Did my 95 year old Grandmother think about this when I showed her my iPhone? Could she have imagined such a device as a child? Wonder what my little son will write about the future…
Tags: smartphone, IPv6, network, advanced technologies, trends
Category: Network
Attended Brainstorm 10.0 today and had a chance to hear PC industry pundit John C. Dvorak. Brainstorm had a great number of technology sessions for K12 Technology Directors.
The most surprising session was “HD video over IP for Distance Learning” because the original presenter did not show up….so I decided to try an Unconference session that ran two hours long. Lots of great learning about how K12 Districts around the Midwest want to bring distance learning and HD video into the classroom.
This week my colleague ijohnpederson blogged about YouTube‘s January analytical results. For the first time over 100 million internet users in the U.S. watched 6.3 Billion videos. In the globalized world today that number is not very big. Consider how the world is connecting to the internet in larger and larger numbers:
Population
China: 1,330,044,544 (July 08) Source
US: 303,824,640 (July 08) Source
Internet Population
China: 298,000,000 (Jan 09) 22.4% of the population Source
US: 220,141,969 (June 08) 72.5% of the population Source
China has almost as many people connected to the internet as America has people. Think about that for a moment. At Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society this week former Berkman fellow Rebecca MacKinnon addressed “The Tao of the Web: China and the future of the Internet” in a webcast about the role of censorship in China.
K12 Teachers and Administrators have questions about some of the finer points regarding CIPA and their school district. It appears there is a misunderstanding: not all CIPA products are created equal and more importantly your District may actually have the wrong CIPA product installed.
From a technical point-of-view CIPA solutions range in flexibility like Tylenol: Extra Strength Tylenol, Regular Strength Tylenol, Tylenol 8 hour and Tylenol PM.
For a real-world overview of YouTube, K12 web filtering & CIPA: Click Here
Many CIPA related questions from teachers and administrators can be addressed by a single resource: District Technology Policy. If you do not have one — get one — following these easy steps:
1. Google “K12 district technology policy”
2. Read policies posted online by Districts around the country
2a. Find one that looks appealing for the needs of your District
2b. Don’t forget to acknowledge their efforts…send an email acknowledging their work
3. Copy/paste
4. Modify as needed WITH District-wide consensus
5. Publish your Policy under Creative Commons
In many respects the CIPA vendor you choose may limit your flexibility in unblocking webpages. Most robust CIPA products DO permit teachers/district coordinators to permit custom URLs to be available on the fly.
Over the long holiday I finally finished Tom Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America. The book is a mixed blessing. Friedman has written one of the best books to understand the emergency need for a global environmental revolution.
Friedman provides detailed examples of how the world has been wasting energy resources since the industrial revolution. Sadly I am convinced we are (environmentally speaking) screwed.
Friedman provides well written pages that will awaken those still asleep on the environment’s impact on the human race. If you think “green” is a movement to replace your light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs your WAY off base. Its about re-educating how we waste energy and in today’s global economy risk losing more industries to countries around the globe.
The major challenge? This issue is no long America’s alone to fix. Thanks to globalization its now a problem for the entire world. Mother Earth needs assistance from China and India. Both must engage in green technologies to ensure planet earth’s health for the long term.
For China and India that includes all 3.5 Billion of their citizens who are just coming out of poverty. Their governments cannot permit new coal plants to dominate their air pollution. China alone brings coal-fired (dirty) power plants online every two weeks and will continue to do so for the short term future.
The Beijing Olympics was a perfect example of population and industrial pollution impacting the Chinese environment … and their economy.
Why China and India are causing the price of gasoline to rise.
When I was born in 1966 the earth’s population stood at 3.4 billion. When my son was born in 2007 the population doubled to 6.7 billion. What does our future hold when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion in 2050? Forget fuel costs for a moment. How much will it cost to feed your family?