liam | Liam O'Donnell

Traffic shaping/Net Neutrality on CBC news

by liam | Apr 2, 2008 | education, literacy, media

The big telcoms practice of traffic shaping, controlling how fast your internet connection is, finally makes the news today with this report from CBC. I’m not even sure if that link will work as the CBC site doesn’t let you link directly to videos (!?) You...

Congress hearing on virtual worlds

by liam | Apr 1, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media, virtual worlds

Thanks [yet again!] to my twitter network, I learned about the Subcommittee meeting of the US Congress, Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium, (archived video here) just as it was kicking off. I managed to catch all the good and...

School but not school: Dave Eggers rethinks education

by liam | Mar 23, 2008 | education, literacy, media

Many times I’m introduced to something so smart, so innovative and already so established I wonder “Why didn’t I hear about this earlier?” The latest example came thanks Kevin Jarrett who tweeted about a new TED Talk from Dave Eggers, who,...

Levelling Up: two-digit math in kids’ video games.

by liam | Mar 22, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media

As I move forward with my teacher education, one of the key issues I keep reading about is student disengagement. Over the past few weeks working in a grade 5 class in Toronto, I’ve seen that disengagement first hand and much of it has been my fault. Part of my...

Wild Ride nominated for Hackmatack Award

by liam | Mar 12, 2008 | comics, literacy, writing news

I just received word yesterday that my new graphic novel, Wild Ride, is nominated for the 2008/09 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award! This is a great surprise and very great honour for many reasons. Not least of which is that Hackmatack winners are chosen...