The Mumbai tragedy has been horrific. Reminiscent of 9/11 times.
That said, my team has worked over the years on web-based curriculum and multimedia resources for K-12 teachers and learners and the process of such activities was expensive and time-consuming. With the types of tools available today, such inefficient activities and resources can be valuable but are not all that necessary. Creating high-quality, web-based, multimedia-enhanced curriculum resources are getting easier and easier to do or rather to access, because it's often done for us.
As an example of what can be quickly created as an event unfolds, here are just some of the resources developed around the Mumbai events:
The Twitter search tool (formerly known as Summize), kept a running documentary (microblogumentary?) including citizen journalism from individuals such as @dina and @vinu; twitter news updates such as @BreakingNewsOn; and overall global commentary.
The Wikipedia page developed as events occurred - November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Individual bloggers updated their sites; Shot Through the Heart was updated with important updated information, including emergency contact information, an embedded google doc for casualties, list of rescued hostages etc.; Arun Shanbhag's blog was kept updated with images and commentary.
Organization blogs provided many voices and resources such as Global Voices and Ground Report.
Webcasts ran such as Saja and Mumbai's Talk Radio Show.
And the resource that prompted me to write this post is an aggregated news feed that provides twitter streams/feeds for various terms like mumbai, breakingnewson, taj, etc,; @vinu's flickr pics, a video timeline (dippity), and a google map of the attacks. Update: I just realized that there was an actual tool that we can use that created the aggregated news feed, it's called Monitter. Dudes! How cool is that?! I hope it stays free...
Seriously. This type of news, information, resources, multimedia capability, etc. has the power to change the world of education. Will it?
~julz
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