e-G8 Forum – ‘Future Net: What’s Next?’

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

I just spent an hour viewing a YouTube video, “Plenary III – Future Net: What’s Next?” It’s part of the e-G8 Forum, “The Internet: Accelerating Growth,” which was held in Paris May 24-25, 2011.

The video was uploaded by e-G8 on May 24, 2011. The moderator is David Rowan, editor of Wired UK. Panelists are Peter Chou, CEO, HTC; Paul Hermelin, CEO, Capgemini; Danny Hillis, Co-Chairman and CTO, Applied Minds; Paul Jacobs, Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm; Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft; and Michel de Rosen, CEO, Eutelsat.

The session is divided into two parts. In the first, each member is asked to briefly talk about a technology trend that will impact our lives in the next five years. The second is devoted to questions and answers between the host and the panelists. Following is a brief summary of each person’s focus in the first part. Continue reading

A Proposal for a U.N. Global Internet School

Frank B. Withrow - The Dawn Patrol

Since the late 1980s, distance learning programs have demonstrated that technology delivered education can be effective and bring learning to students in isolated and remote areas. Programs such as the old federal Star Schools Program brought highly qualified teachers to areas that cannot afford experts in subjects such as mathematics, science, and foreign languages.

From television to satellites to computers and Internet, distance learning offers high quality learning experiences. In the best of all worlds, a highly qualified personal tutor might offer the learner the best possible learning opportunity. Unfortunately, this is not an option nor is even the construction of classrooms and the training of a reasonably qualified cadre of teachers an option in many parts of the world.

Technology can and must bridge this gap for many of the worlds 120,000,000 children without a teacher or a classroom. Distance learning is affordable and available. We cannot allow the world’s children to grow up in ignorance. We cannot allow children to learn more about AK-47s than they know about reading and mathematics. We cannot allow children to know more about war than they know about peace. Children will learn whatever we do. The question is, will we provide them a healthy environment of learning that is scientifically accurate and socially healthy? Continue reading

UnCollege — a Bold New Approach to One’s Education?

John SenerBy John Sener

(Author’s note: this article is an adaptation of a recent blog piece on my web site.)

Is “UnCollege” a bold new approach to one’s education? A colleague recently told me about the UnCollege web site and the related manifesto. I’ll take a closer look later, but my first reaction is: been there, done that; still have the T-shirt in my rag pile though….

Reading this manifesto was a stroll down memory lane, recalling the similar movement in the 1970s and the critics who proliferated then. I did not see anything in this manifesto that I have not seen before, although maybe I’ll find a new nugget or two upon closer examination. (Nice collection of past critical quotes though, although where’s the Vonnegut quote about how my teachers could have ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me?). Coyne and Hebert’s book, This Way Out, covered this ground for its time back in the mid-1970s, as did Ronald Gross’s The Lifelong Learner.

Despite the wonders of the Internet and digital technologies, the shortcomings of this approach are essentially the same now as they were then:

The “academic deviance” approach, like Anya Kamenetz’s, is a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) approach; the problem is that most people don’t want to be DIY with their education any more than they want to be DIY with their car repair, home building, etc. Everyone’s an autodidact to some extent — that is, they can teach themselves things on their own — but academic autodidacts who can do their entire education on their own are a far rarer species. The manifesto may move a few to action, but it lacks a driver to move masses of learners to action. Continue reading

Thoughts on Memorial Day

[Note: This article is from a private email sent by Bonnie on May 28. -Editor]

I am going to play this weekend. Rolling Thunder means that we have an invasion of motorcycles and terrible traffic.

I have opened a Diigo account, Ray [Rose] sent me a thing for some other account, and I have the game piece to work on.

I spent a Memorial Day in Hawaii. My mother wanted to see Pearl Harbor. She cried, along with some older servicemen, almost the whole time, holding my hand as if she were the little girl and I, the mother. I never knew it, but during WWII, her job was to send the missing in action and death certificates from the Naval Annex.

Memorial Day was started by Confederate Army relatives in the area of Petersburg. Recently I went to the Confederate Army Cemetery. My friend, Mano, from India, took me there. It was an interesting trip. It is the cemetery on a hill overlooking Richmond, Virginia.

Some people were startled to see a group of “colored” people touring the cemetery. It was like slipping into a time warp.

Also I had never seen Monument Row. Things have changed for the better I think.

President Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1863.

The Creative Use of Technology Can End Hunger and Illiteracy

Frank B. Withrow - The Dawn Patrol

Research now shows that people who remain active are less likely to have Alzheimer diseases. One interesting report indicates that people who Google every day are warding off the disease. However, there is another compelling question, and that is, What constitutes creativity at any age? The digital world offers us new mindsets, new ways to examine and know our world on Earth and to explore the universe.

The mysteries of the universe are open to us to explore as the Hubble telescope brings us visions from the distant past. Ironically, in our classrooms or homes, the pictures of NASA probes come to us in living color. We take these pictures and decode their meanings. We now can detect planets around distant stars, and we must ask, Is there life outside Earth? If so, what is the nature of that life?

As we explore space and dream of a habitat on Mars, we still have unsolved problems on Earth. We have the knowledge to feed the hungry of the world, but 1.02 billion people go to bed hungry each night. There are 125 million children without a teacher or a classroom. Technology can and must open the doors of learning and knowledge for those children. Who will create the systems that reach into the minds of these millions of children and free them with access to the world’s knowledge? Children are our future.

Continue reading

Infographics: Problems and Opportunities

Claude AlmansiBy Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator

There seems to be a new infographic craze, particularly about education and social media. I had been vaguely aware of the term as an annoying pseudo-nerdy buzz word  for a while, when the Swiss satirical weekly Vigousse started running an “Infographie imbécile” (Dumb Infographic) on the last page of each issue in January 2010. For instance:

Screenshot of the Infographie Imbécile in N. 46 issue of Vigousse, with a link to its textual PDF From Vigousse N. 46, January 21, 2011.
©2010 Vigousse Sàrl .Reused by kind permission of the Editorial Board.
While most of the words can be understood by English speakers,
in French, “gag” means “joke,” and “rire jaune” = “to laugh from the wrong side of the mouth.”

Shortly after that January 2011 issue, the “Infographies imbéciles” stopped: possibly because the targeted newspapers got the message and soft-pedaled on infographics. Or maybe the editorial team of Vigousse got bored with doing them. Continue reading