An education mailing list pointed out the Favorite Poem Project. It looks like an interesting site. The Favorite Poem Project is “A partnership among Boston University, the Library of Congress and other organizations with major funding from the National Endowment from the Arts and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.”

For the more open source folks, I pointed out the Poetry section of Librivox. At Librivox, volunteers read books in the public domain and share the audio files online.

Steve Clift, a great edemocracy activist, announces the arrival A new e-citizen! Annika Jo Clift. Everyone looks very happy.

From a Second Life Educators mailing list, Anthony Fontana of the Polychronic Classroom notes a Reuters Second Life article about HBO buying a machinima film created in Second Life. He goes on to suggest SL Machinima will save YouTube.

This fits nicely with a visitor I had today via MyBlogLog. Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth stopped by. Her most recent blog post asks What The Heck IS Machinima, Anyway?. On MyBlogLog, she describes Shaping Youth as

Who is Shaping Youth? We all are. And that’s what this nonprofit, nonpartisan, non-religious based organization is about.

As media and marketing producers and consumers (that covers just about all of us!) we’re responsible for deconstructing the messages out there.

Children are being defined by media and marketing, before they've even had a chance to define themselves, as healthier behavioral cues get lost in the loud, brash noise.

I look forward to finding out more about Shaping Youth. It provided an interesting to contrast to two other recent visitors from MyBlogLog. One is focused on helping people make money from Google Adsense, and the other is promoting a site where. “You don’t have to ask someone to chat with you and risk possible rejection... you can type in your age and gender and select the age range and gender you wish to talk with and push the button.”

Amy’s efforts at shaping youth sounds much more compelling. To get the full effect of the contrast of how kids can be shaped, check out a video project done using Second Life Machinima by Global Kids' Digital Media Initiative. Their project is about the situation of child soldiers in Uganda. The children soldiers are being shaped in horrifying ways. Yet the youth leaders in Queens are being shaped in very powerful ways to use media for good.

Moving towards more traditional documentaries, the whole discussion about Miss South Carolina has brought up questions about the state of education in South Carolina and around our country. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I think the person asking the question exhibited problems of our educational system by presenting false information. That said, I was pointed to Corridor of Shame.

“CORRIDOR OF SHAME: the neglect of South Carolina's rural schools" is a 58 minute documentary that tells the story of the challenges faced in funding an adequate education in South Carolina's rural school districts.

The documentary, supported by many of South Carolina's leading foundations and community leaders, tracks the evidence presented on behalf of eight school districts in Abbeville County School District v. The State of South Carolina.

The final link for the day is to The Disaster Accountability Project. On Thursday, I received a press release from them saying “Congressional Time Would Be Better Spent Listening To Whistleblowers In Homeland Security and FEMA About Agencies’ Disaster Preparedness Deficiencies”.