Workshop in Tornado Country

Ponca City, Oklahoma, is a community of about 25,000 with a forward-looking school district. The district's East Middle School has been awarded a grant to provide each 8th grader with a laptop computer. Ponca City is was named after the Ponca Indian Tribe, and it was well-known as the headquarters of Conoco-Phillips. A photo from the turn of the century (c. 1900) shows a classic tornado funnel near Ponca City. (photo from Library of Congress). Visit the East Middle School Wikipedia page.

Emerging Technologies: Practical Artificial Intelligence

The term "artificial intelligence" has been an oxymoron for years in computer science circles. Computers and robots excel in narrowly-defined tasks in a controlled environment; think of how new cars are largely assembled and spray painted by robots. This article describes how a research robot at Stanford University is designed to learn to perform common tasks in environments like the kitchen and living room of a normal home. He doesn't look like much, but he can learn on the job! Significant progress has been made in Japan toward robots designed to serve and care for the aged. Korea is working on robots to help children learn to read. Intelligent robots will be in your future. How they will be integrated or excluded from domains like schools and hospitals will be a big question within the next fifteen years. 

Supreme Court Confirms COPA Unconstitutional

The Supreme Court has refused to consider an appeal to court decision to strike down the 1998 Childrens Online Protection Act (COPA). COPA was intended to protect children from unsuitable content on the Internet, but the court found that it "would violate the First Amendment, because filtering technologies and other parental control tools are a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online," according to the article. Some of the problems arise when legislators pass legislation intended for quick fixes to complex problems without understanding the technology issues or the costs and problems in enforcing the act. The key words in the finding are that there are already "less restrictive" ways of protecting children. These are important questions that need to be addressed through extended dialog with school personnel and parents instead of avenues to get votes with regard for neither the consequences nor the Constitution.

Will Obama Support Open Source in Government and Education?

The Obama administration has reportedly requested Scott McNealy, respected co-founder of SUN Microcomputing, to prepare a report on the advantages of using open source software in government. Here's the link to the BBC article. Many of the arguments that support open source in government also support open source in schools. Two of the major reasons advanced for open source software are lower cost, greater accessiblity, and higher security, and it is obvious that these reasons would work for education as well. An additional reason for education would be the free access to software for students, particularly those from low-income families. While major open source initiatives in education have been common around the world, large implementations in the State of Indiana and the San Diego public schools are providing strong models for American educators to follow.

RIAA Stops Prosecuting Individual File Sharers

According to a Wall Street Journal article, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) will cease prosecution of individuals who download copyrighted music and instead focus on limiting file sharing services. The RIAA had focused on young people, attempting to force higher education institutions to divulge personal Internet habits of its students. K- 12 schools have felt threatened by these practices and many have implemented network policies that prohibit file sharing -- even legal file sharing.

Exposure of the draconian investigative and legal practices of the RIAA against individuals, often children, has led to a public outcry against RIAA practices. The RIAA has also lost a number of recent legal decisions in which their questionable, probably illegal, practices have been rejected by the courts. Read the brief Slashdot article here (don't forget to read the always interesting and entertaining comments).

Educator's Guide to Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials Released by Temple University

A wonderful fair use guide for educators has been released by the Temple University Media Education Lab. The report offers an exceptionally clear and balanced resource for teachers and administrators as they struggle with copyright issues that the authors make simple and clear. It's all good news for teachers and kids! Download the report (pdf) here, and visit the Media Education Lab website to view videos and other reports that help schools break through the fog of fear and doubt that overzealous or misinformed enforcers have created. The copyright page with the videos and resources of the Media Education Lab is here. The guide has been reviewed and approved by a number of stakeholder organizations and copyright-savvy lawyers.

China is 2nd Largest (and Fastest-Growing) Internet Domain

A Verisign report on the state of Internet top level domains (TLDs) shows that China is now the second largest TLD after the .com domain. China (.cn) is also the fastest-growing domain; their 76% growth in 2008 far surpasses the growth of other major domains which have grown no faster than 16%. Read the Slashdot article.