Excellent piece on play spaces, from Club Penguin to 1950’s bombsites over at things

Now the spaces of play are highly designed, neat little self-contained worlds of structured complexity and elaborate colours and forms. The reason? We want proscribed spaces for children now, rather than allow them free reign of public space where they are both threatened (or become the threat itself). These firewalled zones are being joined by branded virtual spaces (recently lambasted by Lord Puttnam), where adventure and discovery is carefully controlled and closely linked to consumption.

• iCalendar - Internet calendaring, Ruby style
  a Ruby library for dealing with iCalendar files.
  Tags: code plugin ical ruby rails icalendar
• McGee’s Musings : A dozen papers you should read in the world of Enterprise 2.0
  Good list.
  Tags: list enterprise research

• eduwikius » home
  “a collaborative partnership between educators across the world that enables us to instantly share ideas, resources, projects, and to connect to one another.” So they say. Looks interesting, but would love to see “sixth grade” etc translated to non-US
  Tags: education web2.0 wiki global

• Kids Company » Sponsor a child’s Christmas
  £10 pays gives a child a Christmas dinner they otherwise wouldn’t get.
  Tags: Christmas charity giving children

… is a term I hadn’t heard before. From Truthdig

“Members of the Christian right, recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote against their own interests around the issues of abortion and family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party into new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that could demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage for a Christian fascism.”

Something to think about as I try to digest tomorrow’s meal.

• The Hip-Hop Chess Federation Blog
  fuses music, chess and martial arts to promote unity, strategy and nonviolence … role is to provide an authentic platform for people to actualize their dreams and hopes for themselves, their families and the communities they serve.
  Tags: chess, music, community, games, martial_arts

Sasha’s just sent round this rather fabulous Christmas card.

Happy Christmas everyone!

• Games for Change (G4C) — home
  support, visibility and shared resources for those using digital games for social change. This is the primary community of practice for those interested in making digital games about pressing issues of our day, from poverty to race and the environment
  Tags: games learning network collaboration community nonprofit
• Contents | How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School
  Online book looking at how progress in cognitive science etc can help in the calssroom
  Tags: psychology teaching science book education