http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-pledge-fear-factor.h

Educause and Sakai - strong opponents of Blackboard's patent claims on the LMS and more aren't wholehearted about their support of Blackboard's patent pledge - although Blackboard has included in the pledge many named open source initiatives (Elgg being one of them), regardless of whether they incorporate proprietary elements in their applications, Blackboard has also reserved rights to assert its patents against other providers of such systems that are "bundled" with proprietary code. Is that wiggle room or what?

This bundling language could be construed in any number of ways - introducing "legal and technical complexity and uncertainty which will be inhibitive in this arena of development."
And that. after all, was Blackboatd's intent from the beginning. They were not after a patent - they were after scaring away the new development, scaring away institutions from pursuing open source actions - because maybe, just maybe, Blackboard would try to take them to task.

In fact EDUCAUSE and Sakai worked to gain a pledge that Blackboard would never take legal action for infringement against a college or university using another competing product. Blackboard could not agree for reasons related to its existing legal case.

Fear, sadly, is often more effective than the rule of law.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/connectivism-online-conference-

George Siemens is creating a learning space, populated by great presenters, over 1,000 attendees representing over 40 countries, to virtually explore connectivism and social software from February 2-9, 2007. The conference is online and free but already oversubscribed so...follow me in this blog as I report on the presentations from a higher education perspective.

Here's the blurb about the conference intent...."The evolution of teaching and learning is accelerated with technology. After several decades of duplicating classroom functionality with technology, new opportunities now exist to alter the spaces and structures of knowledge to align with both needs of learners today, and affordances of new tools and processes. Yet our understanding of the impact on teaching and learning trails behind rapidly forming trends. What are critical trends? How does technology influence learning? Is learning fundamentally different today than when most prominent views of learning were first formulated (under the broad umbrellas of cognitivism, behaviourism, and constructivsm)? Have the last 15 years of web, technology, and social trends altered the act of learning? How is knowledge itself, in a digital era, related to learning?"

Key themes will include: trends in K-12 sector, trends in higher education, research and net pedagogy, technological and societal trends, and connective knowledge and connectivism.

Confirmed presenters include: Stephen Downes , Will Richardson , Terry Anderson , George Siemens , Bill Kerr and Diana G. Oblinger, Ph.D.

Stay tuned - I'll be posting some filtering comments on the conference.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-backs-off.html

Chalk up a win for the educational community against the unwarranted and altogether ridiculous attempt by Blackboard to claim the history of educational technology for itself. The doors to open learning are now open once more.

Announcing the Blackboard Patent Pledge - a promise to never assert its issued or pending course management system software patents against open source software or home-grown course management systems. This Blackboard Pledge is legally binding, irrevocable and worldwide in scope.

As part of the Pledge, Blackboard promises never to pursue patent actions against anyone using such systems including professors contributing to open source projects, open source initiatives, commercially developed open source add-on applications to proprietary products and vendors hosting and supporting open source applications.

Blackboard is also extending its pledge to many specifically identified open source initiatives within the course management system space whether or not they may include proprietary elements within their applications, such as Sakai, Moodle, ATutor, Elgg and Bodington.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/connectivism-online-conference-

I'm just now coming down from the heights of chaotic thought provoked by George Siemens' presentation via Elluminate on Connectivism. So there we were, 190 of us, worldwide, linked via web and focussed on listening to George - a trusted member of our network - share his thoughts and ideas with the connectees. And we were all exploring the same questions. Where are we in learning now, where are we going and how will we get there? What skills, provisions do we need on the journey?

Synaptic learning...moments of lucidity...sparks of recognition..a second of how it all fits then fading into ambiguity...excuse me while I kiss the sky; this is learning as it should be - shared, chaotic, questioned, reshared, ideation in process, not product "knowledge in stasis".

Riding through the connective pathways...fast and frugal heuristics, trying to deal with the demanding complexity of our world today, where our linear approach to learning is just not meeting the need. We need to change our interaction patterns, our definition of learning spaces, our focus on product not process - higher education has a lot of changes to make and it is one slow moving beast. But then again climate change drove us all to take a holistic look at our environmental reality and as a result it seems we are prepared to change our behaviour. Changes in higher learning may also be forthcoming - as crisis looms.

Knowledge today is complex, ever changing, and information is overabundant. Knowledge no longer resides in a place, in a brain, in one person or a cadre of experts - it is in the connections we make, our networks of learning. Technology is evolving and affords us the opportunity to connect and share. As our network grows it impacts upon our assumptions about learning infrastructures, about authority, and certainty of "knowing". We'll recognize that a textbook, a professor is a node not a touchstone. Textbooks and professors should not position themselves as experts who can claim to keep pace with the changing face of knowledge - but they can guide us, can provide trusted nodes, a framework, a foundation and skill set that enables and maximizes our learning journey.

Where does knowledge reside in institutions? When is it made available? Journals that few people read, that few people can access. Articles that get refereed by a few experts then disseminated to a small audience usually bound by the blinkers of their discipline. This is not ideation - a fast response to the changing face of knowledge and a recognition of worldwide realities and contextualities.

Institutional approaches are not in line with the rapidity of knowledge development. Containers of learning - courses, professors, textbooks - confined to a space - university - and bounded by time and pace restrictions are not appropriate for this journey.

This learning journey will be troubling, chaotic, fraught with cognitive dangers - and we need to teach new skills to prepare our students, and our professors. We need to have them understand that learning is not a product but a process. That learning is not a place it is a journey. That we have to move from knowing to knowing where, to sense making, and need to learn to apply what we learn to actually learn. The power of the web, the social networking available, and the filtering, tagging, bookmarking tools will help us connect and increase the pace of our sense making .

The chaos and messiness of global networking is seeping into the classroom and higher education is in denial. Guess what? It's going to bite them soon enough thanks to the pace that the lower grade teachers are moving at -using blogs and social networking with their students - the future attendees of universities. These kids will be coming to university with expectations -and skills most professors will not recognize. These kids will have had years of pattern recognition, network formation and evaluation, have exercised critical/creative thinking (collaborate, create and recreate) and learned to accept uncertainty/ambiguity of holistic learning and a recognition that contextually, there is no right answer, their is only the formulation of new ways of thinking.

Is the space, place, pace and minds of the university ready for these kids? Not by a long shot. But maybe, like global warming, higher education will have a crisis to respond to and they might just change. Or perhaps the kids won't care - they'll have other opportunities for their learning journey.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/blackboard-strategy.html

Blackboard knows that their patent action is unconscionable and is open to challenge. But they didn't do it to becuse they thought it had merit - prior art demonstrates that the patent is not applicable. But they don't need to have the patent honoured -they can succeed at what they really wanted this action to do - scare the market and keep prospective proprietary systems at bay.

Institutions are naturally leary of litigation, and would choose to have sand kicked in their face rather than maybe, just maybe be involved in a legal fight with Blackboard. Blackboard may succeed in putting desire2learn out of business (a Canadian company) , and will succeed in scaring off any other company that is drawing up plans to enter the ed tech software arena. But I think Blackboard is going to lose on two fronts. The first is that some forward thinking institutions will think twice about tying into any proprietary system and will take a serious look at Moodle or sakai or Elgg (eg. Open University and Athabasca University already use Moodle). And the second is that Blackboard has through their actions, galvanized an opposition consisting of the educational blogosphere, educause and the open systems folks, and many fence sitting educators who now see open source as a possibility.

If Blackboard continues to push this patent action they will lose the respect and goodwill they have developed over the years. Blackboard would do well to settle out of court with d2l and let this patent action drift off into the twilight zone. Then maybe they can start acting as the leaders they could be rather than trying to stifle competition and innovation.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/waraku-education-podmo.html

Waraku Education: PODMO

Another move ahead for free and open learning - a new network technology called PODMO - it works with bluetooth mobile phone devices. Content is free when e within the bluetooth communication range of a PODMO server. It establishes a network within the internet with free data to users -what can be done with it? - think instant messaging, fill in online forms (data acquisition tasks), access maps, RSS feeds, and soon free VOIP calls.

Free phone calls from a mobile phone - PODMO gets its money via advertising but the advertising model is absolutely non intrusive. The user chooses to access this material via menu items.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/waraku-education-crickee-and-po

Waraku Education: Crickee and PODMO

Announcing cheap SMS thanks to Crickee a Java program that allows the mobile phone to SMS but have the data transmitted and received via the Mobiles Internet data connection.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/02/students-punished-for-facebook-

A student council president of a Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Toronto asked a very pertinent question after being suspended for "online bullying" for negative comments made about the school Principal in Facebook, "When does the school's jurisdiction end?" said Sultana, 17, , adding as far as he knows none of the 19 students was accessing Facebook during school time or on school computers. Since Sultana says he only viewed the comments but did not take part - yet suffered a suspension - where does guilt begin? By association? By viewing comments? By opposing the principal? By voicing free will? By using Facebook to vent? Having an opinion at 17?

The students involved in this online discussion, not able to plead their case or discuss the suspension, are naturally concerned and confused. But what it really signifies is that there is something wrong with the administration of this school - and the students in their frustration were venting about that. Not only is there concern about how they were treated by the principal before this Facebook discussion, but also why they are denied opportunities to discuss the issues when punsihment is meted out.

The long arm of totalitarian control, denying opportunities to face the charges, denial of freedoms - exercised by a principal who obviously has some organizational problems to deal with. This is not what we should be teaching our students.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/open-content-alliance-expands-r

Open Content Alliance Expands Rapidly; Reveals Operational Details: "October 31, 2005 — Just a few weeks after its launch, the Open Content Alliance (http://www.opencontentalliance.org) has already added dozens of new members to its Open Library project (http://www.openlibrary.org). (For background on OCA, see the NewsBreak “Open Content Alliance Rises to the Challenge of Google Print” at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb051003-2.shtml.) Twenty-four new participants have joined the initial 10 founding members. All contributors have committed to donating services, facilities, tools, and/or funding. Microsoft Corp. has joined the effort with the announcement of MSN Book Search, a new mass book digitization project. (For coverage, see the companion NewsBreak, “Microsoft Launches Book Digitization Project—MSN Book Search” at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb051031-2.shtml.) The Research Libraries Group (RLG; http://www.rlg.org), a major library bibliographic utility, has also joined OCA, contributing its bibliographic metadata. In contrast with Google Print’s close-mouthed policy toward its proprietary digitization equipment, the Open Content Alliance has released extensive details on its Scribe system, as well as other options for participants and users. "

To see an example of a scanned book, the interface and process and explanation of the aliiance see this link.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/save-internet-new-activist-movi

Save the Internet Blog:

From savetheinternet.com blog -
"How do you take an issue that can seem geeky, remote, and impossible to explain and translate it into a compelling story that gets the attention it deserves?
That was the challenge we faced in directing the latest SavetheInternet.com video, Independence Day — which premiered Dec 18 on YouTube and SavetheInternet.com.

But from the moment we first doodled this flying saucer image onto a napkin, we thought we might be onto something. More than just a visual gimmick, the UFO frame fits the battle for Net Neutrality surprisingly well. First, because the phone and cable companies really are aliens to our democracy. They’re the ones who want to overrun our Congress to change the way the Internet works — replacing the “level playing field” we know today their “gatekeeper” system.And secondly because they’re phony “Astroturf” groups have been disguising themselves as Internet-friendly activists (”Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-style) that are actually paid front groups. Hands off the Internet may look and talk like us – but watch for the telltale green pods hidden in their back yards…

And lastly, the whole “Mars Attacks” theme helps to communicate something fundamental: that there’s a battle going on for the future of the Internet, and that citizens need to inform themselves and take action. "

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/timecom-now-its-your-turn-dec-2

TIME.com: Now It's Your Turn -- Dec. 25, 2006 -- Page 1

Time's person of the year is You - those who toil bloging, mashing, posting, sharing, and ushering in the possibilities of social software and web 2.0. There is no image on the cover - there is a mylar insert that reflects the image of those who hold it up.

From TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel:
Posted Saturday, Dec. 16, 2006
"The other day I listened to a reader named Tom, age 59, make a pitch for the American Voter as TIME's Person of the Year. Tom wasn't sitting in my office but was home in Stamford, Conn., where he recorded his video and uploaded it to YouTube. In fact, Tom was answering my own video, which I'd posted on YouTube a couple of weeks earlier, asking for people to submit nominations for Person of the Year. Within a few days, it had tens of thousands of page views and dozens of video submissions and comments. The people who sent in nominations were from Australia and Paris and Duluth, and their suggestions included Sacha Baron Cohen, Donald Rumsfeld, Al Gore and many, many votes for the YouTube guys.

This response was the living example of the idea of our 2006 Person of the Year: that individuals are changing the nature of the information age, that the creators and consumers of user-generated content are transforming art and politics and commerce, that they are the engaged citizens of a new digital democracy. From user-generated images of Baghdad strife and the London Underground bombing to the macaca moment that might have altered the midterm elections to the hundreds of thousands of individual outpourings of hope and poetry and self-absorption, this new global nervous system is changing the way we perceive the world. And the consequences of it all are both hard to know and impossible to overestimate..."

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/participatory-media-and-pedagog

Participatory Media And The Pedagogy Of Civic Participation - Robin Good's Latest News: "

Howard Rheingold, The Pedagogy of Civic Participation
Education – the means by which young people learn the skills necessary to succeed in their place and time – is diverging from schooling. Media-literacy-wise, education is happening now after school and on weekends and when the teacher isn't looking, in the SMS messages, MySpace pages, blog posts, podcasts, videoblogs that technology-equipped digital natives exchange among themselves. This population is both self-guided and in need of guidance, and although a willingness to learn new media by point-and-click exploration might come naturally to today's student cohort, there's nothing innate about knowing how to apply their skills to the processes of democracy.''

Participatory media is changing the way we communicate, engage with media and each other and even our approaches to teaching and learning.
The generation of digital natives - those that have grown up immersed in digital media - take all of this for granted. There is nothing strange, new or even transformative about the interactive, participative landscape of blogging, social networking and Web 2.0 Read/Write media for them. This is the very starting point, the background canvas on which they live their lives.
The promise of participatory media is a democratic media, and a media that strengthens our democratic rights in concrete terms. Howard Rheingold has written extensively about the very real uses people have put mobile and digital media to in fighting street level battles over concrete issues. In his 2002 bestseller Smart Mobs, he writes about the ways that these technologies have been put to use in online collaboration, direct political action and the lives of young people across the planet.

But can the use of these emergent socially networked technologies transcend entertainment and personal expression, and push us forward towards an engaged, empowered democracy?

In his recent lecture The Pedagogy of Civic Participation, which took place in the 3D virtual world Second Life on the NMC Campus, Howard Rheingold asks this very question.

In Robin Good's discussion of this lecture he divides Howard Rheingold's presentation into several audio files, and brought together the key points and questions discussed. You can listen to the original verbal presentation delivered for each key point or browse through the summary notes he has posted next to each.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/dear-kids-you-dont-have-to-go-t

Will Richardson made this posting below in his blog - he is an educator who has made it his passion and work to inform us all about the need to review our approach to education. This entry deserves to be cited in it's entirety.


Dear Tess and Tucker,

For most of your young lives, you’ve heard your mom and I occasionally talk about your futures by saying that someday you’ll travel off to college and get this thing called a degree that will show everyone that you are an expert in something and that will lead you to getting a good job that will make you happy and make you able to raise a family of your own someday. At least, that’s what your mom and I have in our heads when we talk about it. But, and I haven’t told your mom this yet, I’ve changed my mind. I want you to know that you don’t have to go to college if you don’t want to, and that there are other avenues to achieving that future that may be more instructive, more meaningful, and more relevant than getting a degree.

Let me put it to you this way (and I’ll explain this more as you get older.) I promise to support you for as long as I can in your quest to learn after high school, whatever that might look like. I’ll do everything I can to help you find what your passions are and pursue them in whatever ways you decide will allow you to learn as much as you can about them. I’ll help you put together your own plan to achieve expertise in that passion, and that plan may include many different activities and environments that look nothing like (and in all likelihood will cost much less than) a traditional college experience. Some of your plan may include classrooms, some may include training or certification programs. But some may also include learning through online video games, virtual communities, and informal networks that you will build around your interests, all moving you further along toward expertise. (Remind me at some point to tell you what a guy named George Siemens says about this.)

And throughout this process, I will support you in the creation of your learning portfolio, the artifact which when the time comes, you will share to prospective employers or collaborators to begin your life’s work. (In all likelihood, in fact, you will probably find these people as a part of this process.) Instead of the piece of paper on the wall that says you are an expert, you will have an array of products and experiences, reflections and conversations that show your expertise, show what you know, make it transparent. It will be comprised of a body of work and a network of learners that you will continually turn to over time, that will evolve as you evolve, and will capture your most important learning.

I know, I know. Even now you are thinking, “but Dad, wouldn’t just going to college be easier?” It might, yes. And depending on what you end up wanting to do, college might still be the best answer. But it might not. And I want to remind you that in my own experience, all of the “learning” I did in all of the college classrooms I’ve spent time in does not come close to the learning that I’ve done on my own for the simple reason that now I am learning with people who are just as (if not more) passionate to “know” as I am. And that is what I want for you, to connect to people and environments where your passions connect, and the expectation is that you learn together, not learn on your own. Where you are free to create your own curriculum, find your own teachers, and create your own assessments as they are relevant. Where you make decisions (and your teachers guide you in those decisions) as to what is relevant to know and what isn’t instead of someone deciding that for you. Where at the end of the day, you’ll look back and find that the vast majority of your effort has been time well spent, not time wasted.

In many ways, I envy you. I think about all of the time I spent “learning” about things that had absolutely no relevance to my life’s work simply because I was required to do so. Knowledge that became old almost as soon as it was uttered from my professor’s mouth. I think about how much more I could have gotten from those hundreds and hundreds of hours (and dollars) that now feel frittered away because I had no real choice. I want to make sure you know you have a choice.

So, when the time comes, we’ll start talking about what roads you might want to pursue and how you might want to pursue them. Your mom and I have high expectations, and we’ll do everything we can to support the decisions you make. But ultimately, my hope is that you will learn this on your own, that you will seize the opportunities that this new world of learning and knowledge offers you, and that you will find it as exciting and provocative a place as I have.

Love always, Dad

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/web-30-self-organizing-content.

Yet Another Meme: The Web 3.0 Label Highlights Self-Organizing Content - Shore Communications Inc. - News Analysis:

"Already tired from a year's worth of Web 2.0 buzz John Markoff of The New York Times is spinning out Yet Another Meme - a 'yam' known as Web 3.0. In Markoff's eyes the new game in content is to push out concierge-like services that analyze Web content to discern much deeper patterns of meaning and more intuitive results for answer-seekers. It's all pretty true stuff, but it's also stuff that's been under development for a long, long time - and is not likely to provide quick payoffs any time soon. In the meantime publishing-empowered users are organizing content themselves and coming up with some pretty compelling insights of their own."

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/online-collaboration-and-soho-w

Online Collaboration And SOHO Web Conferencing: Acrobat Connect Is The New Reference - Robin Good's Latest News

Adobe has ushered in the new standard - meshing the power of Breeze and web conferencing into the Acrobat reader. If you have the reader, you can web conference - no other installation required. And at$39/month for up to 15 users this is a very, very competitive price. Flat-rate monthly or annual pricing for both web and teleconferencing.

Key traits include “always-on” personal meeting rooms, the leveraging of the ubiquitous Flash Player software available on over 97 percent of all Internet-enabled desktops, availability at one-click distance inside Adobe Acrobat 8 and on the Adobe Reader 8 toolbar, screen-sharing, 2-party video, text-chat, integrated tele-conferencing, live annotation and easy invitation management.

Integrated VoIP, videoconferencing, layout customization, full PowerPoint presentation support and many others are all available in the Connect Professional version to be released by 2007.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/online-collaboration-and-soho-w

Online Collaboration And SOHO Web Conferencing: Acrobat Connect Is The New Reference - Robin Good's Latest News

Adobe has ushered in the new standard - meshing the power of Breeze and web conferencing into the Acrobat reader. If you have the reader, you can web conference - no other installation required. And at$39/month for up to 15 users this is a very, very competitive price. Flat-rate monthly or annual pricing for both web and teleconferencing.

Key traits include “always-on” personal meeting rooms, the leveraging of the ubiquitous Flash Player software available on over 97 percent of all Internet-enabled desktops, availability at one-click distance inside Adobe Acrobat 8 and on the Adobe Reader 8 toolbar, screen-sharing, 2-party video, text-chat, integrated tele-conferencing, live annotation and easy invitation management.

Integrated VoIP, videoconferencing, layout customization, full PowerPoint presentation support and many others are all available in the Connect Professional version to be released by 2007.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/dawn-of-stupid-network.html

The Dawn of the Stupid Network

In recent history, the basis of telephone company value has been the sharing of scarce resources -- wires, switches, etc. - to create premium-priced services; glass fibers have gotten clearer, lasers are faster and cheaper, and processors have become many orders of magnitude more capable and available. In other words, the scarcity assumption has disappeared, which poses a challenge to the telcos' "Intelligent Network" model. A new type of open, flexible communications infrastructure, the "Stupid Network," is poised to deliver increased user control, more innovation, and greater value.

Telephone companies (telcos) have always pushed technology improvements that promote the smooth continuation of their basic business. They invented the stored program control switch in the 1970s, as a move toward cost reduction and reliability. Programmability also made possible certain call routing and billing services. In the 1980s, phone companies began marketing these services as the "Intelligent Network." Technology continued its trajectory of improvement, but because technology began to change the value proposition in ways that the old business could not assimilate, the telcos seemed to "fall asleep at the switch" at the core of their network. Meanwhile, the Stupid Network – based on abundant, high-performance elements that emphasized transmission over switching, as well as user control of the vast processing power at the network’s edges – was taking shape.

See link for more.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/internet-lampposts-to-be-triall

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Internet lampposts to be trialled: "Smart lampposts that could provide high-speed internet access are set to go on trial in Scotland.

The idea will be piloted later this month in Dundee but could spread further afield.
Backers of the project plan to install six of the solar-powered, internet-capable lights on a rooftop at the University of Abertay.
Later in the year they plan to install up to 4,000 more in a student village to be built for the university.

The idea will combine lampposts with solar energy and wi-fi wireless internet access. "

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/pixelpurchase-support-free-wind

Support FREE WIND and SOLAR Powered WiFi - Wireless in NYC Parks and Green Spaces
The GREENlined for WiFi!* project seeks to raise $250,000 (US) by selling 1,000,000 pixels for $0.25 each. The funds raised will be applied toward operating expenses and the next phase of upgrading, building and operating a growing Wireless Metropolitain Area Network across the rooftops of NYC, Brooklyn, and Queens, to add SOLAR and WIND systems to power the network, and to provide FREE WiFi to parks and open spaces.


WiFi-NY started the GREENLINED for WiFi!* project to upgrade service and extend its reach to underserved areas such as Williamsburg, Bushwick, Bedford Stuyvesant, and to support extended FREE WiFi services across the entire network. Your contributions will enable us to purchase the energy and network technology and the high-speed internet connectivity required to achieve the goals set forth by this project.


Presently, WiFI-NY provides affordable wireless broadband service to homes and businesses in Manhattan's East Village, Lower East Side, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. WiFi-NY and its subscribers also sponsor limited free public access across its entire network including Tompkins Square Park, La Plaza Cultural Garden, The Earth People Garden, Open Road Park, De Colores Yard Garden, 9 CD Garden, ABC Playground. Help us meet our goal to install a permanent link to McCarren Park in Williamsburg, and to install SOLAR and WIND power and purchase more bandwidth and Internet connectivity using high-speed Free Space Laser Optics and Gigabit RF.
read more about WiFi-NY here

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/green-wifi-to-launch-solar-wifi

Solar wi fi just seems so right - for developed and developing world needs - as shown below in India, in Colorado and in Minnesota. Yes - even if the sun doesn't shine all the time, solar power works fine. Now isn't Edmonton one of the sunniest cities in Canada? YES! If you have the power - make use of it!

GigaOM » Green WiFi To Launch Solar WiFi In India
Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit organization that aims to bring Internet access to schools in developing countries via cheap, solar-powered Wi-Fi networks, is developing a pilot project in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh at the end of the summer. A Canadian aid organization that has asked for Wi-Fi in three schools in the northern Indian state where electricity is unreliable. One of these schools has a cable connection.

Green Wi Fi has received seed money from Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Initiative (OLPC).

Other solar wi fi news:
St. Louis Park is poised to become the first city in North America to provide city-wide, solar-powered, WiFi.
“It’s a cost-saving alternative to traditional powering resources,” Pires said. “We’re expecting to save $40,000 to $50,000 a year by using solar and avoiding standard electricity.”

St. Louis Park (pop: 45,000), 10-sq miles, expects to enter a public-private partnership with ARINC of Maryland, which would install, run and maintain the system’s infrastructure, with an initial investment of $3.3 million from the city. St. Louis Park also is negotiating with Internet provider Unplugged Cities of Fridley.

Boulder Colorado solar wi fi installation

The network cost $10,000 to deploy, but upkeep costs will essentially be nil. The rechargeable batteries need to be swapped out every so often, but the solar panels are built to run for 25-30 years.

Because a 100 percent solar-powered network will continue to run even when electricity is out, and LightWave offers enterprise level security, it has obvious “homeland security” and emergency management uses.

“When power’s out, the first 24 hours can be crucial to saving lives,” says Lyon. “If the system is already in place, and if a disaster strikes and takes out power, our network will still be operational. They are also very portable, so if FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] has a supply of them, they can move into an area that has lost power and set it up very quickly, mobilize search and rescue, do resource management. The infrastructure would already be in place, it could be functioning with VoIP all the time”

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/webct-pseudo-blog.html

Tama’s eLearning Blog This an older posting I just found but pertinent nonetheless. WebCT/Blackboard continue to "advance" their product into the social software sphere that students want and demand - but are they succceeding? Can you make an enclosed space, a walled graden into a social space?

"Mark Hallam from WebCT spoke at the Annual Teaching & Learning Forum held at the University of Western Australia. Mark previewed a number of WebCT’s next steps including ePortfolio tools and blogs. However, on close questioning, Mark admitted that WebCT’s blogs aren’t really blogs at all because…
1. They are locked behind WebCT’s password protection.
2. They cannot be made publicly visible (there is a complex workaround whereby students could copy there WebCT-blog entries to their ePortfolio and then allow anonymous access via a guest password, but WebCT cannot bypass the password stage).
3. Comments can only be made by internal WebCT users using the same installation of WebCT.
4. The “blogs” don’t have RSS feeds."

Hmmm. Doesn't sound like a blog, yet claims the name. Perhaps they should stop trying to recreate what already exists - maybe just allow a link into Elgg. That would be social, personal, amd not institutional centric and not tied to a course, a semester, or to a licensed, closed environment. Now that sounds social. Now that is also added value - but alas, not added profit. (Unless Blackboard/WebCT buys Elgg)

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/to-fix-education-think-web-20.h

CNET reporting on John Seely Brown speaking at MIT suggesting that web 2.0 is the fix for education - "education is going through a large scale transformation toward aore participatory form of learning." and " web 2.0 affords opportunities for information sharing and content creation with "students who are passionate about specific topics...study in groups and participate in online communities."

Yes, yes and yes again. When I find someone passionate about the same things I am passionate about, my learning increases - when I participate my learning increases. When I make my own choice about learning -space, time, association, selection - my learning increases. Web 2.0 affords me access to the passion and participation - it's a no brainer. But changing the existing structure and control of the educational establishment, the learning delivery and assessment framework - now that is difficult.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2006/12/second-life-does-it-have-future

This is going to be BIG! - 10 Reasons to Go Short on Second Life worth a read to see not only Charlie's reasoning, but also to see the comments from others that question his reasoning. It is good that some questions are being raised as Second Life continues to receive extensive news coverage - I've seen three national news items on television and heard two radio news presentations on Second Life in the last 4 weeks.

I am skeptical about Second Life - primarily for the reasons cited by Stephen Downes - it is not democratic, it is owned by a single company, and that has a lot to say about what freedoms are accorded to the online user. I'm not interested in investing a lot of time and energy into creating perosnl or educational aplications that are "owned" by someone else, and could be used for purposes I did not design them for.

As a visual medium it is attractive - but not terribly innovative. It is just creating the saem structures we have in real life - it's educational uses are great for say the behavioural sciences. I am also apprehensive about the continued impositon of corporate interests into Second Life - product placements, sponsorship, advertisements, billboards, soon enough it'll be come the virtual mall linked into paypal and catalog databases.

Open croquet is an educational immersive environment that might be more to my liking - if I were more savvy about programming.

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/01/learning-development-fast-cheap

For the last twenty some years I have been involved in the development of learning materials for training and educational purposes. Whether serving the demand s of a corporate client or an academic client the same mantra is heard - can you do it fast, good and cheap? I always tell them to pick one.

I wonder if any other profession is continually asked (even demanded) to offer their services fast, good and cheap. And how many other professions have a plethora of tools and methodologies - like rapid e-learning - that "promise" to deliver good results fast and cheaply? Now the Learning Circuits Blog has posed the January Big Question to the ed tech blogosphere -What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?

My career has been to act primarily as an advocate for the learner - corporate and academic. I seek to design appropriate and effective learning materials that meet the learning needs of the real client - the student or employee.

This role often puts me in conflict with the demands of the secondary client - he/she who foots the bill. It's a tense stand off - and I am always in a negotiation mode. "yes, we can do it cheaply, but we can't meet all the objectives." "Fast? OK, - are your subject matter experts available when we need them? Can you review the materials and get back to us on schedule?"

Good? Well that depends on your definition of good. If good means fast and cheap - I can meet it - but I don't want my name associated with it and I can't vouch for how effective it will be, and heck, I won't do it. If good means identify the performance problem, develop an effective solution and measure the results - well that takes time. And if the results say we must reevaluate our expectations or design -well that will take more time and money. well spent money and time in pursuit of an end goal."

But wait a second - I think I can offer you my cut rate service - at least I can give you some consulting advice - on how to achieve that mantra -fast, good and cheap - all in one package!

Let's look at the development process and see where the trade offs are possible:
1. Don't do a proper needs analysis - assume the problem is already well defined. We might be on the wrong track here and build something irrelevant - but heck we can still go ahead!

2. Don't do an environmental analysis - treat all learners the same, don't recognize learning styles, learning readiness, language or cultural considerations, or time or resource restraints.
Don't worry that some learners have grade 10 reading level, English is their second language, they have never used and have no access to computers, and they have to learn on their lunch hour. Hey - the learning will be there if they want it bad enough!

3. Cut the team size and skill set. Just give some instructional guidelines to the subject matter expert and have him/her create the course in their spare time. Get rid of the instructional designer. Or keep the ID but give them more to do - course authoring, graphics design, programming, even teaching! Great idea - diminish the worth of instructional design and the quality will remain the same or be enhanced!

4. Cut out pilot testing, prototype development and formative evaluation - just do it, results be damned! Sure it might save time and money and enhance quality. But we want it cheap and fast!
And we want to do it the same way every time!

5. Best of all - do incomplete and and inappropriate evaluation of the process and the results - a smile sheet is all we need - or better yet, just count the number of people signed up for the course. That way we will never know if it was a quality effort or not - and we can keep cutting corners over and over again. If we don't evaluate, we will never have negative results!

6. Now that is a truly rapid e-learning model!

http://choicelearning.blogspot.com/2007/01/field-trips-to-second-life-and-

Interested in immersive worlds? Don't have the time to explore it on your own? How about a field trip moderated by knowledgebale guides? Synthravels is the first organization to offer a complete guide service to all the people who want to make a tour in virtual worlds without knowing these new realities, even if they have never put their feet in these strange, synthetic grounds. The tours and the destinations are chosen by the staff of Synthravels, composed by programmers, architects, experienced video gamers.

The concept of Synthravels is by Mario Gerosa and by Matteo Esposito of Imille.
Mario is a journalist who has a long experience in travel. He has been organizing in-world meetings with famous Second Life residents for a project of the Indiana University. In July 2006 he launched the project for the preservation of Virtual Architectural Heritage.

Synthtravels currently support travel/tours to/of the following:
Albatross18
Anarchy Online
City of Heroes
City of Villains
Dark Age of Camelot
Entropia Universe
Eve Online
Everquest
EverQuest II
Final Fantasy XI
Guild Wars
Horizons
Lineage
Lineage II
Neocron 2
ROSE Online
Runescape
Second Life
SilkRoad Online
Star Wars Galaxies
The Lounge
The Matrix Online
The Saga of Ryzom
The Sims Online
There
Ultima Online
World of Warcraft