Skyping History

Today, my 9th grade history class took a digital detour to Scandinavia. A good friend of mine from Stockholm skyped into our class session on Vikings.

American history curricula teach Scandinavian history as if its only contribution to the world was plunder and horned helmets (which of course, as some of my students pointed out yesterday on their West Civ Proj blog, they didn't even wear). So, I wanted to give them a view of what Scandinavian history is really like by having a conversation with someone who actually was born and lives there.

My friend Joel is a world-class musician and he's spent the last few years working on NGO projects using music as a way of empowering kids in the forgotten cities of the world. A native of Sweden, he was a perfect choice for a brief conversation with my kids here in Maryland.

First he pointed out the different ways Scandinavians think about their ancestors. On the one hand, they were admittedly brutal and severe. One the other, however, they were industrious people who wanted to better their lives and who survived much hardship in the face of climates and limited resources few of us could imagine.

Someone asked what Sweden was like today, and Joel described their schools and government as well as the general attitudes of Swedes towards world affairs. And you could see in the faces of some kids a difficulty lining up the modern society he was describing with the limited knowledge they had always carried around about the land of the Vikings.

Each week, I give the students a question to ponder. This week's question is: "Who is Good? Who is Bad?" We collect these questions, along with many others, on our class wiki; and we crowdsource for more via Twitter. These questions -- not the facts from some filtered-down textbook -- form the basis of our class dialog.

The kids are learning history via the questions we ask about it.

And so, after an eight-minute conversation with a stranger a quarter of a world away -- a conversation that threw some theoretical complications into the mix regarding Vikings (Good, Bad, and Otherwise) -- I look forward to seeing how my kids answer the question this week.

And just as an aside, I'm gonna say that I'm just so happy that I'm living in a time where I can bring the world to my kids and bring my kids to the world.

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Launching oGoing - What's going on?

"If you like Twitter, you will love oGoing," Sanjay Dalal, founder, oGoing.

oGoing connects You with Your friends, family and co-workers through the exchange of frequent answers to one question: "What's going on?" In real-time!

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oGoing For Me

Go to: http://www.ogoing.com to sign up and get started today, and join oGoing friends from all over the world, and begin sharing your updates now!

If you already have a Twitter account, that's Great! On oGoing, you can share all your Twitter updates with your oGoing friends.

But wait, there's more... On oGoing, you can setup multiple accounts with various user names, and link them together! This way, you can send updates to all your followers on all accounts at once, or choose which specific accounts to send updates to...Cool!!

When you have that really long URL to share, and it takes up all the space in the update area... no more!! On oGoing, you can attach your URL separately (long or short), and it will appear on your update... and you still have all the space you need to write your update!! Very cool!!

oGoing even allows you to share the updates you love the most from your friends (or your own), and even share updates you like the most with your friends. You can easily track the most shared updates, most liked updates, and the most talked about updates... Is that cool or what?

On oGoing, you can immediately follow your followers automatically, and send an automatic personalized message to your followers as they begin to follow you... how cool is that!!

But what if I want to send my updates to my special friends only, and don't want the rest of my followers to see them... no problem! On oGoing, you can include your special friends in your own Group... so the next time you are at your favorite restaurant, or doing something spontaneously good, only let your special friends on your Group know about this! Ultra cool!!

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oGoing is innovative and ready for your business!! Setup oGoing for your own business with a unique website created just for your business... At your oGoing For Business website, only your business, your employees, your team members can all share updates with each other, or share updates with your customers or partners - privately, or publicly!! It's your own oGoing where you can brand it, customize it, and manage it... Just go here to request your oGoing For Business portal for a free trial for 60 days - no strings attached. Request Business Portal

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oGoing Team

oGoing is founded by Sanjay Dalal, serial entrepreneur & innovator, and a silicon valley veteran. oGoing Engineers have been working hard to bring oGoing to you (and are still working as you read this)... Contact Us if you are interested in joining oGoing Team.