Offline Youth Struggle in Online World

"Without Internet access, Julian's computer engineering prospects are a distant dream, and low-paying, low-skilled work a likely reality for this soon-to-be-graduate ..."

Check out "Offline Youth Struggle in Online World" by Megan Tady at In These Times.

DMSC featured in Converge magazine!

Kudos to Bob Bradley, Director of Technology Integration at Tennessee State University and founder of the Digital Media Sandbox Consortium, with whom digiTenn partners. Converge magazine tells his story here.

Tennessee Campus Compact

I attended the second meeting of the Tennessee Campus Compact yesterday and was so thrilled to be in their midst. Meeting folks from campuses across the state and hearing their energy and passion for service learning was so inspiring. So inspiring, in fact, that I've decided to pitch a conference for those interested in learning more about technology in service learning, with particular attention to P-16 initiatives. I've spoken with Bob Bradley of the Digital Media Sandbox Consortium and we're going to start work toward a conference in October to coincide with the 2009 Governor's Challenge Podcasting Tournament.

Often, folks equate technology training with aspirations to become a computer programmer or software engineer, but that's no longer true. I often use the analogy of a parent saying, "My child doesn't need to know how to write; he's not going to be a writer when he grows up." Of course, we all know that basic reading and writing skills are critical to any field but many are just now realizing that digital mastery is as critical to success in high school, college and career as the fundamentals of reading and writing. From this article about the promise of a highly interactive, tech-savvy Obama administration:

“Most people from the 20th century think of technology as a separate issue from others like healthcare or energy, but it’s not just one of many issues [like one of many slices of a pie], it’s the pan that supports innovation and change for all of the other issues,” says Andrew Rasiej, copresident of techpresident.com.

We want to highlight this elemental relationship and to highlight nuts and bolts approaches to program design, best practice program models and assessment/outcome potentials that are all enhanced by existing and emerging technologies.

I welcome the TNCC members to this Web site and promise that beginning in January you will see it begin to flower with resources and information regarding technology tools to help you with your work. I remain available to consult with any of you on your program or administrative models and to provide the information you need to cultivate resources and to develop your own technology resources in pursuit of service learning program excellence.

It's important to remember that from an administrative standpoint, Internet technology has the capacity to lower costs (especially important in these days of severe budget cuts), to attract funders (technology funding is very hot right now!) and to enhance and maintain more cohesive partnerships and collaborations.

Please contact me if you have any special needs for information or want to share news of projects combining technology and service learning (I have quite a few I'll be sharing soon!). And please stay tuned for more information on the conference we hope to bring to you in the fall of 2009 which will bring together academic technology and service learning for educators from Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. You won't want to miss it!

FCC ruling could mean free national broadband!

Amazing news! The FCC has agreed to make available the "white spaces" being freed by television's pending switch from analog to digital.

"The FCC has taken a significant step to usher in a new era of technology, allowing for major investments in innovative wireless broadband, education, and government/enterprise applications to spur economic development," Motorola co-CEO Greg Brown said in a statement.

More here!

Google is rumored to be poised and ready to move on a free national broadband initiative that would bring high-speed Internet access to millions more Americans than currently have access, either because of geographical limitations, cost ... or both. According to this article, the FCC stipulates that it would require filtering for obscenity and a 95% coverage within ten years (more good news!) ... the implications for education and community development are vast and stretch the imagination.

The Digital Divide continues to close! If we can secure access and affordable hardware/software, we can focus our efforts on education and training.

Stay tuned!

Social Media Classroom

I got this straight from John Connell's blog (also permanently linked from this page ... what a resource he is!) regarding the social media classroom.

The invitation:

Welcome to the Social Media Classroom and Collaboratory. It’s all free, as in both “freedom of speech” and “almost totally free beer.” We invite you to build on what we’ve started to create more free value. The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools. The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos. The Collaboratory (or Colab), is what we call just the web service part of it. Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMB materials freely, and we host your Colab communities if you don’t want to install your own. (See this for an explanation of who “we” are).

This website is an invitation to grow a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning, and therefore, it is made public with the intention of growing a community of participants who will take over its provisioning, governance and future evolution.

To that end, we’re launching an instance of the Colab as a community of practice for learners and teachers, educators, administrators, funders, students of pedagogy and technology design, engaged students who share a common interest in using social media to afford a more student-centric, constructivist, collaborative, inquiry-oriented learning.

Learn more about how the SMC and Colab works, how to download or sign up for the Colab, how to join the community of practice.

There's no time like the present! (And what a glorious time to be alive!)

Free Photoshop!

There is a free web-based version of Photoshop now available online. If educators were wanting their students to learn how to use this program without requiring the students' purchase of it (or a computer on which to run it), this is a great opportunity to provide access to a powerful tool for the creation of digital media.

And it's a reminder to me that Web 3.0 is not waiting for those of us still learning the Web 2.0 protocols. Web-based software and document storage is a movement I embrace for so many reasons. Besides the fact that this availability makes access to the tools more affordable, there is a huge investment of time and money I can avoid in maintaining software upgrades, document security, and data backup.

Free Geek

"Possibly the coolest place on the whole planet" ...