Blog | 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...

links for 2008-03-05

by liam | Mar 4, 2008 | weekly feedings

Civilization Creator Lists Three Most Important Innovations in Gaming | Game | Life from Wired.com “Sid Meier pointed to the personal computer, Sim City, and Nintendo’s Seal of Approval as the three most important innovations in gaming history.” Not...

links for 2008-03-03

by liam | Mar 2, 2008 | weekly feedings

VW homes to watch real homes and other crazyness “Soon real buildings will be monitored and taken care of remotely through cyber replicas on the net — and their inhabitants too.” Late on this, but still too cool to pass up. (tags: videogames VirtualWorlds...

Edu-VWs gain ground with Quest Atlantis funding

by liam | Mar 2, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media, virtual worlds

With the recent swarm of new toy-based virtual worlds for kids launching in the coming months, I was very happy to hear [via Virtual World News] that the MacArthur Foundation awarded the University of Indiana’s School of Education $1.8 million to expand their...