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I still believe in Santa. If you think there is no Santa - despite having watched Miracle on 34th Street - then further evidence comes from very serious organizations like NORAD and Google putting forward their technology to track him on his Christmas Eve. If there is no Santa, why would they go to all this trouble? And then, who are they tracking?

This year the Google Santa tracker allows us to look at Santa’s dashboard (the technology that powers his sleigh during his around-the-world journey) on Christmas Eve. Apparently, Google has been given access by one of Santa’s many developer elves, who are hard at work in the North Pole helping Santa prepare for his big day. Santa’s dashboard uses Google Maps technology (naturally) which will allow you to follow his progress around the world, and also learn a little about some of his stops along the way.

If you click into the site before he takes off, you can explore Santa’s village while Santa gets ready. There are probably some fun activities and some some interesting elves there now.

And if Google doesn't give Santa the stamp of authenticity, then certainly NORAD must. The fact that North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) uses its super-high-tech equipment to track Santa is further proof of his existence, and it also makes me feel better about Santa's safety while in the air. Santa's sleigh and reindeer show up quite clearly on their radar.

Every year our ability to go online and follow Santa gets more sophisticated. Web cams and videos, information about locations, precise timings that allow kids to know just when they need to be in bed and asleep so that Santa can come to their home.

If your kid is a math whiz and he's figuring that since the world’s population is growing as you read this, and Santa has to deliver more toys in the same amount of time, how is it possible? Well, that's where the magic of Santa comes in. NORAD actually made a calculation last year and said that Santa is somehow able to make stops at homes in about three ten-thousandths of a second. I think it involves quantum mechanics and time travel, but after all, he has been doing this for 16 centuries, so...

Do you adults out there think NORAD has better things to do? Well, they are doing those things too, but the Santa project started more than 50 years ago. NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have been tracking the sleigh and reindeer since 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement misprinted the telephone number for children to call Santa. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline."  Yipes! The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

Obviously, NORAD, Google, Santa and most of us are using social media too. You can follow Santa via NORAD on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter too.  But be sure to step away from the computer and smartphones and enjoy Christmas Eve. And don't forget the milk and cookies and a carrot for the reindeer.

I have read a few posts about Google's initiative this month to get schools to adopt Chromebooks by offering the chance to get them for a special, discounted price of $99 including hardware, management and support.

I am all for getting Chromebooks into classrooms at a price that means more computers for more students. But another important part of the story is Google working with DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects donors directly to public school classroom needs.

Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on our site, and you can give any amount to the project that most inspires you. When a project reaches its funding goal, we ship the materials to the school. You'll get photos of the project taking place, a letter from the teacher, and insight into how every dollar was spent. Give over $50 and you'll also receive hand-written thank-yous from the students.

Chromebooks may not be the perfect computer for all school needs, but they are fast, easily sharable, and require almost no maintenance. Google reports that more than 1,000 schools have adopted Chromebooks in classrooms. For the holiday season, teachers can request in this initiative the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook.

For the Chromebooks program, go to DonorsChoose.org and follow the instructions.

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For the rest of us, a Chromebook will cost more, but it is still an attractive price if you are looking for a laptop that lives in the cloud.

The 100 Top Global Thinkers 2012 list from Foreign Policy has caught some academia attention because amongst the usual suspects (Bill & Melinda Gates, Bill & Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) is Sebastian Thrun. The name doesn't sound familiar? He is the founder of Udacity which pioneered the massive open online courses we now call MOOCs.

But MOOCs didn't get him on the list. It turns out that Thrun, a computer scientist from Palo Alto, made the list "for revving up the robot-car revolution. They say that his work to develop driverless vehicles might make him “the Henry Ford of a new era.”
No mention of Udacity or MOOCs.

REPOSTED

There are many "charities" that you might turn to during this holiday season. One I chose to write about this Thanksgiving Day has a strong web connection and an interesting approach to the idea of helping.

It's Kiva, a site that provides loans to the working poor. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. Kiva is a Swahili word meaning "unity."

You can choose someone who is requesting a loan on Kiva.org and "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor reach for economic independence.

The loans run about 6-12 months and you can receive email updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

I don't know if this is a good project for a class or school group to do, but it's an interesting economics and flat world model to at least explore with a class. It's "microfinance" and I know there are other examples online of providing financial services to the poor in developing countries. Your small, short-term "microloans" goes to poor entrepreneurs who don't otherwise have access to capital. Maybe a student council or student government association could enroll.

Kiva follows the principal that teaching a man to fish is better than simply giving him fish. Recipients "already know how to fish, they just need a loan so they can buy a net," says Fiona Ramsey, spokeswoman for microloan facilitator Kiva. Through Kiva, people can loan sums as small as $25 to individual entrepreneurs they select on kiva.org. Kiva works with local microfinance institutions that screen all applicants and it says the default rate has been only 0.2%. Interest goes to support those microfinance groups rather than to the lenders

Here's a sample from their site: Name: Santa Javier Doate, Location: Sabana Grande de Boya Community of Yamasa, Dominican Republic Primary Activity: Clothing Sales; Loan Requested: $300 Repayment Term: 6 months - repaid monthly Loan Use: Purchase of new clothing products in bulk Posted: Nov 21, 2007 "Santa is twenty-eight years old, and she and her husband have two young girls, ages five and seven. Santa has recently begun selling women's clothing and fashionable shoes to members of her community. Santa plans to use her loan to buy more clothing at bulk rates, improving her profit margin and limiting the number of trips she will have to make to purchase the clothing she sells outside of her community. Santa envisions her business becoming a "grand store with a large selection of chic attire." She explains that the income from her business will help support her studies at the local university and help her to safeguard her children's health."

You don't have to loan the entire $300 either. You can $25 dollars to the total. It's not "charity." In fact, loans made through Kiva are not tax-deductible because they aren't a charitable contribution. When a loan is repaid, the money can be either withdrawn or lent out again. You can even purchase "gift certificates" and let others select loans. They start at $25.

I know that this is the start of the season for giving and the season for people asking you to give. I sent out my donation last week to The Smile Train. It's a charity I feel confident in because I've done some reading about them and 100% of your donation goes towards programs that help children and 0% goes to overhead. My donation is enough to pay for a cleft surgery which is a modern-day medical miracle. It's a surgery that would probably cost at least ten times that here in the U.S. and most people I know (including me) wouldn't hesitate a second to pay for it if it was our child. I'm sure the child who ends up getting the surgery from my donation will get a new smile and possibly a new life.

Tim and I wish all of our readers a season of good things. I know that we have a pretty good number of visitors from outside the United States who don't celebrate our Thanksgiving holiday, but I'm sure you have some comparable day. We hope that you can spend it surrounded by family and loved ones.

At Serendipity35, we still believe that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of people throughout the world. And what more evidence do you need than the fact that NORAD is using its super-high-tech equipment to track his Christmas deliveries. Santa's sleigh and reindeer show up quite clearly on their radar.

Every year, we follow the Countdown to Christmas Eve which started on December 1st and will continue throughout Christmas Eve.

You and any other kids in the room can track Santa live as he makes his journey around the world. You can also watch videos from NORAD Santa Cams of Santa and his reindeer.

I know what you academics are thinking. If Santa's list gets bigger each year (check out the world’s population right now) and Santa has to deliver more toys in the same amount of time, according to NORAD's calculations, he would have to limit each of his stops at homes to two to three ten-thousandths of a second per home.

And yet, for 16 centuries he has been getting the job done.

There's only one logical explanation: Santa's 24 hours are not the 24 hour day we operate within. Santa functions within a different time-space continuum than the rest of us.

Follow the action on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter too.

At Serendipity35, we still believe that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of people throughout the world. And what more evidence do you need than the fact that NORAD is using its super-high-tech equipment to track his Christmas deliveries. Santa's sleigh and reindeer show up quite clearly on their radar.

Every year, we follow the Countdown to Christmas Eve which started on December 1st and will continue throughout Christmas Eve.

You and any other kids in the room can track Santa live as he makes his journey around the world. You can also watch videos from NORAD Santa Cams of Santa and his reindeer.

I know what you academics are thinking. If Santa's list gets bigger each year (check out the world’s population right now) and Santa has to deliver more toys in the same amount of time, according to NORAD's calculations, he would have to limit each of his stops at homes to two to three ten-thousandths of a second per home.

And yet, for 16 centuries he has been getting the job done.

There's only one logical explanation: Santa's 24 hours are not the 24 hour day we operate within. Santa functions within a different time-space continuum than the rest of us.

Follow the action on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter too.

From Inside Higher Ed, comes this interesting but almost frightening electionland news...

Of all the campaign promises made so far in the Republican primary, one of the most unexpected has come from the former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich: If elected, he will teach a free online course from the White House, returning to his roots as a college professor.

With two weeks remaining until the first votes are cast at the Iowa caucuses, it’s unclear how long Gingrich will maintain his status as front-runner in the topsy-turvy campaign for the Republican nomination -- let alone whether he will serve as professor-in-chief.

Still, Gingrich is unusual in the Republican field in his ties to academe and his choice to emphasize his academic background. He is the first major candidate from either party in decades to hold a Ph.D. His history dissertation, written 40 years ago, has attracted a spate of media attention. A supporter of expanding federal spending on scientific research, Gingrich has already proposed a few specific, if perhaps far-fetched, ideas for reforming higher education nationwide.

“We're at the beginning of a period of disruptive reform, and one of the disruptive places will be education,” Gingrich said at a College Board forum in October.

Reading and replying to email requires a lot of time. Smartphones and texting may be the thing now, but email is still the killer app, especially in the workplace.

I recently saw that Chris Anderson (WIRED editor, author, TED conference guy) created an "Email Charter" and posted 10 Rules to Reverse the Email Spiral. He figures that you can't solve this problem acting alone - despite lots of articles about how to have a "zero inbox". He thinks we need to change the ground rules. He is particularly perturbed by email that takes more time to respond to than it took to generate.

I also saw a response to the Charter by The New York Times’ technology columnist, David Pogue, who admits to his own public-figure email problems, but also sees changing other people's habits as the only workable solution.

I agree but I'm less than confident that we can change the world than I was as a college sophomore. Still, I am a lifelong teacher, so here is my list culled from their lists (see, I'm already saving you time) of things we all can do that will help the problem.

1. The big goal is to minimize the time your email will take to process and that does require taking more time at your end before sending.


2. It's OK if replies take a while coming and if they don't give detailed responses to all your questions


3. Clarity - use relevant subject lines - and change them when the conversation changes


4. No odd fonts and colors


5. Avoid open-ended questions (Status? Thoughts? What's next?) These short queries require a lot of time to answer. Administrators seem to like them. ("How can we use social media effectively? Thoughts?)


6. Think twice on cc's - at work, they are often cya's (Cover Your Ass) but it fills other inboxes and increases the chance of you getting multiple replies


7. Think three times before you click "Reply All" Wow, can you get in trouble doing that too quickly!


8. Cut the thread - the thread is all of those earlier emails that are at the bottom of your mail. If there are more than three, maybe you need to make a phonecall or visit their office (especially when the person you're mailing is in the same office/building)


9. Graphics files (logos, signatures) that appear as attachments suck.


10. Why do I have to open a Word or PDF file attachment to read something that could have been in the email itself?


11. Trim your signature lines - I get ones that are quite a bit longer than the message. You can have different ones and you probably don't need to send everyone your fax number or include Bible quotes. David Pogue calls those legal disclaimers that some companies use "Legal Vomit". Has that silliness ever protected a company from anything? They are like the tags on mattresses that say "Don't remove this tag".


12. How about ending a note with “no reply necessary” so that's clear? Maybe we can make NRN a popular shortcut.


13. If you really must blast out a message (or joke or whatever) use BCC and protect your friends' e-mail address and privacy. Those mails get forwarded and eventually someone scrapes those addresses for spamming or hits "Reply All" to tell you (and now all 35 of the rest of us) that they are ROFL.


14. And about those Forwarded mails... get rid of the carets (>>>>>>) and earlier parts of the thread. Remember when people passed jokes along in the office by photocopying the photocopy? By copy number 25, bits of dust were the size of letters. Carets are the dust motes of electronic mail.


15. And was that really worth forwarding? If you had to pay for a stamp to forward it, you probably would forward about 1% of the things you pass along electronically.


16. When replying to that email that has multiple statements or questions, you can reply inline - hit the Return after each one and type your answer there, creating a little dialogue. (Some people use bold, caps or colors, but a line return or two should be sufficient).

The Email Charter says that "If we all agreed to spend less time doing email, we'd all get less email" and that's true. It also suggests that we consider "calendaring half-days at work where you can't go online" which is much more difficult. If the Internet goes down at the college where I work, I feel like we should send everyone home as you hear the work gears grind to a halt.

Email-free weekends are a nice idea. Unfortunately, they lead to stuffed-inbox Mondays...

As we near the deadline for filing federal income taxes, remind students that textbooks and course materials are eligible for a tax credit.

To learn more about this option as well as how to claim the tax credit, review the IRS instructions posted online at www.textbookaid.org

The tax credit allows students who pay taxes to receive back 40% of their textbook costs.

Of course, open textbooks are a much better deal! The costs for digital textbooks are nearly zero for students with computers and internet access. The cost of bound open textbooks is less than 25% of the cost of comparable commercial textbooks. Students can also claim tax credits on the small price of open textbooks.

Have you checked recently the open textbooks available in your discipline? The supply and quality grows constantly. See collegeopentextbooks.org/opentextbookcontent/open-textbooks-by-subject.html