Smashcast hits Jetset Show

Just watch it – make sure you’re plugged in and/or wait for the show to download once. I’m very sorry for some of the girls comments on ‘why such few girls in Smashcast’. We’ll see if we can’t prepare a podcast on this at our next session. But cheers all in all. Just that moment with Vincent talking about downloading audacity, open source software etc. takes us miles ahead in breaking those dastardely stereotypes. Cameo by Moi. I had said ‘no’ to their videotaping me at the conference, figured it should be all about the Smashcasters. The cameo’s from some clever interjection of still photographs into the video. Permalink to show.

Bad School

Synablog, new entrant on my blogroll, reminds us about how crazy life can be when he tries to log onto smashcast at school. Read More.

Businessweek on Smashcast

Heather Green from business week captures the spirit of smashcast.org in her most recent blog entry.

Secret killer: School transfers

Smashcast.org goes live tomorrow (Preview here; Brainbytes preview here).

This week’s post, and next week’s post are going to veer away from talking directly about science and technology, but instead bring up environmental and contextual issues that impact whether smashcasters have the peace of mind to allow them to focus on their academics. This week’s post, “Top High Shcool Acceptance“, describes the travails of a top student who has to move to Kentucky and wants to get into a good public school. The school has its own rules about who gets in, how and when. None of these seem flexible enough to accomodate families that need to move to deal with financial hardship. When these families move, the timing isn’t perfect, and rarely aligns with expected application dates. So if you don’t move proactively and control your moving time to school application deadlines, sounds like there are not many options for your child …

In related news, from a recent series of articles in the LATimes – “Why Does High School Fail So Many?” (thanks Jessica):

The more students transferred, the less likely they were to graduate; an ominous development in a district in which one-quarter of the students change schools annually. Of 18 students who attended three or more schools, only one graduated.

Every night josephine & other lurid stories

This was not the cover of the book I was caught reading in 6th grade. The cover of that previous edition didn’t show the poodle, and did have a by-line – “My First True Love Story”

Caught reading this ‘trash’ while everyone else was studying for a Hindi exam, our Arts & Crafts teacher, the only male teacher at the school, hauled me up, then announced to the class the ‘terrible’ things I was reading.

Every Night Josephine

GASP

My First True Love Story

OH!

I remember standing there, absolutely still, stone-faced. ITS ABOUT A DOG I wanted to yell, and Jacqueline Susann’s story about how the dog takes over her life, and Jaqueline falls in love with the DOG … but in moments like this, bureacracy doesn’t listen. Too late they figure out that there’s a joke, and its on them. I just let it play out all the way to the hyper-concerned parent-teacher meeting on my precocious behavior (I agreed with the general assessment even though the specifics were ridiculous, so I just let them go at it)

In subsequent years, someone changed the cover of the book to the sober one shown here.

But Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s story is a one-up …

“… I needed a business license from THE CITY of Albuquerque No problem. Or so I thought. They called today, to tell me they had decided to reject my application for a business license. “On what grounds?” we asked. “Because you are a pornographic establishment,” said the brilliant people at City Hall. “

Here’s the rest.

America as Gillespie & Ali

It dawned on me recently that while I was growing up in Calcutta, a series of introductions to America were all black.

Two key informers of my vision of America, both mediated through my father, were Dizzy Gillespie (and jazz in general) and Muhammad Ali’s autobiography. The former as a live interaction under Calcutta skies, the latter, read off family bookcases, but reinforced and regurgitated as ‘Elocution’ at my school, La Martiniere. More on these soon.

Differing Realities

On another work-related project, I spent last Saturday interviewing amazing students for our Summer Math and Science Honors Academy for students of color. These students were inspiring. Not only are they smart, dying to get off the streets or couch and study over the summer – many live hard lives that they simply take for granted.

Not all will get in, and it breaks my heart.

Instead, I have to read articles such as the recent one in the Wall Street Journal. It straight-facedly describes “bought” community service sessions for rich kids -

‘work in a village in vietnam’ for 2 weeks, snorkel off the coast for four: 5000 dollars; college applications look good with ‘community service’ on those resumes: priceless.

And if that wasn’t wierd enough, the article slips out one-liners that lament the case of the student (whose parents can afford afore-mentioned application booster) who has to look for that little extra something since those ‘lucky’ students of color have affirmative action – or whatever remains of it.

So would the wall street journal students exchange their life with one of the students I interviewed? Here’s what Chris Rock has to say:

There ain’t no white man in this room that will change places with me – and I’m rich. That’s how good it is to be white. There’s a one-legged busboy in here right now that’s going: “I don’t want to change. I’m gonna ride this white thing out and see where it takes me.”

And the movie version: go watch Crazy/Beautiful. Carlos gets on a bus for 2 hours to get to the school from which Amy can’t wait to cut class. They fall in love. But that romance trajectory is full of moments that make you squirm. Amy just completely misses the reality and limited set of choices that make up Carlos’ life. The movie’s got its problems, but it sure makes the point of the yawning gap and completely different starting assumptions of the two worlds.