Innovative journalism in a digital world

One of the wonders of digital media is its potential to change the way we share information.  For journalists and educators, it's opening up a whole range of interesting possibilities.

A good example is The Guardian newspaper's interactive timeline of the Arab Spring uprisings. The Guardian's detailed graphic tracks events in seventeen North African and Middle Eastern countries, from Algeria to Yemen, along a timeline that began on January 9, 2011, with the first protests in Tunisia. Each country is listed on the bottom of the graph, with a a path moving forward toward the horizon. The "map" has roll-over icons of different colours representing different types of events: protests,  political moves, regime change, and international or external responses.  A  slider device allows you to move forward and backward in time by clicking on it and moving your mouse up or down. Links are supplied to newspaper articles. It's an ingenious, comprehensive tool that has attracted the attention of web surfers.  You can see it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest-interactive-timeline


Another innovative site is the online home of the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan group that uses the internet to push for government transparency. It does so by bringing together some impressive data-management tools.  One example is "Poligraft," which scours an article or a web site for information related to points of influence connecting key people featured in a story.  The article is presented on the left side of the page, while the data filter presents a report in a companion column to the right. It shows, for example, aggregated financial contributions by associations to a particular cause or their support for particular politicians.  I tested it by pasting the web address of a Globe and Mail newspaper article about two Toyota plants in Canada. In seconds the right hand column produced a report that highlighted references to General Motors and Chrysler and outlined their relative contributions to the American Democratic and Republican parties in pie chart form.

The Sunlight Foundation shows you how the tool works here:

http://poligraft.com/vyJf

Another innovator is Common Craft, a company founded by a Seattle-area couple.  Common Craft presents complex ideas in easy-to-understand cartoon videos.  Here's an example that explains how the U.S. presidential elections work:

http://www.commoncraft.com/election

Designer Jonathan Jarvis shows another fine use of internet video in explaining the U.S. credit crisis. It was part of his thesis for the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

http://vimeo.com/3261363

These innovators show us the great possibilities for digital media and global networks to provide a better understanding of complex issues and the easy dissemination of public information. What a wonderful time it is to be journalist or an educator...

Things we should learn before leaving high school

My daughter, who is now in the middle of her university years and living in an apartment for nine months of the year, was talking the other day about education. She asked a rhetorical question: why don't high schools do more to teach you about managing your finances, preparing your taxes, cooking, maintaining your house and your car?

I think she's right. We pick up many of those skills (or perhaps never even learn them) in an unstructured way outside of school, often to our detriment. What good is it to memorize some algebraic formula in math, or the parts of a flower in biology, if we don't know how to manage a household budget when we graduate?

Some schools are better than others, but some more courses or skills I would add to Lisa's list for all schools would be: mental health and balanced lifestyle, essential communication techniques, practical psychology (especially the role of the ego and how different personality types relate to each other), spirituality or meditation, personal improvement, citizenship and community building.

I realize schools can't do everything, but in my opinion a stronger awareness of some of these subject areas would go a long way to making all our lives better.

An incredible act of bravery

When I read the article in the Globe and Mail newspaper this morning, I was choked with emotion: school girls disfigured by an acid attack in Afghanistan have defied the men who targeted them and have returned to school. 

It's an incredible act of bravery that anyone who believes in fundamental human rights should applaud and shout from the rooftops.

Can you imagine?  These girls were walking to school with their teachers in November when a group of men on motorcycles picked them out and sprayed their faces with acid, apparently because the students had the temerity to want to improve themselves by seeking an education.

Now the girls, some with permanent scars and damaged vision, have returned to school. According to the Globe, most of the 1,300 students have gone back to class.  The headmaster, Mahmood Qadri, 54, apparently begged the families of the girls not to let the attackers have their way by giving up on their education.  The community listened; and acted. 

 

If your child had been attacked in this way, would she have the courage to do such a thing? Would you, as a parent, have the conviction to let her risk her life in this way?  This is simply amazing.
 
The actions of these girls and their teachers bring hope to Afghanistan and are a powerful symbol of the human spirit.  

I'm so moved that words cannot adequately express my feelings. Thank you, girls of Kandahar. 

Notes:

Read the Globe and Mail story here. 

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Education: Finding ways to help young people reach their potential in developing countries.

After health, education is the cornerstone of a young life. Education allows people to achieve their potential as human beings. Societies depend on an educated population for their survival and growth. In some places where the education system is weak or nonexistent, living conditions tend to be poor and societies become fertile ground for despotic rule. Where education is missing, misery usually follows. And it’s such a shame.

In the world today, millions of children do not have access to basic education. A United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) study, published about 10 years ago, concluded that about a quarter of the world’s children are currently not attending school. The highest illiteracy rates are found in the developing nations of Africa, Asian and South America.

UNICEF writes in its web site that “if we took a snapshot of the state of education across the globe, the image would shock many of us. Current estimates place the number of out-of-school children at 93 million – more than the entire population of the Philippines. The majority of these children are girls, and almost 80 per cent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Indeed, quality education remains a distant dream for many of the world’s children, even though it is a fundamental human right enshrined in international commitments.”

Fortunately, things are slowly improving. Thanks to global efforts, school attendance rates are rising. But the needs are great.

An American and Canadian organization, Schools for the Children of the World, is committed to building new schools in developing countries. In recent years, they’ve focused on projects in Honduras and have dramatically changed the lives of not only the children in small communities, but also of the volunteers. The Canadian branch of the organization produced a short video that provides a good overview.

See the Schools for the Children of the World video here.

Large corporations like Microsoft, are also committing resources to provide “social and economic opportunity” for young people. Microsoft recently launched an initiative to bring new products and programs to help an estimated 5 billion people who do not have access to today’s information technology.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is working on initiatives to help more girls in developing countries. It is also working on projects to extend education to children with disabilities.

There is much work to do. It’s essential that it continue and that well-developed countries find ways to support it. As the saying goes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

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The photo of a school in Honduras is courtesy of Ben Kaye-Skinner, who made it available at http://www.sxc.hu/.

Harvard University digs up its Native American past

Something unusual is happening at Harvard University.

America's oldest institution of higher learning, founded way back in Puritan 1636, is rediscovering it's Indian heritage. The Boston Globe reports that in the middle of Harvard Yard, where students sun themselves on warm days, an archaeological dig is unearthing artifacts from the university's brick building where whites and Native Americans studied side by side.

It's a long forgotten fact that Harvard, the venerable Ivy League school of the elite, early in it's history welcomed the area's native inhabitants. It was an age when the future of the university and of New England was anything but certain.

In a rare precursor to our more modern notions of integration and multiculturalism, the university's 1650 charter laid out its mission as "the education of the English and Indian youths of this country, in knowledge and godliness."

Students working on the archaeological project, led by the school's Peabody Museum, are finding lots of small items, including pieces of a printing press that may have produced the first Bible printed in North America. It was a 1661 edition written in the Wampanoag dialect of the Algonquin language.

Coincidentally, one of the students working on the dig, Tiffany Lee Smalley, 18, of Martha's Vineyard, is -- the Globe writes -- the first Aquinnah Wampanoag admitted to Harvard as an undergraduate since the 1660's. She says the experience is bringing her closer to her ancestors.

Researchers hope to learn more about how the early English settlers interacted with the local Native American population.

Four hundred years ago, wampum -- beads of polished shell --were legal tender in New England. According to the Globe, Native students paid 1,900 beads for their tuition, while the equivalent sum for English settlers was 1 pound, 6 shillings, 8 pence in English currency.

Sadly, the link of multicultural scholarship was broken in 1675 when war broke out between the settlers and local inhabitants in the region. Many years passed before Native American students returned.


The Boston Globe article, with slide show, is located here.
(You may have to register on the site to get to the free page.)

For details on the archaeological project conducted by the Peabody Museum, here's the museum's newsletter page.

For more information on Harvard's history, see the Harvard web site.

The 1650 Harvard Charter is photographed here.

An issue we cannot ignore

The proposal to fund multifaith schools in the Province of Ontario has been defeated with the re-election of the Liberal Party in today's election. While it was the key issue that dealt the mortal blow to Progressive Conservative leader John Tory, it was also one that, thanks to Tory's campaign, motivated voters to reflect on the essential imbalance it presents in today's education system.

While other provinces have abandoned the concept of school funding based along religious lines, Ontario continues to move along with its established system, based on precedents from the 19th Century (see post of September 23rd); a system whereby Roman Catholic schools receive public money and maintain a parallel education structure to the secular one. Jewish schools, Islamic schools and those of other faiths do not receive tax revenues and depend on private funding to remain open.

During the campaign Tory argued the system is worrisome and unfair. He was concerned that students in some of these schools are not necessarily meeting the standards of the Ontario curriculum because of the lack of funding and public oversight. Standing on principle, Tory said that public money either goes to all of the religious schools or none of these schools. He chose the path of across-the-board funding because he felt that was the preferred approach.

In doing so, he raised a crucial point that no one seems to want to tackle; it's the elephant in the room no one wants to address. It is, of course, that in today's multicultural, multifaith Ontario, perhaps what we ought to be doing is considering the removal of the right of Roman Catholics to send their students to separate schools. It is a funding practice that comes down to us from another age, and maybe the time has come to change direction. A tough choice, one that is politically very risky, as we have seen.

John Tory's position on multifaith school funding cost him the election. However, we are indebted to him for having opened a debate that perhaps was long overdue and that we will have to tackle squarely again in the future.

Should tax funds go to religious schools?

In the Ontario provincial election campaign, the issue of public funding for faith-based schools has dominated discussions between candidates and voters.

The opposition Progressive Conservative Party, under leader John Tory, has proposed extending public funding to all faith-based schools in the province.

Currently in Ontario the public system is based on an old division of responsibilities between "secular" schools and "separate" Catholic schools. It's a separation that pre-dates Canada's 1867 union as a country.

As outlined this weekend in an interesting article by Lynda Hurst in the Toronto Star, the population in Ontario in the 1800s consisted of a Protestant majority and a vulnerable Catholic minority. In the city of York, which later became Toronto, Northern Irish and Scottish Protestants did not like the arrival of thousands of Irish Catholics between 1845 and 1849. After many attempts at integrating the Catholics into the public school system, two laws were passed in 1855 and 1863 that gave Ontario's religious minority the right to finance a separate system by directing their property taxes to that aim.

Ontario's population has changed dramatically since then. The province is now a diverse, multicultural demographic reality. Religious groups -- Jewish, Muslim and Sikh to name just three -- have financed their own schools for those parents who wish to educate their children in their preferred religious setting.

What John Tory is proposing is to direct public funding to these schools with the object of ensuring that these schools follow the Ontario curriculum. Why should Catholic schools receive funding, while all these others do not, he asks? Is this not better than allowing these students to possibly drift away from a standardized curriculum? It may be one approach to fairness.

Some immigrant groups have applauded this proposal, but many voters seem perplexed by it or opposed to it.

The ruling Liberal Party under Dalton McGuinty has jumped on this issue and labelled it divisive and bad for the province. The Liberals advocate a strong central education system where children of all faiths come together and learn together. Under an umbrella of shared values and diversity, of multicultural integration with one curriculum, lies a better road for education, they say.

Personally, I'm in favour of keeping schools as secular as possible. Religion has an important role to play in society, but it should not form the basis of a separate education system. We must learn about each other and about other religions, but not build ideological walls between us. I'm concerned that this proposal may result in segregationist tendencies that are not positive for a multicultural society.

What occurred in Ontario in the 1800s was a historical precedent that, in my opinion, should not be amplified and used as a model for the 21st century.

Voters go to the polls on October 10th. We'll see what they say.

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Illustration: www.wpclipart.com