And to be honest students, high school students, are very media savvy today.

But what about students not pretending to do radio but actually doing it for real?

How often to we hear students on our local commercial or national radio networks DOING RADIO?

Never really!

And that never is exactly why every other week the students from Wellington International School in Dubai come on my show, Nightline, and take over the broadcast.

Risky? WC Fields said never work with pets and children.

Challenge? You bet!

Worth it? 200%

These students are doing a live broadcast every other week for an hour and doing well!

Imagine this program in 2 months time!

Why don’t more stations and presenters do what I am doing?

No clue!

And I can’t help but look at the results and ask if I have achieved my goal.

The goal being very simply to make my students laugh and think.

And of course there is the application of the laughter and thinking into some real world possibility.

How often to we link the comic side of things with the thinking side of things?

Not often enough is the short answer.

Well there is an answer to this challenge.

Marc Abrahams: The founder of the Ig Nobel Prize describes some past favorites – including some connections to other Gel 2011 presentations. See also Marc’s Annals of Improbable Research.

Marc Abrahams at Gel 2011 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

About 100 Hawaiian-language newspapers published from 1834 to 1948 are being translated by roughly 3,000 volunteers. The newspapers are currently housed in Hawaiian archival collections as originals and microfilmed images, but when the project is finished, more than 60,000 pages of daily life in the Hawaiian Kingdom will be available for viewing on the Internet.

This is the coolest idea I have read about in a long time.

And the 1st thing it made me think about was the rich history of the printed press in the UAE.

Well, if we go back before the federation of the UAE there were a handful of people writing broadsheets, by hand, and placing them on their Majalis doors for the community.

Imagine if these publications could be brought back to life?

In a sense this is the type of historical journalism that the UAE needs to embark upon.

A history project that is still young enough to have materials and people of the era around.

The Awaiaulu project is a great example and a doable idea here in the UAE.

Anyone interested?

What is a teacher?

Public education?

Smart?

Not?

Economics vs intellectual?

I am moving to a new school in September to help create the UAE’s leading mass communication program.

I say leading because if we are going to just do what is typical today there would be no point in moving to CUD from ZU.

We are going to put a program in motion that is in constant re-invention.

We are thinking of journalism in terms of the craft and the delivery.

We are thinking advertising in terms of what, who and where.

We are thinking about PR in terms of the story and delivery.

No more we need huge expensive pools of equipment to make media, WE DON’T NEED A HUGE SET OR A HUGE LAB.

What we need is people who are engaged as mentors and learners.

Watch this video this to me is where CUD’s mass communication program is going.

Honest, sincere and real.

I loved his answer to the question about writers block.

Rash said that he felt like every song was his last and then the next one just seemed to arrive in his mind.

I love the sound of his music and he said that it is set to morph into a bit more deeper textures.

This is an interview that I would recommend to anyone who is looking at what they love to do and thinking of packing it in.

Sometimes all you need for a bit of inspiration is someone to take notice.

Listen to Rash Radio music at Triplew.me.

Here is the interview.

There are a lot of TEDx events taking place these days, things have sure come a long way from 2009 when Giorgio Ungania and myself organized the 1st TEDxDubai.

Big, small, local, regional, ethnic, artistic the question that people are asking is what makes a great TEDx?

Unlike many things size does matter.

It is my personal belief that many TEDx organizers have become blinded by size and want to scale their events.

TEDx is all about engagement of a community and from where I am sitting the closer you can get to the community and actually get them involved in the process of communication, 2 way not mass or one way, the better.

The other challenge that TEDx organizers face is who to engage as speakers.

Again TEDx is all about community and too many organizers spend too much time trying to be TED.

Tap the community and the magic happens.

This TEDx event is one of those events that has wrestled with its identity and I think it has found the mix of size, content and community that makes it very relevant.

My own foray into TEDx events has taken me to Salons that are small, almost impromptu and in very public places.

Instead of people coming to TEDx the event comes to them, interesting idea and it seems to work.

The beauty of TEDx, from where I am sitting, is the ability it has to engage a community.

And the best thing about a TEDx event is there are many examples but as many variations as you can dream up.

One of the greatest challenges to any education institution is how to take what is happening inside the walls to a larger community.

Think ideas and think finances.

What we are talking about is a win win.

What if I could get a million people doing courses and for 1 dollar they could get a certificate?

That would be cool.

And what if the certificate had value because my course completion was authenticated and validated?

MIT is well on the road to making a global open education possible.

MITx will endeavor to break down barriers to education in two ways. First, it will offer the online teaching of MIT courses to people around the world and the opportunity for able learners to gain certification of mastery of MIT material. Second, it will make freely available to educational institutions everywhere the open-source software infrastructure on which MITx is based.

This sounds really cool and I wonder how Zayed University where I am now or the Canadian University of Dubai where I am moving to in July can borrow a page from MIT.

This just works so well on so many levels.

Of course not literally but they are generally not thinking about how they are presenting ideas and instead getting caught up with the noise.

Video artists Mac Premo and Oliver Jeffers summed up 2011 for The Daily in a stylish stop-motion clip that chronicles the year’s biggest stories, from January’s shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to the curtain closing on the Iraq War.

This is just cool!

What I would love to see is more students trying to do stuff like this and beyond!

I have been using Evernote for a while and can’t figure out why it isn’t a must use tool for every student?

And professors/teachers should also be at the front of the Evernote line.

What I really like about this tool is the ability it gives me to take my work anyplace!

And the fact that I can add images, audio… and the list goes on.

There is a lot of stuff out there that distracts and obscures but this is a tool that works.

It would be interesting to know what tools you have tried and abandoned and which you keep using.

I bet there are more abandoned than used.

What are the top 10 apps you are using today?

What are the top 5 songs on the iPod today?

What are your top 3 podcasts?

If you are like me the list is small and very easy to manage!