"And I would've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids ..."

File this under "you must be joking." The chancellor of Lakehead University, an otherwise fine institution nestled in the bosom of our sister nation to the North, has banned campus wifi. Not cell phones, not mp3 players, not the campus radio station ... wifi. There will be no wireless network nor untethered access to the Internets for the Thunderwolves. Why? EMF, friends, the scourge of this newfangled technology stuff we keep hearing about.

Sure, the 7,000 students in Thunder Bay can fry the bejeebers out of their brains with their cellies, and jam themselves to stone deafness with their iPods, but thank Heaven, they'll be safe from that treacherous toxic telegraphic pulse from the 802.11g.

God help the Thunderwolves. It's probably no wonder that their website lists "news" from the 2002-2003 school year. Let the kiddies get their wifi on, man. This ain't your father's Internet, ya dig?

Check out the more seriously reported version of this story here, at itbusiness.ca. And if you're of a mind, pay a little visit to the (dated) online home of the (don'tcha love saying it?!) Thunderwolves. Maybe drop the chancellor an e-mail ... nah, you'll probably need a stamp to get a message to him. Something tells me he's not an e-mail kinda guy. Dr. Gilbert, seriously, dude ... this is just not cool.

P.S. According to the story at itbusiness.ca, the decision to ban wifi is credited to Dr. Fred Gilbert, president and vice-chancellor. Dr. Lorne Everett is chancellor. Apologies for the above misnomer, and thanks to a friendly webmaster who pointed out the error.

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Data Mining Boilermakers

Purdue University is applying basic data mining principles to identify at-risk students based on criteria culled from their existing course management system(s) (CMSs). The concept of data mining isn't exactly new, but Purdue's approach to identify and intervene with students who may be close to failure or dropping out is a new spin on the old practice.

Capturing and analyzing such data as time-on-task for online course components is starting to point to trends that can then be managed and predicted. Student behavior and interaction with a CMS can be measured, and even qualified to a certain extent. This information can then be parsed to create a model that anticipates performance based on the individual student's behavior. It can, ostensibly, also be rolled up to more complex models studying group behavior, by course, by instructor, by time of day, or shirt size such that macro trends can also be exposed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's worth noting that the majority of major CMSs can capture and report data that might be lying dormant today. Props to Purdue for noticing, and for recongnizing the potential. It's entirely possible that other schools are doing this already, and this one just happened to pick up the ears of a news site. If that's the case, or if your school(s) is (are) doing something along these lines, please comment the post and let's get some ideas exchanged. Naturally, the predictive ability of the models is dependent on the quality and variety of data fed in, but still ... this is pretty cool. Check out the brief article here, at eSchool News.

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Missouri Goes IPTV

OK, this is very cool: The Missouri School Boards Association (MSBA) is set to launch a new video narrowcast service via IPTV ... what's essentially TV on demand from the Internets. According to eSchool News, the vision has football coaches calling up ten years' worth of game footage on a whim, students taking video courses across the state, virtual meetings, and all the rosy glow of video-rich panacea.

The reality is that IPTV is a ways off from full duplex real-time video on demand. It's more like ordering a pizza-- calling for and downloading a movie. Certainly videoconferencing over IP is do-able; it's done in lots of schools already. But the real IPTV goodness means accessible archives of (ostensibly) indexed, searchable, tagged, optimized, normalized content. That's not to say they can't start small, but the "ultimate vision" of a statewide video community ... even nationwide? ... calls for production resources and standards that are far beyond most classrooms and teachers. The organic vision of interconnected beneficiaries who also produce the content is not, yet, ready for prime time (literally). There will be many more consumers of video over IP than there will be providers.

Kudos to MSBA. It's not fair to harsh on their goals or visions. But a statewide network of consumers is a hungry beast that will need to be fed, with content they can find and use reliably. Best of luck to them, and to others who will follow their bold lead, as they look for new ways to leverage the fat pipes and dark fiber that trail listlessly betwixt our schools. Theirs are the big dreams of practical futurists, and that's way, way cool.

Again, the well-reported news item is here. It's worth a read.

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Maybe MySpace has a good side too...

OK, you've read it here and you've probably seen it on the evening news and everybody is all spazzed about sites like MySpace (et al.) and the potential hazards they pose. But maybe some good has come from all that bad publicity.

According to the Associated Press, a 16-year-old highschooler was actually suspended from school and arrested by police when he posted photos of himself on MySpace.com. The gist of the case is that he posed with various firearms, including a couple of handguns ... possession of which by a minor is a misdemeanor in Colorado. He also had some disturbing, vaguely threatening language about being an "angel o' death" with "wings o' lead" (in a photo with long guns splayed winglike beside him).

Homey's name has not been released, and the MySpace.com page has been pulled, but it's probably safe to say that at best, Junior here has got some serious redneck issues. At worst, he's a simmering stew of nihilistic, teen-hormone-induced, potentially lethal threat with a bad sense o' spelling and o' grammar.

Now the cool part. Junior posted his "masterpieces" on MySpace.com.: other kids, other kids' parents, teachers and/or principals, and eventually the police SAW these photos on MySpace.com, and were able to step in and disarm this genius.

If he'd been "journaling" in spiral notebooks like his Colorado predecessors, it's entirely possible that this intellectual giant could have shown up at school one day with his hardware, and surprised-- and maybe destroyed-- his peers, teachers, etc.

Kudos to those who saw and acted on the photos. We'll never know how many lives were saved, but mad props to you. Not just for reigning in this, um, "individual," but also for being smart enough and persistent enough to spend the time on MySpace to see what was happening. Ya gotta believe that some parents triggered the chain reaction that led to suspension and arrest. You go, moms and pops-- you are not only aware of your kids' online personnas, you're checking out their neighborhood. And that is WAY k00l.

(You can check the original AP story here, courtesy of MSNBC.)

P.S.-- No White Hat for MySpace ... unless they tweaked to the photos first and began the investigation. Of course we can't hold MySpace responsible for the content posted on these sites, but if there had been some kind of bot or filter that could have triggered a red flag ... . First Amendment and all that, yeah, but still ... this case has "close call" written all over it, with chills and that nasty gut-twist that says we were this close to disaster. And "almost," in this case, is definitely NOT k00l.

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Negroponte to focus on OLPC

Nicholas Negroponte has stepped down as the founding head of the MIT Media Lab, and will focus his engergies exclusively on the One Laptop Per Child initiative he began there. Debate rages ... well, no, it's not really "raging," but there's some debate about the best way to bring the power of interconnected computing to the developing world.

Recently, Bill Gates (you know who he is, right?) suggested that a laptop computer might not be the best way to bring the technological revolution to the world. Gates, who has considerable interest in the operating systems of hardware the world over, suggests that mobile phones are a less-expensive, more immediately practical means to connect the unconnected.

You read here about One Laptop Per Child, or OLPC, and it's made headlines the world over. But whether you subscribe to Negroponte's version of tomorrow, or you're more inclined to add Gates to your buddy list, you have to admit: Negroponte's move, devoting all of his attention to OLPC, is very cool.


How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads.
For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheetpublished by South-Western, a Thomson company. Trusted news for educators for several decades, several miles ahead.

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Personal Safety in the Interactive Age

We've seen it in the news all too often. In fact, one major television network news magazine has been running "sting" operations. We know, in the abstract, that predators lurk on the internets. Chat rooms, BBS, IM ... these are all ways that the malicious can connect with the innocent.

Lately, though, there have been more stories about how teens, pre-teens, and even twenty-somethings put themselves at even more risk. They do this by joining the interconnected online community in an affirmative way. It's not just the direct-contact IM dangers of (dare I say?) the old days. Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Xanga, and similar sites allow kids to blog, post pictures, and put up data about themselves. These social network sites have become fertile ground for predators, a veritable shopping mall full of vulnerable prey. Let me be clear up front: I AM NOT BLAMING THE SITES. NOR am I blaming kids!



The fact is, the most innocuous data can arm a criminal with information that makes it easier for them to "socially engineer" ("soc," pronounced "soash") their way into a kid's online life, and eventually, step from the virtual to the vulnerable.

On these social sites, kids blog their lives. They post about what they like and hate about school, parents, activities, hobbies, music, movies, and more. These are literally invitations for other, like-minded kids to comment, strike up a conversation, and develop an online relationship. But it's not hard to soc a blog. It's all too easy for the nefarious to show interest in and compatibility with a victim's postings, luring the unwitting target into an online relationship that can last for weeks or months in order to gain their confidence, before culminating in an innocent-sounding "let's meet at the mall" invitation.

Some kids even make it way easy for the less patient deviant, posting things like their address, their after-school schedule, their plans for the weekend. Other kids are more careful about what they post, but it doesn't mean they're not at risk. Any little piece of information-- what you thought about the latest Harry Potter movie or your favorite song-- can be leveraged as a starting point for conversation or correspondence. Eventually, the evildoers gain enough information to lock in on their victim. Indeed, for many of these deviants, the whole process-- what amounts to virtual stalking of their prey-- is part of the attraction.

Their goal isn't just to find and "hook up" with a kid, they also want the intimacy and empathy that comes from learning everything they can about their victims.

In recent months, schools have been cracking down on student blogs and other public forums where students may be exposing dangerous (and apparently harmless) information. But sites like MySpace and FaceBook-- and again, let's not blame the sites here-- give students an outlet that doesn't require their users' school's servers. Teachers and administrators can't filter what students post on these public sites; most often they're not even aware that a student has a page there. Parents are often not sufficiently knowledgable or are unaware of their child's online personna altogether.

The solution is to educate kids, early, often, and in depth, about the dangers of personal information they post online. We can't force kids to abstain from online contact with others; but we can teach them about how to do it more safely, how to protect themselves, how to avoid some of the danger.

Online safety needs to be part of every curriculum. We wouldn't let our kids post personal ads on billboards along the highway; we have to teach them that online social sites are equally unacceptable. We spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours teaching our kids how to run applications on a computer. We've taught them how to operate a car, but we haven't taught them to drive. We teach them about the human-computer interface, but we haven't taught them about the human-human realities of the online world. We need to put their newfound computer skills in context; the consequences of doing otherwise are simply too dire. And that's NOT cool.

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads.
For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet published by South-Western, a Thomson company. Trusted news for educators for several decades, several miles ahead.

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New Reports Cite Impact of Technology on School Culture, Curriculum

Two studies released recently indicate that the latest generation of technology-- sometimes called Web 2.0-- has a direct and significant impact on the education process and on students directly. Not that this overgeneralization is surprising, but the details are telling. The reports are the 2006 Horizon Report, undertaken by the Educause Learning Initiative, and a report released by Certiport and the Center for Education, Employment, and Community at Education Development Center, Inc., titled Power Users of Technology.

Not only do these reports detail the exceptionally advanced characteristics of Power Users of Technology, and the impact of Web 2.0 on education, but they go beneath the obvious and look at how and why today's kids think, learn, and behave differently. Great reading, if a bit academically dry.

For example, two-thirds of teachers surveyed say that Power Users of Technology between the ages of 10 and 15 actually change the way those teachers teach. A similar number say that most Power Users tend to be a positive force in and out of the classroom, serving as positive examples and even mentors to their less-technologically-sophisticated peers.

The report on Power Users of Technology refers to the multitasking, analytical, research, and critical thinking skills of kids who are not only "digital natives" (born into a Web-empowered world) but are also pushing and changing the way technology is used. Information consumers are so yesterday, apparently, and interaction with information (wikis, blogs, etc.) is the word of the day.

Because we always need catchy pigeonholes for our students, let's rename these "Power Users of Technology" with something a bit more catchy: Psychobionic, perhaps? These kids seek out information even as they publish information of their own; they find experts to fill knowledge gaps and then reconfigure their newfound information to fill the gaps of others. They're as likely to seek an article from a scholarly publication as they are Wikipedia or Britannica. They're also as likely to debate or probe deeper as they are to accept at face value the information they find.

Kids these days. But seriously, check out the reports. IM, Wikis, RSS, podcasting and blogging and learning are all being seamlessly integrated with each other to create a sub-group of a generation that processes information as fast as they acquire it.

Cool, huh?

How will it shake out? Comment this blog, and let's see where the conversation leads.
For great news, views, and resources for educators, check out The Balance Sheet published by South-Western, a Thomson company. Trusted news for educators for several decades, several miles ahead.

Read the full post here ...