So, it is December. Christmas' month. Santa's time. Big fat guy on a red suit, ringing his bell and flying around on his sleigh. It is, indeed, a nice picture. He must find himself warm under those heavy clothes.

Down here, it is Christmas too, but it is summer and we got the lots of guys sweating underneath those red fabrics. And we got sleighs but no snow. You may also see some Christmas trees decorated with fake foamy snow.

I just do not understand that.

I would rather have a nice warm-style Christmas. Cold dishes for dinner. Getting flip flops and snorkels. I want some Christmas' Old Fellows (that would be the literal translation of how we call that guy here: Viejo Pascuero) wearing shorts and shaved, riding anything that could move on anything that is not snow -a pick-up truck maybe or a carriage if you prefer something more traditional-, and a red cap instead of that impotent pointy hat, although we could keep the white cotton ball on top of it. I just want a summer Santa Claus.

But I believe everyone should have his or her own holyday.

Which one is yours? How it is going to be? How was it?

How is it in Prague? in Berlin? in Hawthrone? in Albany? in Richland? in Bahrain? in Paris? in Tegucigalpa? in Leeds? in Schenectady? in Bogotá? in Québec? in Trinidad? in London? in Barcelona? in Kyoto? in Lagos? in NYC? in Portland? in Rennes? in Buenos Aires? in El Paso? in WDC? in Tokio? in Fiji? Where ever you are... how is it?

Mengistu Haile Mariam ruled Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991. He leaded a communist revolution that overthrone Haile Selassie, emperor at the time, and he killed over 750,000 people during his dictatorship.

Today, Ethiopia's Federal High Court found him and 71 other officials of his Government guilty of genocide.

He is exiled in Zimbabwe, and he is being protected by that State. Thus, he will not face Ethiopian justice.

Still, he was judge in his own country.

Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile between 1973 and 1990. He leaded a military coup that overthrone Salvador Allende, constitutional president at the time, and he killed, desapeared, sexually abused, and turtured over 5,000 people during his dictatorship.

Last Sunday, he died at 91 in a militar hospital, surrounded by his family, with none of 300 trails open against him in Chilean courts.

Today, he was cremated with militar honors.

Go back to this post's title.

There is no much more to say about Pinochet's death this afternoon that you might have already read.

You all might already know that some people is crying over his death, while other are dancing and celebrating the very same thing.

I am 25. I was born under hos government. I was a child when he lost both 1988 and 1989 elections and he had to give up the office. I was a teenager when he was recluted in London in 1998. I have always seen him in the news. I saw him giving up the power in 1990. I saw him getting of the plane which brought him back from England in 1999. So many, many things...

He have always been there, but not any more.

I am glad. He did so much harm.

Still, the one that is comming soon -one without Pinochet arround- it is a Chile I do not know.

Looking for new citizen journalists everyday, I ran into Roger Schank (in Wikipedia), an American who is devoted to making high quality e-learning affordable for both businesses and schools through the company Socratics Arts, which he founded.

By "ran into" I mean "reading one of his articles", and I was really impressed. His first considerations are so obvious that we miss them: do we learn what we really need to?. It is kind of long, but it worths your next five minutes in front this screen:

What if we Started with a Clean Slate?

by Roger Schank

Remember when Jimmy Carter said that he'd like to start each government department with a zero-based budget and then have them prove they needed any money at all? He never got very far with that and I probably won't get very far with what I am about to suggest either: zero-based curriculum planning.

How about if we assume that everything we have so far created as courses is wrong, throw them out, and start over? I think this idea has merit in corporate training as well as in high school and college. To illustrate what I mean I will discuss high school. This is not entirely random since I am now engaged in a project to redesign high school.

In high school, we can either accept that the subjects we teach are the ones that have always been taught and this is because they were handed to someone on a mountain somewhere by a deity, or else we can ask: what is that any adult should know how to do, and start from there. In fact, I have asked this question many times of many people. Here are the most common answers I have received:

An adult should know how to:

• Write
• Speak in public
• Work cooperatively in a team
• Lead a team
• Negotiate
• Plan
• Handle his or her finances
• Make healthcare decisions
• Function within the society in which he or she lives
• Get along with a mate
• Raise children in a healthy manner
• Learn from experts
• Handle the technological tools of the society
• Make nutritional decisions
• Keep fit
• Navigate the terrain
• Convince others of his or her ideas
• Reason and draw conclusions from evidence

This isn't a complete set of course. Feel free to add your favorites. My question is: will your favorites include: biology, chemistry, physics, trigonometry, algebra, geometry, macroeconomics, or English literature?

If the latter are not your favorites, then you need to think about why you send your children to schools that teach them and why, in your corporation, you let the same old courses be taught again and again without examining what people really need to learn to know how to do.

If the old courses are your favorites because they have always been there and you are really conservative, you need to ask yourself how much you remember from them -do you know the quadratic formula or the periodic table for example? If you can't recall those things there probably wasn't much point in drilling them into your head in high school. And, if you can recall those things there still wasn't much point in having drilled them into your head in high school.

So, what should we teach? The stuff that people really need to do on a daily basis.

But, how do we do that?

We need to create contexts in which the important things happen. Most of the subjects that I listed above are both obvious and difficult to teach directly. One must create contexts where people work in groups, have to reason and plan, must make written and oral presentations and so on.

Last week, I held a meeting in Chicago of new technology experts to plan a technology curriculum for high school. It is meant to take up all of year three of a four year virtual high school curriculum that we are building meant to prepare student for careers or further education in science and technology.

The New Technology curriculum that we planned is a story centered curriculum (NT-SCC) that consists of projects in which students engage, sometimes in groups and sometimes on their own. These projects require deliverables, that once delivered allow students to proceed on to the next project. Each project is designed to be fun, relevant to young people, collaborative, and to allow individual expression and the pursuit of particular interests that a student might have. Taken together, the projects increase in complexity and tell a story of life in the world of computers. At the end of the NT-SCC there is a choice of intense internship-like experiences that prepare a student to get a job in an aspect of the world of new technology that the student has found to be of interest.

Here is a project-by-project list of what we have in mind:

• Project 1: Blogosphere

Students are asked to create their own blog. The blog is to be about technology or a new technological event that interests them. It is to be documented with web sites they have visited and is to include a critical analysis and their thoughts on the technology they have seen. The student is asked to add some new technological feature to the blog. The new blog feature is evaluated by the working group and the teacher.

• Project 2: My Alternate Space

Today's young people are connecting with each other at places like MySpace. The 2nd project is meant to build upon that interest and expand it technologically. Working with an open source version of MySpace that we will construct students will begin to expand the possibilities within that sort of framework.

• Project 3: Web Site

The curriculum now shifts into an individual mode. Each student needs to build his or her own web site. The student will learn appropriate scripting languages. The web site project starts with an examination of web sites that the student believes are good and bad.

• Project 4: Enhanced Web Site

Now students are encouraged to team up with other students they find interesting. They need to make their sites interactive, use java-script, flash and other means to make the sites first rate. They learn about information architecture, web design, graphics and animation.

• Project 5: Create Something

This is the beginning of the student's opportunity to work on something of personal interest. The student is given a month to build an artifact of some kind. There are three possible tracks a student could follow:

1. The Software Application track - In this track, the student who is interested in programming, mash ups, games, or any kind of new software application spends the month building what interests him or her. This can be done individually or in teams.
2. The Physical Component track - In this track the student can do a project in networking, computer hardware, robotics or the creation of smart spaces, embedded systems and smart devices using sensor technology
3. The Artist track - Here a student can create their own movie, cartoon, television or music project or any other artistic creation using technology.

• Project 6: Web Magazine

Students create a web magazine and produce two issues in one month's time. They play different roles- writer, editor, webmaster, animator, graphic artist and so on. The issues will be about subjects other than technology but related to it, such as political, environmental, and social issues. Writing, teamwork and learning about non technical issues is the intention of this project.

• Project 7: Mini-Search Engine

The next project students will tackle is to build their own search engine. This project takes three weeks and is meant to have them build a real world application that actually works.

• Project 8: Mobile Technology

Students add mobility to whatever they have been working on. This takes three weeks.

• Project 9: Build a Business

Students propose and execute a technology business, writing the business plan and building a prototype of their product or service. They look at business plans for other new technology businesses and adapt one of their own for whatever they have been working on. This takes three weeks.

• Internship

The curriculum ends with a simulated internship. Students pick from the following areas:

1. Telecommunications -- Here they would work for a phone company, real or simulated, in a series of work-like projects.
2. New media -- Here they would work for a video production company (real or simulated.)
3. Software development 1 -- Here they would work for a software company doing applications (real or simulated)
4. Software development 2 -- Here they would work on projects that involve real time systems, security, networking, or hardware.
5. Web development -- Here they would work on web development
6. Embedded systems -- Here they would work on creating intelligent devices.

So, this is our plan. We begin building soon. Can we just get rid of what was there before in year three of high school? We had better.