iSean

As technology develops, MIT finds ways to get computers to all children - The Daily Free Press - Science

As the world becomes increasingly technologically dependent, the use of computers in classrooms has become more beneficial. One university in Massachusetts is developing a durable $100 laptop computer that may be mass produced for thousands of children around the world.The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently updated the development of a self-reliant and durable laptop for children.The computer’s A-C adapter would double as the carrying strap and a hand crank could be used power the machine if no electricity were available. Every minute of winding would power the machine for 10 minutes.The laptop is encased in rubber to resist damage from spillage or simply dropping the computer.

this story has been running through the blogosphere for the last week. i didn’t address it initially because i’ve been busy, but i don’t want to let it slide. while i think it’s great that there are folks who are looking to get technology into the hands of kids all over the world, i also hold out hope that a project finding laptops this affordable will translate into solutions for kids here in the United States who still have no computer at home.

but, rather than focus on the whole program, i wanted to point out a little nugget i found buried in the article. and, even before i get into that (something geeky), the article is on a subscription page as you may have noticed. the first page is accessible, but the second and third pages are not without registering . . . that is, unless you click on the “print” the article link near the top. this will give you the whole article. ;~)

anyway, embedded in the second page is an explanation of how these laptops are being built to act as their own bridges for wireless connectivity. so, if one laptop can reach the wireless signal source then that laptop can use the wireless signal, but it will also send the wireless signal on to all laptops within range. what a great way to develop a wireless model on the very cheap. kudos to these developers.

i also notice that my link no longer works for me without registering. i should probably have found another link. oh well.

and, moments after posting that last entry, i actually read the ed tech posse paragraph that contained spurl and realize that it appears as though furl was more highly regarded. LookSmart’s Furl - About Furl

Furl is a free service that saves the important items you find on the Web and enables you to quickly find them again. Furl archives a personal copy of every page you save. When you want to recall it, you can find it instantly by searching the full text your archived items. Each member has a personal archive of 5 gigabytes (GB), large enough to store tens of thousands of searchable items.
Furl recommends new Web pages that may interest you, guided by the sites you’ve already “Furled,” or saved.
Furl also offers the best ways to share the content you find on the Web. Send a daily email newsletter of links to friends and colleagues, use Furl to generate RSS feeds for your links, or integrate them quickly and easily into an existing Web site.

personally, i am still trying to figure out the value of social bookmarking for myself.

okay, i just came across a new (new to me anyway) tool on the internet that helps to make browsing something that anyone can manage from any connected computer. while this isn’t much use to me since i have a laptop that i take everywhere i go, i do think this is something that many of my students could benefit from using . . . especially those students who find themselves using lab computers from time to time. the service is called spurl.net and it’s free. what is it? i’ll let them answer: Spurl.net 1.0 - Free online bookmarks with so much more…

Spurl.net is a free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It allows you to store and quickly access again all the interesting pages you find on the web from any Internet connected computer.
With Spurl.net you will never have to lose a good link again. You can search your links, notes and in fact the entire text of all the pages you’ve ever “spurled”.
You can start by uploading the bookmarks from all your computers - after that all your bookmarks will be accessible in one place.
And because thousands of other users are using Spurl.net as well, you will discover interesting links through recommendations, hot lists and more.

fwiw, i found this tool by visiting the ed tech posse website (link over on the right), so you might visit their site to find their latest podcast where they discuss this tool and others.

this morning, i came across andy kessler’s blog. kessler is a frequent contributor to the wall street journal’s op-ed page as well as many other rags. he has an expertise in investment trends in technology and communications. well, the current blog entry deals with the issue of municipalities versus the telecommunications industry with regard to providing wireless internet access.

the telecommunications industry (e.g., SBC, Verizon, etc.) is fighting tooth-and-nail to keep cities out of the business of providing wireless on their own because they stand to lose a gazillion dollars, at least. cities, meanwhile, are tired of waiting for the big telecommunication corporations to provide cheap and wireless technologies for its residents. so, many cities and communities are starting their own efforts to go wireless. free market capitalists are claiming that this isn’t something that the gov’t should do (e.g., like most cities do with water — is internet access as basic as water?). and, communities are fighting back saying that even the poorest of their citizens should have access to information (via wireless). but, kessler examines the behind the scenes nooks and crannies and this blog entry is quite enlightening and worth a read. Andy Kessler: WSJ: Philadel-Fi

here’s a snippet:

But it turns out cities get to sort of cheat, cite eminent domain, and place a lot of gear on their own light poles and radio towers. No startup gets that deal. And new mesh technologies mean Philly can plug into the Internet just once, paying wholesale rates, unlike the folks that run Starbucks or hotel hotspots, who overpay (probably to Verizon) for the Internet connection their Wi-Fi users share.

But the real whopper is that - as Ms. Neff claims - by the third year, Philly will be saving $2 million a year on their $150 million IT budget by not having to pay Verizon for Internet access at their 24,000-employee city offices. Hmmm. That whole disadvantaged thing is just icing. Sounds like some sort of arbitrage.

It is, and its not going to be pretty for Verizon. By rigging the city with wireless hotspots, under the guise of helping the disadvantaged, Philadelphia may completely bypass Verizon. A T-1 line from Verizon, which is 1.5 megabits of data per second, runs anywhere from $400 to $1300 dollars a month. With Municipal Wi-Fi (Mu-Fi), that could drop to $300, heck, maybe even $20 a month. Consumers (read voters) are happy and small businesses will save tons of money. No wonder phone companies are circling the wagons. Think of it as a Telco tax cut. Cheese steak sales are gonna boom.

Its about time (for cheaper access, not cheese steaks). If municipalities across the U.S. are willing to lose $1 million a year to save $2 million, this is going to spread like wildfire.

i intend to use blogging as a tool for communicating with my students, but also for my students to communicate with each other. i will likely de-emphasize the internet discussion forum and shift more attention to the use of blog, though i’ll still use the phpBB discussion forum. for what it’s worth, i considered using edublogs for blogging, but they discourage teachers using it with students. so, i am going to use blogsome, which uses WordPress just like this blog. it’s also free. this blog entry is my attempt to think out loud as i weight the plusses and minuses.

phpBB forums strengths:
this is a controlled environment. i can see every post/comment made by my students in one place. it’s efficient, convenient and effective. when i want to grade the value of the various contributions, the forum administration tools provide me with tools to quickly evaluate individual students. i can edit any comments made (e.g., to correct a spelling error or to delete a double submission). i can poll my students easily. i can make class announcements in a timely manner as all participating students will check the forum throughout the week. i can easily add images and make links and tie content into the weekly objectives. i also add avatars (photos of my students) so that i “see” each student every time they comment (as do the other students). if students forget passwords, they can easily have it reset (i can’t look it up, but tools exist to change it). i can also customize the look and feel of the forums.

phpBB forum disadvantages:
i don’t really have much to complain about. i have to keep group size to around 8 - 10 students at most because otherwise, i think people participating later in the week tend to feel that the contributions they want to make have already been hashed out. compared to Blackboard, which my university provides for me, the phpBB forums are light-years ahead, so any disadvantages should be viewed in light of this revelation.

blogging strengths:
blogging is becoming quite the rage and i think keeping a journal can be a good way to reflect back on content that you’ve learned while in school, but it can also be used while teaching to continue improving. blogs are more permanent than discussion forums. blogging can be as formal or informal as the author chooses. blogs are open to the world, so anyone can read it and add comments and/or feedback.

blogging disadvantages:
blogs are open to the world, so anyone can read it. ;~) yeah, i added this under strengths and weaknesses and it is both. i worry about having my students write in an open environment. i’ll encourage my students to create their blog anonymously and to not reveal private information (e.g., contact information, names, etc.). that’s good enough for me. blogs are spread out and each student has a unique URL, which can make it difficult to locate. in the past, students have lost passwords or login information and had to recreate new blogs, so their contributions to the course get spread out.

while there is much more, this is the gist of where i am in viewing these tools. my solution is to use phpBB forums and blogsome for blogging. i will try and pose more controversial subjects/questions in the forum and more personal content in the blog-o-sphere (e.g., how would you handle this scenario in your classroom . . . ; or please comment on this article). classes start this coming Monday so i suppose i’ll settle on my happy medium by then. ;~)

am i missing anything crucial in my thinking? feel free to comment or email me.

google news customization

Originally uploaded by atticmooses.

my internet start page is news.google.com. i like to run through the various headlines from time to time during the day and Google’s news gives me access to tens of thousands of sources. Great!

but, what about that specialized news that doesn’t often fit into the generic headlines that Google supplies? have no fear, google has got your back. the news is customizable. you can have as many special categories as you’d like. i set up many customized news searches. in the image enclosed (you may have to click it to see a close up version), you can see two of the categories that i am using: computers & schools; and, internet & teach. any current news articles that contain the two specified words will appear in my search results. it’s as simple as it looks. try it out. ;~)

JD and Ellie watching waves

Originally uploaded by atticmooses.

I joined a new photo storage and sharing site a while back and forgot about it. Well, I was reading internet news today and came across a tutorial for using Flickr. I was surprised to see that I already had an account. So, I decided to test it out. In fact, I am posting this blog entry from within the Flickr website.

Further, I was able to download a photo uploading tool to use inside of iPhoto — iPhoto is the application I use on my Mac to store and organize all of my digital photos. The uploading tool makes it extremely easy to resize and upload any photos I want to share. Further, the tool allows me to add titles, comments, and even searching terms to each image or batch process all photos at once.

I have to say that I am quite impressed with the ease of sharing photos once you put in a small amount of legwork up front. Then again, I can already see one thing I’d fix . . . This blog entry does not have a section that allows me to choose the categories for which this blog entry applies, so I’ll have to visit my blog and add that. But, that’s minor compared to the ease of everything else. And, I should have a neat little photo of my children enjoying the ocean at Carolina Beach this summer.


Edit: My first attempt said it failed and I tried again. The second attempt worked. I then visited my blog and both attempts had worked. I deleted one and that solved that, but I guess that’s why Flickr is still in beta. heh heh.

this link (to a PBS op-ed) starts to look at the shift apple is making from IBM chips to Intel over the next 2 years. the thinking here is that the shift has more to do with the potential of Intel beyond just computing:

Another shoe fell recently with the announcement of Intel’s investment in actor Morgan Freeman’s online movie distribution startup, ClickStar. Here is the most important part of that announcement: “The company’s strategy is to provide the marketing and distribution expertise required to enable the release of first-run films before they’re released on DVD and delivered directly to Intel’s digital home entertainment devices.”

What digital home entertainment devices would these be?

I’ve looked and can’t find any. Sure, Intel has plenty of information on its Digital Home web site about digital home entertainment products from its many hardware OEMs, but there is very little you can buy right now under the Intel brand name.

Press releases aren’t written lightly or without nuance. In the ClickStar announcement. Intel was declaring its intention to introduce, presumably in time for Christmas, a family of Intel-branded home entertainment devices. If they had meant devices from Dell or HP, they would have written that.

Now take a look at the ClickStar web site. It isn’t clickstar.com, but clickstarinc.com, which tell us that the name is probably a placeholder. If they really intended to use the trade name “ClickStar,” they would have tied-up the domain prior to the announcement. When the service finally appears, then, it will probably be called something else.

I think it will be called the “iTunes Movie Store.”

i think this is a natural next step. i think apple has their finger on the pulse of pop culture and they are one of the few companies that has shown that they have the infrastructure to handle this sort of a digital lifestyle change. time will tell.

personally, i am more excited about the focus on video and finding ways to get video compressed better and better at a higher quality. i can’t wait to incorporate video into my own teaching. unfortunately, i surveyed students in my two online classes this summer and about 75% of them were still using dial-up. that’s horrible and that doesn’t bode well for any full scale implementations of video for me any time soon. Shucks!

so, i know quite a bit about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but practically nothing about php. this blog uses a template to give it its look and layout. i spent the better part of the day designing the CSS and the images that go with it. i also tried to play with some php files because i want my links on the right to be divided according to some categories that i’ve defined for the links, but that will have to happen another day because everything i tried tended to end in errors. sheesh! then again, i really like that my blog looks unique and i am sure enough time on the WordPress support forums will get my links fixed. all in due time.

well, i just checked my admin files for the themes and there is weird code everywhere. apparently, i did something wrong. i guess i’ll keep this theme as long as it works for you, but i’ll probably spend another day soon just trying to figure out what i did wrong and how to fix it. fun times ahead.

so, i just installed a new service called craftysyntax. craftysyntax is a a multi-user, multi-operator, multi-department live help support chat system. In simple terms, it’s a way to interact with people who are browsing your website. now, i don’t expect to interact live (e.g., a chat session) with all of my students — i can’t; however, i have grown a bit leery of the online lectures that i assign. i get the feeling that my lectures aren’t being read very well, if at all. now, i had the same fears about the textbook and i give my students a quiz at the end of each session in the hopes of asking some questions that will cause my students to want to read the readings. but the quiz comes on Sundays evenings and the class sessions started on the previous monday. many students will complete the class well before the quiz arrives. i want to find a way to get my students being more interactive around the lecture content. enter craftysyntax onto the scene.

craftysyntax is set up to be live help, but i have discovered that you don’t have to be live to enjoy the main benefits of this software as it pertains to e-learning. let me explain how i’ll use it . . . i want to create little buttons throughout online lectures (perhaps after about each page or 2 of the lectures). students will click on the button that is included on the webpages of the lectures. each click will pop open a new window with content and questions that i’ve written. students will answer questions that are less about being a quiz and much more about reflecting on various sections of the e-lecture. their answers are emailed to me immediately and i can then provide them with a model response to the question(s) posed.

it’s late and i am tired. more on this later.