Today is My Day

Let it be noted forever in the history books that today, December 8th, is My Day!

1. I'm an Intern!

Yes, you are now reading the blog of shiny new intern for One Voice. I will be focusing on acting as a resource for college-aged students promoting Israeli-Palestinian coexistence and democracy on their campuses. If working at OSU with Israel Action Committee and founding the Muslim-Jewish Dialogue Club didn't prepare me for the stress that is coexistence advocacy, nothing will. So now I get to develop programming, look up texts and films for resources, and act as a personal I-P Programming Crisis Hotline. I'm very excited about my coworkers and the office itself. I'm looking forward to put what I'm learning at TC into context and gain some real experience.

2. PeaceGames

I attended an event at TC put on by Ed-Tech Interactive to learn about games being used in classrooms. There were some old favorites like Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail (which they seriously promoted as History Education) and a few new blocky looking programs that promoted math, language, and cooperation skills. But the real star of the show was a presentation on Peacemaker. Jim Diamond presented her preliminary PhD work on the game which challenges students to act as either the President of the PA or Prime Minister of Israel and react to realtime situations. The game is still under development at Carnegie Mellon and is being tested on students there as well as in Qatar. The point of such games that deal with the social sciences is not only to teach historical content (dates, names, places) as well as developing multiple perspectives and empathy (seeking values in history). I have quite a few questions about the Peacemaker game, and since it's not out yet it's very hard to get a demo of it, so I asked Jim to find out a bit more when he meets with the developers. And yeay, I have a new friend now and he said he'd share his notes and he's excited aobut my input too!

3. Celebrity Spotting

I walked past, twice, a filming of What Not To Wear!!!!!!!! I saw Clinton and Stacey arm in arm about to change some lucky young woman's life. Let me tell you they're beautiful people!

4. Wine

I stopped by my local liquer store to pick up soemthing to bring to my sister's tonight, and lo and behold I am a STAR! There's an Israeli Kinneret winery!!!!!!!! To be honest, it doesn't get high reviews, but I bought myself a Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot of... MYSELF. I will taste it tonight and let you know if you should all run out and get some. Though, I have ot say, the bottle alone seems worth it. Unlike Kineret Challah, it's even spelled correctly.