Great - we finally have computers making their way into the hands of Australian students. But what if they don’t have access to the internet that will really equip then as 21C learners when they get home? (I’ve written more about the Meraki solution on my own blog here.)

In this scenario, I have been thinking about how schools can provide equitable access to students from a wide demographic range to the internet. With Kevin Rudd’s promise that students from years 9-12 will receive a computer of their own it is important that consideration is given to how they will connect to the network that connects them to their 21C world. One powerful solution is to set-up a secure WiFi network across the geographic area that surrounds the school community. While I realise that not all kids go to school’s nearby, a large proportion still do.

Let’s say a school with Rudd’s promised 100Mbps connection was to share that connection with student’s within the schools geographic radius this could be a very effective way of providing access and moderating content usage. It is one thing to provide students with these machines but unless we empower them with the ability to use them as network devices we are missing the point.

This may seem like a pipe dream but there is precedence of a similar projects here in Australia. The Victorian Department of Education has set-up the ‘World’s largest’ Wi-Fi network with a server backbone built their own Linux kernel. With 540,000 students, 42,000 teachers, more than 200,000 computers, and 40,000 notebooks spread across the 1700 sites, DET VIC last year allocated A$6.5 million (US$4.8 million) to implement a wireless network aimed at easing connectivity. I’d be interested to find out if student access to this network extends beyond school hours or are they sending students home with what equates to notepads without a pencil to write on it. Positively, according to this article DET Victoria has experienced a minimum 20 percent saving against cabling and 50 percent due to open source software.

This idea of the school providing network access for students beyond school-hours led me in search for a solution. While the USB modems provided by mobile carriers are becoming effective tools for business they are still way to expensive for school use. However, we now have the ability to create secure easily access to WiFi networks via one node on the network by way of relaying that signal. One device and service that impressed me on this search is Meraki. This company has focused on changing the economics of access since its beginning as a MIT Ph.D. research project that provided wireless access to graduate students. One can take the tour on how Meraki works here. While many, large scale WiFi projects have been plagued by poor and unreliable coverage, Meraki seems to be different - even if it is using 801.2b/g and not the new ‘n’ standard.

Some of their city networks include the City of San Francisco and City of Prestonsburg. Meraki has over 5,000 networks today. The Victorian DET has

Meraki comes with a suite of monitoring tools such as shown in the graphic below that would be valuable for school administrators.

I like their choice of name too:

Meraki (may-rah-kee) is a Greek word that means doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing.

In some sectors the knee-jerk reaction to this suggestion will be to disregard this as a way of schools being able to exert influence in the family home. On the other hand others may thinks this is great if the students access only the content in the walled gardens that surround school content. But 21C kids need access to their own personal learning environment (PLE) which is the internet. While we teachers would have ridden miles to get to the local library. These kids will travel metres to the nearest open wireless network. We need to remember how fast the nature of access is changing and to approach the opportunities with a educative view rather than a legislative one - an organic one in fact. Real nature is not green. It is out of control. Our technological world has become so intricate and uncontrollable that it has become a nature of its own.

I could go on but this would be another post on open-source and why it is the backbone of the flat-world we now live in. So, I leave this thought process here for the moment and value some input from others to see if this is a viable possibility.

labdien lurkers

synopsis

anyone interested in playing picaxe perhaps over the holidays or even over a weekend early in term 4 2007, drop me a line. members of the wordstar users group will be meeting in the jim fuller room of our secret headquarters to play with these things. i do not claim to know much more than how to spell picaxe, and offer the usual vertical learning curve, familiar to those who like to tilt at windmills

picaxe

let me wax on lyrically about the old daze, when men were men and monkeys ate cheese. back then, there was a subject taught in skools called komputering, done mainly by maths and science teachers with that sort of mind. it catered mainly for boys, and in those days dealt with peeks and pokes, code and sprites. and they were 8 bit komputeras. (whaaaa … ?)

anyway, these daze, with education in such spectacular shape here in the state of excitement, we find komputering is now called ict, the maths and science guys have either moved on, died or are back teachering lower school classes. we find komputering now largely taken over by *others* who have been press ganged into the game want to make sure the kids have nice borders around their business cards. they justify this by saying they are using komputeras as tools.

back then, i once predicted email would be big. i got a couple of others right, but haven’t got the buzz in moodle i thought it deserved. still, there are a whole bunch of secret squirrels nutting away over there on edna, so we can only hope.

so now my big prediction, 2007. the next big thing for teaching komputering/engineering/electronics and stuff for boys seems to be picaxe. a programmable computer chip that can drive electronic circuits. this could be the equivalent of john aloisi’s penalty against uruguay, and provide the lost arts of komputering a new breath of life.

http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/

it is supported by british oil and gas industries, has heaps of support on the website. this is seen as important, cos industry can’t get enough technical type folk to run their enterprises. there is support in Australia with projects made available from an australian company scorpio technology

http://www.scorpiotechnology.com.au/new.shtml

and picaxe chips available locally from altronics

http://www.altronics.com.au/

i suggested this about five years ago, but unfortunately, the shed men have grabbed onto it and claimed it as their own. and there is some evidence of industry sponsorship because it is more to do with *komputering* and little to do with *information technology*. there is allegedly up to the $2 mill up for to encourage schools to adapt this.

anyway, at my school, we are looking to introduce this into an info sys programme in 2008. i might even trial it in late 2007, depending on time. picaxe seems to break into two broad areas, introduction to electronics and programming the chip via a serial cable. lurkers can program using a flow chart and directly download this canverted to assembler and run straight off the chipp.

maybe there is a place to engage *boys* into the tattered remnants of what was once mighty komputering. by using this chip in ait in a kontext, this will baffle curriculum council snoozers enough to allow us to attract kids into something useful, and seen by industry as vital. .

OK - finally have my little parcel of land upon which to develop the basics for part of the Interdisciplinary Practice unit I’m teaching at university this year and to accommodate some of my explorations for my research. You can find it over at Maceday 121,143, 152. It looks a bit like a sandbox at the moment as I experiment with some building and terraforming.

But it is a substantial 4096 sqm block in an L-shape at the bottom of a hill - the weather is a bit misty at times.

Not sure who all my neighbours are but there seems to be an amusement park developing nearby. I wanted to thank Pathfinder Linden for assisting with the allocation of the space - once I met him inworld it took only minutes to have the space set up for me.

In the hope of meeting some other Drama teachers within Second Life I have set up DEISL - Drama Educators in Second Life - a group to help bring together other like-minded teachers. I am also associated with several of the major educational groups within Second Life and hope that DEISL will become a group of pioneers in Drama Education online. Hopefully we can grow and share resources and ideas as we develop new approaches to drama online.

Also of interest to readers of Digital Chalkie might be the ongoing development of SLOODLE - a Second Life/Moodle integration.  The concept has captured the imagination of quite a few educators and web develpers and the resultant community is making rapid headway with the model.  A lot of engaging and critical discussion on their forums.  The Skype block they’ve developed would be a great addition to a standard Moodle installation to add another layer of interaction to the interface.

The stars are amazingly clear up here in Paraburdoo and the Space Shuttle flight that was visible earlier last year captured the students interest in the night sky. In fact we blew our monthly download limit in two days with many classes watching Yahoo’s live broadcast from the shuttle. Maybe this is old news to you, but I suggest anyone teaching Science add the free Stellarium to their teaching toolbelt, especially for the Earth and Beyond outcome. Being able to see a live depiction of the sky above from any geographical location certainly has a wow factor (but the pièce de résistance is the ability to turn off the atmosphere on a sunny day to see the space behind has instant education factor). Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It is quite impressive, so much so I’ve included it on our labs disk image for this year. Displayed with a projector it’s almost like having a planetarium in the classroom. The fact that it’s open source and cross-platform is just bonza. Stellarium - try it out, but if you want a bit of a preview you can check out the screenshots. Just amazing.

From the project FAQ:

Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It renders the skies in realtime using OpenGL, which means the skies will look exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners.