Right on the heels of my recent post about building city-wide wireless networks, Robert X. Cringely has a article at pbs.com entitled Land Grab where he describes how Wal-Mart, or any other similarly gigantic nation-wide retail outfit, could use its locations to install WiMax hotspots that would cover 1,000 square miles each. An interesting idea to be sure, and anyone who saw Frontlline’s recent show Is Wal-Mart Good For America would know that Wal-Mart has an insatiable appetite for new technology. Cringely may be on to something here.
Monthly Archives: November 2004
’Tis the season
Videoconferencing on the cheap
What do you get when you combine a Mac PowerBook and iSight camera with a PC and Logitech webcam 200 miles away? Happy grandparents. This isn’t exactly new technology, but the newest video-enabled version of AIM for the PC and iChat for the Mac finally make this possible for our family. Now when my kindergarten-aged son does something cool at school, he can hold it up to the iSight camera for my parents to see. Needless to say, this is a hit.
We’re using a similar setup for a homebound elementary student this year and it’s working great. I’ve used a video chat over iChat to bring people into meetings too. Now we’re trying to find ways to use this with students. An obvious use is to bring experts to a classroom for a brief visit. It would be really great if there was a directory somewhere to help teachers find experts that are available for video chats.
Traveling with technology
Here’s the list of technology I carried with me to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving this year:
- Apple 15″ PowerBook G4 with a bluetooth mouse and iSight camera
- Apple 20 GB iPod
- Apple 12″ iBook G4
- Linksys firewall/router
- Linksys wireless access point
- Canon A95 digital camera
- Sony Ericcson T610 cell phone
- Palm Tungsten C PDA
- assorted patch cords and video cables
The scary thing is that I’m actually using everything except the Palm. It’s like I’m living in a Popular Science article from a few years ago.
Cool RSS applications
Sebastian Fiedler has compiled a list of Ten Cool Things You Can Do With Webfeeds. This is just the kind of thing that needs to be communicated to teachers and students. I’m not sure blogs alone are sufficient to convince regular people of the power of RSS.
Congress slices ed tech grants
The bad news came today via email from our state Deptartment of Education. The 2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill approved by the House and Senate over the weekend includes large cuts in educational technology funding. The biggest cut comes to the State Education Technology Block Grant (Title II Part D) which will be cut from $692 million last year to $500 million this year, a 28% decrease in funding. Those Title II funds provide resources for professional development and technology integration to nearly every school district in the country. Our district is luckier than most; the cuts will probably amount to less than $10,000 next year. There are other schools that depend on those funds for a much larger portion of their annual technology integration and training budgets.
The Community Technology Centers program suffered a major cut as well, while the Title V (Promoting Informed Parental Choice and Innovative Programs), 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Star Schools, Part D of IDEA, Ready to Learn and Ready to Learn programs all survived unscathed.
Hopkins grad blogging in the NBA
Hopkins High School grad Kris Humphries was drafted 14th overall by the Utah Jazz last year. He is maintaining a blog at NBA.com chronicling his rookie season. It looks like he’s not exactly on a blistering blogging pace, but I have to cut the guy a little slack. I have a hard enough time blogging regularly, and I’m not traveling from city to city every night.
It’s interesting to look at the NBA Blog Squad roster. They’ve compiled a pretty diverse list of players, journalists, and fans. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the NBA really gets blogging. None of the blogs have any feedback mechanism at all. You can’t even email the author directly. If the NBA wants to generate genuine interest in the league through blogging, they’re going to have to create real blogs that will give the fans they’re reaching out to an opportunity to participate. This looks like 99% marketing and 1% blogging to me.
Employee blogging
I moved this blog from our server at school to my own server at home in part because I wanted to make sure that whatever I write here is less likely to be misconstrued as the official word from my employer. Not that I have anything critical to say about my school district, but I always felt a little uncomfortable with the old setup. It seems like most of the other edubloggers I read have made the same decision.
Even though I’m hosting this site myself, I still feel like I can’t speak completely freely. (I have to stress again that I’m not harboring any bombshells.) Bloggers who write about their work must feel this all the time. I don’t have any particular insight here, but I’d be curious to know how other bloggers deal with the issue.