Blog | Liam O'Donnell

Am I the only one troubled by Doodle 4 Google?

by liam | Feb 14, 2008 | education, literacy, media

From a search of the web on Doodle 4 Google, it looks like I might be. Is anyone wondering about how elementary students and high schoolers spending valuable, publicly funded, class time helping Google redraw their logo benefits students’ learning? Not that I...

UK schools teach literacy via virtual world

by liam | Feb 13, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media, virtual worlds

This is unbelievably cool and exactly the kind of educational potential I see in virtual worlds for kids [via Computer Weekly]: Schools in Barnsley are using virtual world software to teach children writing and comprehension skills. The borough council has implemented...

Spore’s teaching potential

by liam | Feb 13, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media

Like millions of other gamers around the planet, I am totally excited for the release of Will Wright’s new life-building game Spore. Up until this morning, I just thought of it as being a cool new sim to mess around with, but after reading a tweet from...

Friday night with Y! Live

by liam | Feb 9, 2008 | literacy, media

Y! Live, Yahoo’s new streaming video service, launched last night and thanks to my resident early adopter, I was there to watch it all unfold. As I watched hundreds of people from around the world broadcast their own live video streams and chat to each other, I...

MinyanLand to sell free-market gospel to kids

by liam | Feb 6, 2008 | education, gaming, literacy, media, virtual worlds

In the wake of the sub-prime mortgage disasters in the US, the crashing of stock markets around the world, and the already upon us, I mean, approaching recession, it’s refreshing to know that those kooky free market, pull yourself up from your bootstraps,...

Sneaking a peak at Metaplace

by liam | Jan 31, 2008 | gaming

I just spent the last hour hanging out with Raph Koster and his crew and about 90 other keeners during the Metaplace developer’s chat and demo and all I can say is “Wow!” During the chat, the gang a Metaplace answered burning questions like...

On my way to OLA

by liam | Jan 31, 2008 | appearances, comics, education, literacy

[from main page] The librarians are coming! The librarians are coming! And I’m going to meet them. On Friday anyway. At the OLA Super Conference. Say around 2 pm? The Orca booth sound good? Great! See you there. Play your cards right and you could walk away with...

Tweeting at Educon

by liam | Jan 30, 2008 | education

My virtual visit to the EduCon 2.0 conference in Pennsylvania wrapped up on Sunday afternoon and I was left with a great feeling of excitement about what lies ahead for education and technology. I also left with a new appreciation for that twitch-happy communication...