Don Kasprzak

Conversations regarding Globalization, Internet2 and Education

August 18, 2007
by donkasprzak
3 Comments

My latest read – The Tipping Point

A long and exciting summer with Maxwell has taken me away from my daily reading. But I have just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and learned its just as great as reviews have suggested.

Chapter 3 (The Stickiness Factor: Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues and the Educational Virus) is a really great read and made a real impact in approaching a thread that is currently underway on Internet2‘s Teaching and Learning listserv.

The discussion is about the impact of SecondLife in K12 education. There are real questions about the validity of SecondLife.

After the initial hype of SecondLife (for higher education) peaked, colleges now find themselves in the same rut about really embracing SecondLife when virtual visits never really materialized. A lost leader? Probably.

Many including Wired‘s Chris Anderson are openly debating the ‘stickiness’ of SecondLife. Does it provide solid learning outside the classroom or studio?

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August 18, 2007
by donkasprzak
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Text Message your next pizza

dominos pizzaThe emerging and cool method to order pizza is via SMS by Domino’s. After a successful test run early this summer.

Sound interesting? Big pizza lover? You will need to register and establish a preferred menu…but just text message “gametime” will have your favorite pizza at your door within 30 minutes.

And by gametime I mean football….well actually I mean soccer. Domino’s is making this available only in the United Kingdom.

Tags: pizza, Domino’s, SMS, United Kingdom, trends

August 9, 2007
by donkasprzak
2 Comments

The new iMac makes a leap


Apple has released a new iMac generation that has a couple of more powerful features that you may have overlooked by it’s visual design: HD video and internal hard drive capacity of 1 terabyte in size. And built-in support for optical digital audio too.

I’m not sure anyone else is shipping a consumer system with these features…it’s their high end configuration but clearly demonstrates the penetration of these features for ‘home’ users. My first Mac shipped with 512K RAM and NO internal hard drive…How about your first computer?

Well today moving forward its 1 Terabyte capacity. Yup…Terabyte.

Tags: imac, HD, terabyte, design, innovation, trends

August 1, 2007
by donkasprzak
0 comments

The new way of learning

MIT has posted a free online course on the engineering and design aspects for 2.993 Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering: The Art and Science of Boat Design, taught in January (IAP) 2007. This class seems like a great opportunity for MIAD students to engage in further learning. This course is another example of the OpenCourseWare movement available from colleges across the globe.

There is a small number of schools in the US that are participating in this Consortium. The mission is to share knowledge. There are 12 colleges in the USA while China has 30 colleges. It feels very much like Tom Friedman’s book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.
What can There are new opportunities for educators and students from around the world to freely participate in classes taught at MIT or Notre Dame, for example. And if you speak a foreign language…the world can really open your eyes. to new educational and cultural experiences.

Tags: OCW, OpenCourseWare, MIT, Design, innovation, trends

July 17, 2007
by donkasprzak
1 Comment

Hey Intel, play nice

Intel received a lot of negative PR (rightfully so) when 60 minutes aired an interview with Nicholas Negroponte from MIT. He has worked to produce an affordable laptop for children living in third world countries. This project is called One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and is a great example of people making the world a better place.

olpcFollowing a lot of positive press on how he was helping change access to technology Intel announced they would begin selling an almost identical laptop to the same audience.

Bad move Intel.

As a very successful company Intel missed an initial opportunity to not only give away their chips to this project but “selling” a computer in this situation…very bad. And to a large extent the 60 minutes interview allowed Intel to reconsider.

As you may have learned, yesterday Intel buried the hatchet with Nicholas and has joined the OLPC program. At this point — its never too late — they are now helping OLPC make this world a better place. Nice ending.

Tags: OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, Nicholas Negroponte, Intel, Globalization, technology

July 14, 2007
by donkasprzak
1 Comment

My latest read – A Whole New Mind

Daniel Pink’s second book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future is a great, easy read for everyone. In today’s very competitive business market, college or non-profit Dan’s new views on tapping creative minds will ensure success moving forward.
There are several examples of how business must change in order to not just compete…but survive in today’s globalized economy. It was somewhat refreshing to basically see Tom Friedman‘s influence from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century stitched into Pink’s writing. And he could not be more accurate.

GM’s well publicized struggles continue. But their struggle is not against Japan. They have new competition on the automobile producing block…from India and China. Why? Well lets start with the fact that both India and China can begin building state of the art robotic assembly plants with cheaper labor resulting in India producing brand new cars for only $2,500. This actually points to another Friedman reference from The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization where we learned only a small handful of humans produce Lexus cars…robots do the rest. So India and China can move past the hurdle of long standing contract, benefit and retirement costs bogging down GM to win the race to sell their products on the American marketplace.

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July 12, 2007
by donkasprzak
0 comments

My latest read – The Ten Faces of Innovation

This book by IDEO‘s found Tom Kelley is a good, interesting and fairly quick read. In his book The Ten Faces of Innovation Kelley has outlined the opportunity to identify, empower and reward the ten types of employees you may have in your company…or those needed to make your organization think differently and succeed in today’s marketplace or school.

This is a refreshing look at the demands of today’s aggressive business climate — regardless if your in a Fortune 100 company, small non-profit or educational institution.

While some elements are a bit over-hyped (examples are IDEO’s clients — surprise!) the basic message is to look and empower new thinking. And I was surprised to learn his brother knew about .mp3s before Napster….but so did millions already on the internet finding them in newsgroups.

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July 1, 2007
by donkasprzak
1 Comment

My latest read – The Best and The Brightest

Writers are Heroes. David Halberstam wrote his groundbreaking The Best and the Brightest in 1972 but won a Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for reporting on Vietnam.  Did Halberstam reveal the deep mistakes (in Vietnam) that are visible today in Iraq? There are probably just a few books regarding Vietnam that can actually upset you, the reader after 40 years. David’s writing does just that.

Clearly conveyed by very bright men in President Kennedy‘s Administration, they looked past the expected failures; lack of leadership of the South Vietnamese government, an empty South Vietnamese military, a war against colonialism not communism and even falsified reports by the US military on the progress of the war. That almost documentation-like writing proved US interests in Vietnam would fail in Kennedy’s Administration.

Was our continued commitment a combination of China falling to the communists, the effects of the Korean War, McCarthyism and a view that Democrats were actually soft on communism? Clearly Kennedy surrounded himself with the best, smartest and successful cabinet members. Halberstam’s detailed writing provides the type of deep background on all who served in both Kennedy and Johnson’s Administration exploring how talented they all were, including Adlai Stevenson.

It was a bit of a surprised to learn outgoing President Eisenhower suggested in his first meeting with then President-elect Kennedy that the country would indeed fight communism in Southeast Asia…but in Cambodia.

It was also very interesting to see Daniel Ellsburg mentioned — prior to his Pentagon Papers leak. Very bright men thinking they could win a war by freeing people who viewed America not as liberators but as colonial invaders.

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June 21, 2007
by donkasprzak
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Family video conference

Father’s Day was quite a day. In utilizing all the technologies available, Maggie and I were able to introduce Max to his cousins in Michigan and extended family in Ohio all via internet video. We have been so busy with his first three weeks of life that our trip to Ohio has not been booked at this point. Many family emailed and were eager to see him in person. Plopped my Powerbook on the couch and fired up iChat and spoke with family.

webconference

The built-in video camera provided the source and we had a wireless video conference from Milwaukee to Toledo Ohio — where my 96 year old Grandmother was able to see Maxwell for the first time.

Tags: iChat, Video Conference, wireless video, Father’s Day, trends