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I'm sorry to disappoint you, Iron Man fans.
Related to country: France

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Ever since the movie "Iron Man" opened, the popularity of this picture I took last summer in France has ballooned, thanks to people who are searching Google and Flickr for images with the keywords "iron" and "man" and "mask."

Apologies to the fans. I know it's not what you were looking for. But if it's any consolation, this was awesomely hilarious to see on the chateau tour.

the man in the iron mask

May 8, 2008 | 3:38 PM Comments  2 comments



YMEX public beta goes live!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

After many months of thinking, learning, writing, talking, designing, testing, thinking more, rewriting, and learning new stuff again, the public beta of Youth Media Exchange is live!

YMEX.org is a new online social network, developed by TIG, Global Kids, and Asia Society, where young people can share, create, and learn about digital media for social change. It's full of resources to learn about both digital media production and global issues, and it's ready and waiting for YOU to come check it out, share your media, and get your voice heard.

There's much more to be said about the process, as well as what's still to come. But as we know, if I wait to write a well crafted post, it will never get done, so for now, just check it out: http://www.ymex.org and let us know what you think!

May 1, 2008 | 6:24 PM Comments  0 comments



TIG at the National Service Learning Conference
About this event: National Service Learning Conference

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The deluges of rain, snow, and American Airlines cancellations from April 9-12 were no deterrents to a great few days at the National Service Learning Conference in Minneapolis. I still haven’t broken my recent streak of traveling to bad weather (San Antonio, I have my eye on you…) but the NSLC was worth it nonetheless.

A couple months ago, a fellow frequent-conference-exhibitor had tried to warn me about the NSLC, a conference, in their opinion, with a totally dead exhibit hall. In MY opinion, an empty exhibit hall is a sign of a GOOD conference! Not only was I glad to see that the NSLC has such a compelling agenda that people actually went to the workshops, but the booth saw plenty of traffic during breakfast, lunch, and other breaks.

I met a professor from Argentina who coordinates a network of thousands of schools there involved in service learning (Damian, I’ll be putting you two in touch!), made new contacts at organizations looking for online tools to connect the young people in their programs, and shared resources with several hundred teachers and students who are highly active in service learning projects in their schools and communities.

And, when things were a little slow, I took the opportunity to check out all the other great groups who were there to share resources with the young people and educators involved in service learning. I’m still not all the way through the stack of materials I picked up, but here’s a sample:

At the Free Tibet booth, I signed a petition and had an inspiring conversation with a student activist (who is a Tibetan refugee born in India, now living and studying in Saint Paul – he told me Minnesota has the second largest Tibetan community in the US) about Tibet, China, and the Olympics.

At the Peace Corps booth, I learned more about how they connect volunteers in the field to classrooms in the US, and met a staffer who thinks very highly of the TIG Guide to Action, and recommended that their whole network use it in planning events for Global Youth Service Day. It means a lot to have the endorsement of a leading service organization.

The folks from the Shinnyo-En Foundation were handing out t-shirts and DVDs to promote their new Six Billion Paths to Peace initiative, and I talked to a program officer for a while to understand what the campaign is about, since I missed out on the gala that the rest of the GYAN crew attended in New York in March (while I was still recovering from the flu) :)

There was no one at the Project Learning Tree booth, but I was intrigued by this sign, in thinking about our own sustainability practices when it comes to outreach and marketing:

no exhibit hall carpeting

It was also great to meet leaders from Youth Service America and put faces to names I’ve heard around the GYAN office in planning for GYSD.

There were three sessions I managed to attend – both keynotes (awesome move on NSLC’s part to close the exhibit hall during the keynotes!), as well as a panel on youth media.

Pedro Noguera, as much respect as I have for his work, gave a surprisingly generic keynote compared to other times I’ve heard him speak. He made some great points about how unacceptable and sorry the state of our education system is, but with this crowd, he might have been preaching to the choir. Then again, almost every keynote I’ve ever heard pales in comparison to the inspiration and energy and awe that I gained from hearing Archbishop Desmond Tutu deliver the keynote on Friday. How can you beat a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and spiritual leader telling a knock-knock joke in reference to the Bible?

Archbishop Tutu tells a knock knock joke

In all seriousness though, having spent a lot of time thinking about the distinctions between service and activism, Desmond Tutu’s keynote gave a refreshing bit of historical perspective. I’ve struggled with the way service and activism (both of which fall under the umbrella of civic engagement) are often separated from one another, particularly service as a “safe” or non-political term, one used to describe what students do unto other, less-fortunate people, while activism gets pigeon-holed as a more radical thing that happens separately from learning. In limiting what each term means, we also misunderstand and underestimate the importance they play in enabling young people as social changemakers, whether in school or out. Archbishop Tutu reminded us that young people have always been changemakers and activists – from the Bible (it was a young person, David, who stood up to Goliath) to the students who led the civil rights movement, protested against South African apartheid, and now speak out against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

Finally, the youth media panel was perhaps a bit long, but I learned about some cool projects:

- thefoshow.com – Run out of the high school for performing arts in Minneapolis, it’s the only commercial radio station in US completely run and produced by high school students.

- Strive Media – print and video production (Gumbo Teen Magazine) out of Minneapolis

- Beyond Green – the latest project from Listen Up!

- Teen International Media Exchange (TIME) – program using media to explore seven global issues, based at Media Academy at Cleveland HS in Los Angeles

I was really honored to meet Sidibay, a young person I’ve heard a lot about through our mutual friends at iEARN Canada, who presented his award-winning documentary about his life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

The importance of global perspectives and connections in service learning really seems to be on the rise within the NSLC community, so it was great to participate in that conversation as it expands, and hope we’ll be back next year!

April 21, 2008 | 1:09 PM Comments  1 comments



Internationalization/Localization
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Knowing that having a site as multilingual as TIG is unusual, it was cool to happen upon a panel at SXSW about website internationalization and localization. While the moderator had a few annoying moments (mostly making a big deal about how many in the audience raised their hands to the question "do you live in a country where English is the primary language?" - this should not be surprising at a conference with mostly American attendees), overall there were quite a few tips that I think we can learn a lot from.


-being bilingual does not make you a translator

-translators are often not technology people, so they don’t know the right technical language to translate interface words (“apply”, “enter”, “submit”)

-context is everything – if the translator can’t see the language in context, they will get it wrong

-have a translator on board at the wireframing stage, so that person can point out contextual and cultural issues

-localization isn’t just replacing the words in one language into another, it’s also about giving appropriate cultural and social context

-translation needs to deal not just with literal words, but also with concepts that don’t translate from one culture/language to another

-Social networking sites don’t choose their users, users choose the site – snses grow because users tell their friends, and want to find people like themselves. If a site has a high concentration of users in a particular culture, it sometimes turns users from other countries off because they don’t understand why the site seems so saturated with members and content from another country (this happened with Orkut – Americans complained that it was too Brazilian! So Orkut responded by giving users the option of only connecting with other people who speak the same language as them)

-most sites view internationalization efforts as moving to a language other than English

-Community driven translation is NOT the norm - one of panelists asked if anyone was allowing their online community to do the translation for them – only two of us raised our hands (probably 75-100 in the room)

-use icon based representation with mouse-over where possible, to reduce multilingual formatting issues (words being longer in diff languages) – but beware the problem with an icon/image having different cultural meanings

-sometimes you try to localize so much that you end up with something that is “just ok” in a lot of languages, and “not so great” in a few – instead of trying to rebrand and make the site almost its own stand alone in different locations

Cool sites to check out:
-One of the speakers was from Worldwide Lexicon project – really cool open source translation and localization tools, ability to develop multilingual web apps, Simple Localization System (SLS - php library), and multilingual blogging/publishing tools – with a wiki approach to translating web content.

-dotsub – community subtitling and translation tool

April 7, 2008 | 9:42 PM Comments  2 comments



Textbooks of the Future
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

-publishing industry becoming unbundled from old fashioned vertical integration and will be replaced by companies that just do one element of the business

-Budapest Open Access Declaration – scholarly articles (in medicine, science, and engineering) should be open licensed and available for everyone – NIH now mandates that publications resulting from projects it funds must be open access

-now there is a call for a similar movement - Capetown Open Education Declaration (Shuttleworth Foundation, OSI) – main premise is that all publicly funded education materials should have open access

-changing role of people in producing knowledge – mixed roles of “teacher” and “student” and “expert” etc.
-changing role of content and how we classify information
-changing role of context – textbooks lack context and personalization, digital content allows customized learning experience

April 7, 2008 | 2:46 PM Comments  0 comments



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