Lightning in a Bottle

The George Lucas Educational Foundation maintains a great website called Edutopia. It has a wealth of articles on educational practices, research, and profiles of schools and teachers involved in innovative projects. For instance, when someone asks “Does project-based learning with computers really make a difference on standardized test scores?” you can say “Yep!” and point them to here. (The full URL is too long and messy to display.)

The home page for the website is at http://glef.org/.

Michael Rogers at MSNBC has just published a more extensive article about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, their potential, and the controversy around them. I hadn’t thought about being able to call the refrigerator and asking it if I need to buy milk on the way home. Maybe I will like these things after all. (I definitely don’t want the refrigerator calling ME, though. I get enough “reminders” already!)

You can read what the hubub is all about at http://www.msnbc.com/news/924859.asp?0si=-.

One of the most interesting results of widespread Internet access has the appearance of “fan fiction” websites. These sites showcase stories (often by students) that are based on or inspired by popular movies, books, or television shows. They contain tens of thousands of stories, and allow for feedback to the author. More sophisticated sites include sorting stories by author, topic, and even movie-style ratings. Check out
http://www.fanfiction.net to see a popular example.

The folks that run this website have actually created a new, companion website for original writing other than fan fiction. It hosts fiction and poetry for over 65,000 registered contributors, with almost 100,000 stories and over 180,000 pieces of poetry. As with the fan fiction site, a large proportion of the contributors are young people. The site is at http://www.fictionpress.com.

So, what can we do to get kids this enthusiastic about writing in school?

This is one of those “So where will THIS lead?” stories. Technology manufacturers have developed tiny chips called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. They broadcast to nearby radio receivers, providing their location and identity. The chips are so small and inexpensive that they can be embedded in products ranging from cereal boxes to clothing, and used for inventory. Theoretically, you’ll be able to wheel your shopping cart right up to the register and get an immediate total for checkout - no more scanning!

Walmart announced last week that they were requiring their top 100 suppliers to have RFID tags on their products in two years. Microsoft today announced today that they will develop software to support the use of the tags in inventory and management (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-1015058.html?tag=fdfeed).

I think we’ll have school applications almost immediately. You could embed the chips in student ID cards, and track the students (or their cards, anyway) everywhere in school. Every item of any value in the school could be tagged and linked into the security system. Students could check out books or charge lunches by just picking them up and walking past the radio receiver.

On the other hand, having computers track a students’ every move seems just a bit creepy to me. And what about when they start tracking the staff? Do I really want my every move all day recorded for perusal? (”Well, Conn, according to your tracking records, you made five trips to the coffee maker today. Are you developing a caffeine dependency? Do we need to consider an intervention?”)

North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine To Purchase
Palm Tungsten C Handhelds for Students

One of the nation’s leading schools of veterinary medicine plans to provide its
students with the latest wireless handheld technology from Palm. North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh will provide Palm Tungsten C handhelds to all first-, second- and third-year students starting this fall. The handhelds will be used in classroom instruction and to prepare students to use the technology during their fourth-year clinical rotations. The high-speed wireless device has integrated 802.11 technology (also known as Wi-Fi).

Leave it to USA Today to discover an issue we’ve been talking about for the last five years — how much should we focus on children’s handwriting skills in school in the light of widespread computer use. Cursive is certainly not a job skill anymore, but does that matter? What is the cultural loss of giving it up? (What the article doesn’t discuss is whether the push for improving test scores is helping to shove handwriting out of the curriculum.) Read on at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-06-cursive_x.htm.

North Central ESD has put together a web page of virtual field trips available via video conferencing. You can search by subject area, grade level, or whether or not it’s free at http://www.ncesd.net/vft/.

The disadvantage of a vitual field trip is that, unlike a real field trip, you can’t be licked by a cow. The advantage of a virtual field trip is, of course, you can’t be licked by a cow.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a method of speeding up data rates on the Internet. The current technology used is called TCP/IP, and was developed in the early 1970s. Through some clever tweaking, they have modified it into what they call Fast TCP. In tests, they were able to transfer data at rates up to 8.6 gigabytes per second. (That’s fast enough to download an entire DVD in less than five seconds, which is why companies like Disney are negotiating with them for the rights to use the technology.) The most interesting part is that it will work over the existing Internet infrastructure.

You can read more about it at New Scientist online (worth visiting anyway, if you like science stuff!) at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993799.

The West Bloomfield School District has developed a set of K-12 Technology Benchmarks for Learning. They are divided into seven areas, and illustrate the range of technology integration in classrooms across the district and give clear direction for teachers to use technology at a variety of levels. You can check them out at http://www.westbloomfield.k12.mi.us/technology/bench.html.

What would you do in your classroom if you could hand out a video as easily as a book? Sooner or later it will happen, and to see what it might look like you can go to an article at the San Francisco Gate Online at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/02/BU204669.DTL. It’s about the Archos Video AV320, a handheld video player that has a 3.8 inch screen and a 20 or 40 gigabyte hard drive. The company’s own web page is at http://www.archos.com/products/av300_series.html?sid=j22o2s2jbyfoso2bocysfy, but I had trouble viewing it.

It’s not really set up for classroom use yet, but just wait a year or two and some educational company will be selling devices like it, along with access to content. Or giving the players free in return for signing up for their online educational video delivery system!