In case you have not caught this on the news wire, India is all set to launch a $7 or Rs. 500 laptop. read more

Seven years ago, Marc Prensky authored a seminal article titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants- in which he coined and used these now-famous phrases to describe (respectively) the students of today who are “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet; and those of us who were not born in read more

Michael Wesch (mwesch on youtube), he of the The Machine is Us/ing Us fame, spoke at length on the anthropology of Youtube in an entertaining and enlightening lecture delivered at the Library of Congress about a month ago. read more

This is an article written for the New York Times by a self-professed techno-optimist about the coming of age of technology use in classrooms after years of bumbling and trying and testing.

The context is US schools and quite different from the average school in India in terms of access to technology -  "The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. read more

Cuil (pronounced "cool") - is all the buzz since its launch yesterday.

A new, and purportedly "better" search engine than Google, started by ex-Googlers, has received much press (odd term to use in the context of the Internet, I guess) in the past 24-48 hours. read more

Since the current Spotlight on educatorslog.in seems to be on FOSS in schools in India, I thought I'd share some more on the idea of FOSS and the rationale for its use, especially in schools.

The first is the much-talked about article by Richard M. read more

Someone alerted me to the Breaking News Online blog, and more specifically to their 1000th post titled Breaking News Online 1000: 25 Most Significant Events in India (After Independence) which lists out what are in their view the 25 most significant events in India post-1947. read more

[The following write-up was forwarded to me by my friend, Uma Chandru, a cultural anthropologist, environmental designer and educator, who recently concluded a fellowship at the Smithsonian where she  researched democratic policies and practices that accord respect to and foreground the values and agency of indigenous visual artists and artisans in India with a view to safeguarding tangible and intangible cultural heritage.]

"For those interested in educational technology and  design in state
schools in India -

http://in.news.yahoo.com/indiaabroad/20080323/r_ read more

" Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin is being learnt by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the language of the other Asian tiger.

Some schools in the US have decided to introduce Hindi as a foreign language with staples like French, Spanish and German. read more

Today's Deccan Herald carries a beautiful story by Arvind Gupta titled "We Have to Call It School" about Ny Lilleskole in Denmark which inspired Peggy Hughes' film which is now on Google Video (see related link), and also inspired the likes of John Holt to write at length about this unusual "school".

Arvind Gupta was generous enough to email me the story. read more