BigThink Looking for Exceptional Young People

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Attention teachers, students and parents: One of my favorite websites, BigThink, is launching a new series on Friday called “10 Under 25,” which focuses on the exceptional contributions that young people are making to global society.
BigThink, which features videotaped conversations with some of the world’s best and brightest thinkers — everyone from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to musician Moby– is soliciting nominations for the series.
They’re asking that you create an argument for why your nominee (under the age of 25, of course) should be included in their 10 Under 25 series, and upload a taped presentation to BigThink’s user-generated “expert page.” The most exceptional young people nominated will then be invited to the BigThink studio for interviews during the spring.
The site is encouraging high schools, colleges, and students themselves to submit their nominations for immediate consideration. Include a profile of your young achiever, with a summary of his or her accomplishments and contact information to Big Think senior editor Zachary Shtogren at zachary@bigthink.com.
Here’s an example of a BigThink interview — New Jersey Gov. John Corzine talking about what he learned from his tragic accident:

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Get Yourself a Twitter Mosaic

I stumbled across Twitter Mosaic over at Joan Vinall-Cox’s blog, WebTools for Learners. I follow Vinall-Cox’s blog pretty closely, checking in with her to read about the latest trends in instructional technology.

Lo and behold — a recent post showed Joan’s Twitter Mosaic and I decided to try it out for myself. Twitter Mosaic simply asks for your Twitter ID, then quickly provides you with a code that you copy and paste onto your blog to view your own mosaic — a look at the faces of your followers. How cool to see it all in one place. BTW: It’s the longest code ever, so keep that in mind. And the more users you have, the longer the code.

So here’s mine. (I’m not sure how Sarah Palin got in there, but I’m sure I’m not following her.)

Get your twitter mosaic here.

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Issuu – An Awesome App for Publications

In preparing for a presentation next week, I was trolling around for some interesting new Web 2.0 applications designed specifically around publishing and publications.

I stumbled upon Issuu (pronounced “Issue”, and tried it out. This free website makes it possible for you to download any publication you’ve created from your hard drive, which Issuu then displays on your homepage and turns your clunky PDF publication into an interactive digital publication. You can zoom in, use the right and left arrows to turn pages, and view your publication in a variety of ways.

What’s more, you can use Issuu as a library, storing all your publications and adding favorites from a growing library of other publications, all categorized by interest. The best part of using Issuu is the fact that once your publication is converted, you can then post or embed your publication anywhere online, including on your blog, website, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Issuu also provfides viewer statistics about your publication.

To test it out, I uploaded a recent Budget Book my office created, which now lives on the shelves in my Issuu library but also has been embedded on our organization’s website. Issuu provides you with detailed how-to videos as well.

This is an awesome app that I intend to use frequently.

Curious about Twitter?

I meet more people in my line of work who have finally created Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, but consider Twitter the final frontier in their online/digital life. I hear: “Who’s got the time?” Or: “What do you use Twitter for?” Or: “I already suffer from Information Overload!” Nevertheless, Twitter has presented us with grounbreaking implications for our everyday lives and for the way we communicate. There’s probably no better way to explain this than to show you a video from a TED conference, in which Twitter co-founder Evan Williams explains its many uses. By the way, during 2008 alone, Twitter exploded in size by 10 times.

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