Open Participants, Syndicated

Some Rhizomatic Learning on P2PU

rhizomatic

Our first task for the the first week of the new MOOC by Dave Cormier is not so much reconcile cheating with learning but rethink learning so there is no place for cheating. A MOOC, especially a Connectivist MOOC, with rhizomatic roots is a good place to do that. Rhizomatic Learning is an attempt to assemble a community of people, some with knowledge of the focal topic, others with knowledge of other topics, to work together to fill each others’ chinks. More on the root system that allows single plants to weave themselves together into a single organism, and how Dave had taken that idea and applied it to online learning. I have to take care of a couple of my other blogs, one over at DMLL, about Digital Mobile Language Learning, and another for student work over at languagejapan.com.

But I will be right back with another post. About Burma.

Open Participants, Syndicated

SMS and wireless internet free to Minneapolis students

The fact text messaging actually costs carriers nothing  combined with the fact that free wireless internet service is also available to connect students in Minneapolis with the servers at Minneapolis Public Schools means that students and teachers in Minneapolis should be able to use Twitter and Moodle in their “classrooms”  which could be anyplace in the city for free.  The only cost then becomes the cost of the devices and the cost of training teachers and students how to use these tools.  The cost of devices is not much more, if any, than the cost of textbooks.

Due to the nature of the system used by carriers to send text messages between phones, texting does not cost the carriers any money at all.  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss   This is because SMS messages are designed to fit inside the bandwidth alloted to the “control channel”, which is used to establish communication between the mobile phone and the cellular tower. This channel is continuously active, so the messages are piggybacking on the control signal, for free.

It is essentially only our ability to think through the logistics of using the current technology that is keeping us from doing what is being done in colleges like the UT Dallas and will be done in UK elementary schools according to the recently announced plans.

I did a search on twitter in the classroom thinking I would get to the Youtube video of Monica Rankin and instead I found out that we’re already using Twitter in the classroom in Minneapolis.

The path seems to be getting shorter by the hour !  Now, we just need to get everybody on board.

Open Participants, Syndicated

AT&T to start offering $50 netbooks

With a two year contract, of course. see Stribune article from 4/18/09

http://www.startribune.com/business/43208492.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

This is a big deal because it means that there will likely be a more significant source for internet devices.  If the trend keeps up people and businesses will want a place to unload their ‘old’ netbooks.  Sabier will be there to provide the service of unloading them so that people can buy a new device guilt free.

The new Civic Garden of Wireless Minneapolis allows students and their families to access Minneapolis Public Schools websites including our Classroom Moodle . That means the only thing keeping a student from participating in the online learning environment at home is a device to access the Civic Garden. A $50 used desktop computer or a $150 used laptop would be fine for most of the stuff kids need to do today. As netbooks approach the $50 price, eventually without a contract for the older models, the availability of devices should increase.

The AT&T offering confirms what Wired has said in their piece in February, The Netbook Effect .  It’s pretty clear that internet devices will become increasingly affordable.  That brings me to the thought that maybe the resource that Sabier needs to focus on is teacher training rather providing devices for students.   Students might be able to get the devices on their own, but teachers are going to need lots of help getting to the point where they feel comfortable using netbooks in class.  Perhaps we can do a little of both.

The network is the deliverable