Digital Divisions

I wrote a month ago about a school district in North Carolina that is using smart phones in class as a platform for learning.

Mobile devices could be a great way to integrate technology into the classroom. They are inexpensive, ubiquitous, and are designed for communication. A lot of kids have them already, so teachers could harness their power instead of telling the kids to turn them off.

Read Write Web has a piece up about mobile learning and the integration of mobile devices in the classroom, a response to a recent book called Augmented Learning by MIT Professor Eric Klopfer.

Klopfer call this idea m-learning. E-learning is so 2005.

Small mobile game devices are already making strides in classrooms, although they may not all be mobile phones. I’ve talked about the importance of the educational software. The mobile phone could hypothetically be a great platform, but with all the different kinds of phones and different capabilities, can you create good software that won’t require all students to by an iPhone for class?

In response to the recent Parks Associates study that said that around one fifth of American heads-of-households had never used email, the Next Web Blog put up a post with some comments from Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels.

Amazon focuses on keeping prices low, and so naturally attracts lower income individuals. Vogels said Amazon designs their site so that it’s accessible from slow connections, old computers and small monitors. For Vogels it’s important to make sure as many customers can use the site as possible.

As a web developer, I get excited about the newest tech, gadgets, and the best looking websites. It’s difficult to build software and web sites that both harness the best parts of interactive javascript and aesthetics and not disenfranchise the web surfers that are not up to date with their hardware and software.

The ITU, or International Telecommunication Union, has produced another video about their efforts to connect  a remote and impoverished area of Honduras. They sent out a technician to install a wireless telephone that locals can use to communicate. This kind of thing can make a big impact in communities, allowing businesses to communicate with suppliers and buyers who only come to town once and a while.

A recent survey from marketing firm Parks Associates has found that around one in every five American house-holds have never used email or any other Internet service. So potentially one in five Americans have never used email.

The survey interviewed heads-of-households and found that of those that had never used email, around half were 65 or older and around half had a high-school level education. It also says that around 20 million households do not have Internet access.

Heads-of-household tend to be the oldest people in the house, the release about the study doesn’t say, but I wonder if they asked about kids in the household. Kids make much more use of the Internet than adults do, and the Internet is available in libraries in most places.

Via TechBlog and PC World

Source: IDC/Nortel White Paper -
The Hyperconnected: Here They Come!

A post by Steve Rubel up on his site Micro Persuasion, points at a gap between the hyperconnected and the rest of the world. The term comes from a recent IDC/Nortel study that surveyed people for the number of communication devices and communication applications. The hyperconnected are those who use online communication services extensively and from a myriad of devices. People who use Twitter from their cell phone, check email on vacation, or have Flickr, Facebook, myspace, LinkedIn, Pownce and gTalk and use them all regularly.

The survey says 16 percent of internet users fall into this category. The hyperconnected have at least 7 gadgets, including computers, mobile phones, gps maps, video game consoles, and PDAs, and use at least 9 applications or services, including things like Firefox, Outlook, RSS readers, Facebook and Twitter.

Rubel writes about the passive online, and how this gap represents a barrier to user-generated media online.

I believe this gap will narrow as more people get comfortable with the technology and with participating online more. Will there always be a sizable group people who decide not to participate, barring any other reason from getting online?

The UN’s Commission on Science and Technology for Development will be looking at the progress on goals later this month set forth by the World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, which was held in 2003 and 2004. The goal of the WSIS is to outline ways to promote an information society that will be accessible to all people.

Intellectual Property Watch has a piece up about the opportunities that the commission’s meeting will hold for companies and governments relating to IP.

The Importance of open standards was brought up one of the sessions that were held in the lead up to meeting of the UN’s commission. Delegates highlighted the use of free and open source methodologies as a way to accomplish the goals set forth by the WSIS.

Earthlink has announced that they will turn off the municipal WiFi in Philadelphia in June. The system never ended up being as popular as Earthlink needed it to be. They wanted 100,000 customers, they have a little more than 5000. Earthlink is also planning on shuttering, shelving or selling all of their other WiFi networks throughout the country, in New Orleans, Texas and California.

With no other companies building city-wide wireless networks on WiFi, looks like the whole muni WiFi thing is dead. But people have been saying it for a while. Who ever thought that a technology like WiFi designed for homes and offices would be good choice to cover an entire city?

Meanwhile, Sprint recently inked a deal with wireless broadband company Clearwire to build a high-speed wireless network on a new technology WiMax throughout the U.S.

I spoke with Chicago Public Library’s marketing director, Ruth Lednicer, about what they are doing for city residents. I asked her about the Cyber Explorer program, which pays college students to teach library patrons how to use the Internet, and about other ways the library is working on fulfilling communities’ tech needs.

Digital Divisions interview with Ruth Lednicer (transcript after the bump):

Ruth Lednicer - CPL

Read the rest of this entry »

Oxford professor and neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, said children’s brains are rotting from too much exposure to technology. In an interview for The Sunday Times Life & Style section about her life and work, Greenfield discusses her theory about the effect of video games and Internet Media exposure on the brain chemistry of developing children.

Greenfield theorizes that the structure of modern technology emphasizes method over content and will rob children of imagination, creativity and personality:

If the purpose of a game, for instance, is to free the princess from the tower, it is the thrill of attaining the goal, the process, that counts. What does not count is the content – the personality of the princess and the narrative as to why and how she is there, as in a storybook. Greenfield avers that emphasis on process in isolation becomes addictive and profoundly mind-changing.

-John Cornwell, The Sunday Times

What about games that emphasize content and interpersonal relationships, like the Sims, or massive online multiplayer games, where getting along with other people is critical for success? What about the online masses who would rather participate in social networking than isolated video games, or split time between the two? As someone who has enjoyed video games throughout my life, the things Greenfield says about the addictive nature of games rings true, and yet I think I have personality.

Because broadband isn’t expensive enough already I suppose.

Last month I wrote about a West Coast ISP that began offering high-speed Internet plans with download limits. According to a piece at Broadband Reports, Comcast is considering putting a 250GB download limit on customers and charging fees for exceeding the limit.

Comcast has been doing a bang up job for it’s customers. For the past year, experts and customers have been shaking their fists at Comcast’s attempts to disrupt bandwidth intensive bit-torrent traffic over their network.

However there seems to be growing resistance to Comcast’s and other ISPs’ push to more tightly control the Internet traffic that flows through their networks. Tuesday, Sen. Ron Wyden, a democrat from Oregon, made some strong remarks, warning the ISPs. It sounds like the growing support for customer protection has finally started to reach some of the politicians through their constituency. I wonder if Comcast is scared.