[DDN] Making Mobile Phones Mandatory in Schools?
Hi everyone, The AP had an interesting story this weekend about universities now requiring students to participate in school-sanctioned mobile phone services: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060709/D8IOKONO0.html I've posted an analysis of one of the more cutting-edge programs (MSU Connect at Montclair State University) on my learning.now blog: http://www.pbs.org/learningnow permalink: http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2006/07/making_mobile_phones_mandatory.html The Montclair program includes a variety of campus-specific services on their phones, including classroom management tools and real-time public transportation information. It also includes a controversial tracking program called Rave Guardian that allows the university to pinpoint the exact location of all students using GPS. In my blog I take a look at the service and ponder whether or not it might have relevancy some day in the K-12 universe as well. thanks, andy -- -- Andy Carvin acarvin (at) edc . org andycarvin (at) yahoo . com http://www.andycarvin.com http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.pbs.org/learningnow -- ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
RE: [DDN] Nicholas Negroponte- ISTE NECC Speech
FROM: Paul Paulson [EMAIL PROTECTED] (858) 673-4269 DATE: Sunday, July 09, 2006 TO: [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUBJECT: Peer to peer teaching, San Diego style Dear BBracey More peer to peer teaching has to happen, and the children have to help with the learning. I saw that sentence in your digitaldivide email of Friday, July 7, 2006 8:15 PM. As an advocate of computer literacy for older adults, I would add another sentence: To raise the level of adult computer literacy, more peer to peer teaching has to happen, and adults have to help each other with the learning. When you and other computer literacy leaders come to San Diego, please take some time of observe what goes on during the computer lab classes of Gini Pedersen, the most effective computer literacy teacher I have every seen. She is a graduate of San Diego State University, an outstanding instructor, a powerful advocate of computer literacy for older adults, and a gifted user of a student-helping-student method of instruction. Gini is an instructor at the North City Campus of the San Diego Community College District located at 8401 Aero Drive. She often is a volunteer guest speaker for two groups of older adults, the Seniors Computer Group (SCG) and the Rancho Bernardo Community Computer Club (RBCCC). When Gini is a guest speaker, members come early to get a good seat. The governing board of the Seniors Computer Group recently awarded Gini an Honorary Lifetime Membership for her outstanding work in the community. She has won many other awards, and she is a popular presenter and a panel member at San Diego conferences of the Southwest Regional User Groups of the APCUG (Association of Personal Computer User Groups). To explain her success, I will describe what happens in her computer lab classes, but to appreciate her effectiveness as an instructor, you and other educators should observe one of more of her lab classes. Here are some of her coming classes: . Developing a Webpage 2 Mondays, July 10 and 17 . . . 5:30-9 pm . Buying the RIGHT Computer 1 Tuesday, July 11 . . . 1-5 pm . Word Tips and Tricks 1 Tuesday, July 11 . . . 5:30-9 pm . Excel 3 Mondays, July 17, 24, and 31 . . . 1-5 pm . Top 10 Computer Problems and Solutions 2 Tuesdays, July 18 and 25 . . . 1-5 pm . Intro to Computers 1 Tuesday, July 18 . . . 5:30-9 pm . Windows File Management 1 Monday, July 24 . . . 5:30-9 pm . Windows Basics 1 Tuesday, July 25 . . . 5:30-9 pm . Access 2 Mondays, July 31 and Aug 7 . . . 5:30-9 pm Go to her web site at www.iteachyou.com to see her current schedule of classes. Here is what you can observe in her classes. . . . Gini welcomes each student as they enter the lab, has them take a seat at a vacant computer, and distributes registration forms, pencils, and the course outline. As the completed forms are turned in, Gini notices any missing items and returns them for corrections. Gini wears a portable microphone so she can continue the orientation as she moves around the lab to help students get settled and fill out the forms. For a class of about 40 students, all this preliminary administration takes less than 10 minutes. In Phase 1, Gini demonstrates and explains each step of the first mini-module. Her demonstration on her computer is projected onto the large screen at the front of the class. The networked computers allow each student to also view the same demonstration on their own computer screen. During this phase the students hear the instructor describe each step, they see the instructor demonstrate each step, and they can read the written step-by-step instructions in their course outline. In Phase 2, the instructor leads the students step-by-step through the same mini-module. Students are given control of their computers so they can do each step on their own computer as directed by the instructor. Students get immediate personal feedback. Their action on their keyboard and mouse produces results that show up on their own monitor. If a student falls behind, Gini notices their predicament and personally comes to their aid or asks her assistant to help them catch up. In Phase 3, the instructor requires the students to pair off with a co-learner. The two co-learners use a buddy system to practice the mini-module. *One of the co-learners plays the role of READER while the other co-learner plays the role of DOER. *Using the printed directions on the course outline, the READER reads the step-by-step instructions aloud, one at a time, to their co-learner. The DOER works the mouse and the keyboard as directed by their co-learner. *As the DOER uses the mouse and the keyboard, they tell their co-learner what they are doing. (Example, I'm moving the mouse pointer to the START button at the lower left of the screen.) This close association of the words spoken with the action taken is an
[DDN] Need to build intellectual commons
Here is an interesting argument in favour of making knowledge flow freely without barriers. From Peter Suber's blog. Subbiah Arunachalam Building a positive intellectual commons Peter Drahos, A Defence of the Intellectual Commons, Consumer Policy Review, May/June 2006. Excerpt: For present purposes, the 'intellectual commons' refers to information, where information is used as a generic term to mean things like verified knowledge (for example, the structure of the DNA molecule), data, interpretations of that data, techniques, information embodied in technology, the products of technology (for example, music) and many other discrete classes of information. I will argue that monopoly rights in the form of intellectual property rights are an especially bad idea for the intellectual commons. Amongst other things, information cannot be depleted through use Pharmaceutical, software and media companies argue for and obtain, usually by means of trade agreements, stronger and stronger forms of intellectual property that are backed by the coercive power of civil and criminal lawIn essence, private monopolists are using intellectual property law to command our obedience over new arrangements for the intellectual commons The intellectual commons can be distinguished from the public domain. The latter draws its meaning from the laws of intellectual property, while the former is a political expression of community when it comes to social arrangements for use rights over information. Hardin's tragedy of the commons does not apply to the intellectual commons. In fact, the intellectual common is subject to the law of repletion. It grows rather than depletes through useA negative common in which monopolists gain the power of restriction over the commoners slows down the operation of the law of repletion and, more importantly, represents a net loss of freedom. Self-organized positive intellectual commons will become more prevalent as citizens conclude that governments, because they have been corrupted by the wealth of big business, will not deliver the institutions of knowledge that citizens want. Citizens will, through social licences, construct variants of the positive intellectual commons that maximize their use rights over the informational assets that matter to their ends in life, commons that will help to disperse the centralizing power of private monopoly over information. ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
Re: [DDN] Nicholas Negroponte- ISTE NECC Speech
This is a very grand vision, no doubt, but there crucial points that may be brushed over in the rhetoric. I'll point out one example, since it was one I was looking for: The children will maintain the laptops themselves. How? Who is going to train a child to maintain a laptop? Is Negropointe funding the training? I'd *love* to see children able to maintain their own laptops, but the truth of the matter is, very few techies in the US ever meddle with laptop hardware. Website developers, community technologists, people who can build a desktop machine from the ground up...all of them give up and get warranty service on their laptops. Why? Because everything is proprietary, the machines are delicate, and soldiering the power connector back on to your laptop's main board is somewhat more daunting than popping a PCI card into your desktop. Or does he mean they'll maintain their own software? I don't think that training is everything; those laptops could be an incredible tool for systemic social change. But they're only one step. Negropointe talks about not focusing on the laptops but on using them as tools to teach learning, instead of tools to teach something. Pedagogically, this sounds great...but then he contradicts himself by focusing entirely on the laptop itself, instead of on the teaching. Who's managing this $100 file server? Who's training the teachers who are (supposedly) training these students to maintain their own laptops? These questions are still unanswered. I think the cost per laptop may be cut down to $100 if you (irresponsibly) leave out training, service and support in addition to your marketing costs...and I'm far from convinced that Negropointe's not marketing this. Dave. --- Dave A. Chakrabarti Projects Coordinator CTCNet Chicago [EMAIL PROTECTED] (708) 919 1026 --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am listening to Nicholas Negroponte, telling his story about the computer that will change the world. He has referenced the beginning of the ideas , back from Seymour Papert's ideas of teaching children to think, and how we could use Logo programming when it was a new initiative. He said, that , back then in the seventies, that it changed the way that children using technology to think. Thirty years forward, he is describing the way it works in developing nations and the difficulty of getting there , the location, the place, a person with old pc's with a generator.. and they are teaching the kids Word and Excel in various countries all over the world.. with the misconception that learning these programs will change the world. He is describing to us the three basic principles Use technology to learn learning not to learn something teaching is one but not the only way to achieve learning Leverage children themselves some 50 percent of the children in this world live in rural , poor, part of the world and many of the children have barely a sixth grade education, and go to school in shifts in huge groups. More peer to peer teaching has to happen, and the children have to help with the learning. He showed various pictures of children around the world who were being introduced to technology from Dakar to Costa Rica... There are pictures of children from India, to ..Kashmir... and they showed use of wifi to connect the various groups of children. But connectivity is not the thing the truth is that this technology is unfolding, the problem is not telecommunications it is the laptops.. the LAPTOPS He sent his son to Cambodia to create a project, and they had connectivity, laptops, and created a infrastructure in villages with no electricity, no roads, no resources, no lights.. the computers go home, and the light from the computers was the only light at home. ( as long as the batteries lasted) Story in the US Angus King started the laptop initiative in Maine and it was revolutionary. He states that the initiative creates a new way of looking at technology. He described the initiative. What is One Laptop Per Child? 1.A non profit entity of $30 M funding for non recurring engineering costs 2. About scale, scale, being global is crucial launch 5-10 million in 2007 50-150 million 2008 , in five large diverse countries. 3. To provide to children, to own, to take home to use seamlessly. There are partners Google, Ebay, AMC, News Corp, Brightstar, Marvell, Nortell, Red hat, 3M, etc A lot about laptops This is an education and a learning project. Getting to a hundred dollard is sales, marketing and profit. the costs can be 60 percent. Eliminate half of the cost by not doing these things. No Sales, Marketing, Distribiution, first purchase order, 5-10 M units, Linux, reduce display cost leveraging backlight innovation. 75 percent of the cost is to support the software and the features and these features cost us. Don't need a little dog
[DDN] Podcast: Governor Angus King on the Maine laptop initiative
Hi everyone, Last month I recorded a podcast of former Maine governor Angus King talking about his role in creating Maine's middle school laptop initiative. I just received permission from him to post it publicly, so it's now on my blog: http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/07/podcast_angus_king_o.html It's about 50 minutes long and 45 megabytes. I've also included a link to notes I wrote during his presentation for those of you who'd prefer not to download the audio. thanks, andy -- -- Andy Carvin acarvin (at) edc . org andycarvin (at) yahoo . com http://www.andycarvin.com http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.pbs.org/learningnow -- ___ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
