“Steal This Wi-Fi”

Count me in as a supporter of open wi-fi!

Link to Wired article “Steal This Wi-FI“

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Copyright chaos: A reality check!

An excerpt from Utah Law Professor John Tehranian’s article HERE:

“The dichotomy between copyright law and norms is profound yet underappreciated. On any given day, for example, even the most law-abiding American engages in thousands of actions that likely constitute copyright infringement. The widespread use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology, which has enabled ordinary Americans to become mass copyright infringers with spectacular ease, has brought the law/norm gap to light. However, the problem extends far beyond P2P activities. We are, technically speaking, a nation of constant infringers.”

March: Boycott the RIAA Month

From Gizmodo: (link to full post)

“In case you missed it, last Friday we declared the month of March Boycott the RIAA Month. We’ve gotten sick and tired of always seeing the RIAA pulling deplorable moves and decided it was time for us to do something about it. We’re kicking the month off with this, our manifesto. We want to be absolutely clear about what this fight is about and why it’s so important. This is an overview of what the RIAA does, why it’s damaging, and what we need to do to stop it. Consider this our planted flag.

First off, we want to be clear that this battle won’t be over on March 31st. We declared March the Boycott the RIAA month to draw a line in the sand and to make a strong statement, but this is merely the beginning. Everything we’re going to lay out here will still be true in April, in May, in June, and in the months that follow. March will be not the entirety of our efforts, but rather a kick off of our organized campaign to make a difference. We’ll be posting tips for how to get the word out, ways to support artists without supporting the RIAA, and keeping you updated with everything that’s going on throughout the entire month. With your help, we can educate people about how important this issue is and really make a difference.”

Cheap mp3 player, podcast content, and exercise!!

 RANT….

I wish there was some way we could get public schools to embrace inexpensive digital media players, content accessed via podcasting, and the need for human beings to get more exercise so as to produce smarter, healthier, people with information to share to hopefully help all of us make better decisions.

Fix Copyright

RANT….

Current American copyright law is broken. Too much information (raw material) is kept locked away from the public domain. To utilize ICT and make better decisions that affect all humanity we must as a society have access to more of this information to do with it as we see fit.

Fixes:
-Legislative action
-Reinterpretation by judiciary
-Education of users regarding fair use

Please support the work of Larry Lessig and CreativeCommons.org

Charles Darwin who???

Is it possible that out of a group of 50 7th and 8th graders not one knew who Charles Darwin was!?  Near my hometown it is!!!

Is it possible that schools have elimnated Darwin from the curriculum or is it not gotten to until 9th grade?

In case one of these students stumbles upon this post….

From Wikipedia: Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist who achieved lasting fame by producing considerable evidence that species originated through evolutionary change, at the same time proposing the scientific theory that natural selection is the mechanism by which such change occurs. This theory is now considered a cornerstone of biology.

50% is easy…. 100% is hard

Teaching in an educational system where the expectation or goal is to educate the top 50% of students is easy.  When the goal is 100% it gets much harder.  What was the expected percent in this country 20 years ago? What is the expected percent in the rest of the world now?

Open Education Contest – Build the Ultimate Learning Environment

It seems to me that many people (many of them very smart and thoughtful and many of them not) have put a lot of time and energy into trying to come up with what educational technology should look like for today's students. Microsoft has their version, Apple has their version, numerous other software and hardware vendors have their version and so on and so forth. I was thinking this morning that wouldn't it be nice if students had a say in what educational technology should look like!?

But of course my colleagues have tried putting students on task force panels, facilitating round table discussions with students, and of course students have filled out endless surveys, but in all cases (I am assuming) students were always under the current constraints of educational technology and the typical (and broken) way we currently do business.

I was also listening to a podcast this morning from David Warlick. He was facilitating a discussion at an edtech conference about open source. Most of the questions revolved around financing and supporting open source environments. However, no one mentioned what I am coming to believe open source is really all about…freedom. Not freedom as in "free lunch" but freedom as in liberty or libre. Free and open source software is great because it is free to educators, but what if we took the freedom that open source provides and allow students (in collaboration with other students and teachers) to use the freedom inherent in open source to create the learning technology supported learning environment that they want.

This is what I am proposing:

A contest to build the ultimate educational technology student learning environment. It would have to include only open source and free (flash, IM, adobe reader, etc) software and code. Students would be able to modify any number of linux and other OSes, grab software titles, write their own code, add games, etc. and build the ultimate learning environment. If a student feels that Doom 4 should be part of the ultimate learning environment so be it. If a student feels Open Office should be part of the ultimate learning environment so be it. If a student feels that FreeBSD should be the underpinnings of the ultimate learning environment so be it. If a student thinks that the latest version of Ubuntu with a whole bunch of code hacks thrown in is the ultimate learning environment so be it.

The judges of the ultimate learning environments should be the community. Prizes should be awarded to all entrants with larger prizes going to the top winners (maybe an iPod with a linux mod). All entries would be made available to everyone. Let the cream rise to the top. Lets students create LiveCD versions to share with all their friends. Let innovation take place on the edges. Let innovation take place in the schools. Let the promise of open source be released thru more then a "free lunch" but thru the active recruitment of thousands of students. Make collaboration easy so non-coders can meet virtually with geeks to put their $.02 in. Open source all entries so we can all build on each other….

Needs:

Money Sponsors (UConn or Linux companies or non-profit edu vendors or media comapnies or Larry Lessig or open source foundations…)

"Get the word out" Sponsors (Warlick, November, Jukes, Susan Patrick, Taking ITGlobal…)

Rules Committee
-what should entries look like (LiveCD or install)
-minimum hardware specs to run on?!
-examples of what is acceptable and not
-ideas to get started
-adhere to open source and free
-creative commons license
-Should this be USA or Global??

No more tiers!

“Fundamentally, education and the Internet serve the same purpose. At best, both transfer knowledge. At least, both transmit information. ANd just now both are at risk from the same general quarter.”
-Editor, eSchool News, APril 2006

This is in reference to the telcos and certain elements on the “right” and their attempts to make Internet access and education seperate tiered arenas where those with more $$$ get more and better access.