Beam me up, Scotty.

As I was glued to my TV on Tuesday night watching the election coverage, I discovered that many stations had really gone all out with their technology usage during their broadcasts. Instead of static maps and boring political analysts, some stations were using smart boards, interactive graphics, and wonder of all wonders, holograms. In case you didn't happen to catch any of CNN's coverage, they were using holographic spokespeople to report from different locations around the country. They even beamed in a hip-hop celebrity (Will I. Am from the Black Eyed Peas) to discuss his support of President-Elect Obama. I think this new technology could really open up some interesting ways to report the news. Imagine having a reporter that's station in a war zone or on location after a devastating natural disaster being able to be holographically shown on the news. Who knows, maybe we could one day have our favorite reporter beamed into our own living room to interact with.
In case you missed seeing this, here is a video of CNN's new technology in action:

Hot Election Topics and Sites

One of the biggest obligations of educators today is to teach social responsibility and to help create productive, informed members of society. As a result of that charge, the political and economic climate cannot be ignored. Our government classes, politics classes, and econ classes (maybe even math classes!) are trying to address today's issues with some measure of objectivity. Hence, there has been quite a scuttlebutt over Michael Moore's SLACKER UPRISING video. This piece of media advocates a particular party and is definitely not objective, but is being used with great appeal in classrooms because it speaks directly to and about our new voting age population - many of whom are still in schools.
I have started a collection (which grows by the day) of good links for addressing the election in our classrooms, one of which is the SLACKER UPRISING video (by the way, the entire movie can be currently downloaded at no cost in the United States and Canada), which can be nicely used as a teachable moment on target audiences, personal agendas, yellow journalism, and objectivity (or lack thereof).

Check out all of my delicious links on the election process at: http://delicious.com/JennyKay5/election