper was a thrilling encouragement to me. Our equipment was provided by the school district. However, the students in the Computer Needed for New Student-Run Newspaper project have struggled to get the equipment they need. They’ve raised funds of their own by working in the community to get the supplies. These students produced newspapers on their own, in spite of the difficulties. Surely, you can spare a dollar or two to support this dedicated teacher and her hard-working students.

You can start your own blogger challenge in support of any of the DonorChoose programs. Start at the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge Page. Add information to your own blog in support of the journalism students in North Carolina who have worked so hard to create a school newspaper, or in support of the other available projects at DonorsChoose.

Cross Posted at BlogHer: DonorsChoose Challenge: Journalism students need a computer

Useful links: Palin, ARIA, Open Office, CSS Systems

Palin’s experience in just 12 minutes. An analysis from Lawrence Lessig.

ARIA on the fast track. Ian Lloyd’s thoughts on the Web Accessiblity Initiative’s Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite and what it might do to validation.

Open Office for Aqua. Burningbird puts the open source office suite through its paces and finds it a good substitute for the office suite from that big corporation (you know the one).

CSS Systems for writing maintainable CSS. A presentation about “CSS Systems” with links to slides and notes. The author describes CSS Systems as,

A CSS System is a reusable set of content-oriented markup patterns and associated CSS created to express a site’s individual design. It is the end result of a process that emphasizes up-front planning, loose coupling between CSS and markup, pre-empting browser bugs and overall robustness. It also incorporates a shared vocabulary for developers to communicate the intent of the code.

OneWebDay

OneWebDay

Today is OneWebDay. It’s a day to think about issues that are important to the future of the Internet. Here is the list of ideas for how you can help with OneWebDay from the organization’s web site.

How can you help the Web on OneWebDay?

1. If you’re a Web user, use a standards-compliant Web browser like Firefox or Opera. They’re free, faster, and more protective of your privacy. And because they conform to Web development standards, they make things easier for people who make Web sites. If you’re a Web developer, test your sites with the w3c’s Markup Validation Service.

2. Edit a Wikipedia article. Teach people what you know, and in so doing, help create free universal knowledge.

3. Learn about an Internet policy issue from the Center for Democracy and Technology, and teach five other people about it. There are real legal threats that could drastically change the way the Internet works. We should all be aware of them.

4. Take steps to ensure that your computer can’t be treated like a zombie. Computer viruses can steal your personal information. They can also cause major network outages on the Web, slowing things down and making sites inaccessible. Vint Cerf estimates that more than 150 million PCs have already been zombified, and are now awaiting their next order. To learn more about the threat of zombie computers, read this article.

5. Join an Internet rights advocacy group:

  • Become a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights, from privacy to free speech to Internet service.
  • Join the Internet Society. ISOC is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world, particularly by establishing Internet infrastructure standards.
  • Support Creative Commons by donating and by using their licenses to copyright your work. If you’re outside the U.S., help support their counterpart, iCommons.

6. Help promote public Internet access. If you live in a city, there is likely an organization dedicated to providing free wireless access in public spaces.

7. Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation supports not only Wikipedia, but several other projects to create free knowledge: textbooks, news, learning tools, and more.

8. Donate a computer. You can donate a new $100 laptop to children in impoverished countries, or donate your used computer to Goodwill or a school.

9. Write your OneWebDay story. Talk about what the Internet means to you and why One WebDay matters at http://onewebday.org/stories

10. If your city is hosting a OneWebDay event, show up on September 22 and participate.

I think the concept of net neutrality is the key issue for me. Equal access for all, equal bandwidth for all. A neutral technology that supports a level playing field. Some of what I’ve said before about it is available in the related posts.

Related Posts: The FCC Holds Hearings on the Comcast Strangle Hold on Bandwidth, Technology Blogs in the News,  FCC will investigate Comcast on Net Neutrality, All Buzz

Terms of Service

Remember this terms of service paragraph?

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.

That’s the same TOS material that caused so much discussion about the search engine service Lijit in these pages a while back. See comments in A Report from BlogHer08 and Lijit.

But the paragraph quoted above came from Google’s TOS for the new browser beta Google Chrome. All it took for Google to listen and change the TOS was an article in slashdot. Almost overnight, Google changed its TOS and posted an explanation on the Google blog: Google does not want rights to things you do using Chrome.

As for Lijit, we heard from them during the discussion here about their TOS, but if that has changed since then, we haven’t heard about it.

McCain and Obama on Technology

John McCain admits he is a not a techno-geek and barely knows how to use the Internet. Barak Obama is seen with fingers flying on his BlackBerry when he travels and has raised millions of dollars using the Internet. The technology gap between the two men has raised a considerable amount of discussion of late. How important is what the candidates say about technology? How important is the role of technology in the plans, platforms, proposals and agendas that the two campaign about? How important is it that the President is technologically savvy?

Read my complete comparison of the technology positions of the two presumed candidates at BlogHer.

Useful Links

It’s still an early draft, but the W3C is working on something called Experiences Shared by People with Disabilities and People Using Mobile Devices.

Ars technica reported on IBM makes web accessibility for blind users a social effort. This should be an interesting project to watch.

Find an Undervalued Asset. Fix It Up. Flip It. (Now It’s Web Sites, Not Houses) I found this new niche for money making on the web fascinating. Check out the fact that web sites being sold on eBay. Is there a new career description as a Site Flipper in your future?