eCROP Blog

Hello Jamaicans. The OLPC ($100 laptop) hardware and Croquet/Linux software movements are within range of the land of almost no-cost citizenship to the digital 21st century for all citizens. By grooving a path to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, we will further increase the educational levels and economic competitiveness of a nation. For example, many groups who have been disenfanchised have recently been making great strides, such as the giant leaps forward taken in Internet use by the black community . Further, many ambitious rural and metropolitan regions that have been challenged economically have been building wireless and wired networks to increase local Internet access in hope of also catching up. However, the successful and intense multi-million dollar lobbying of the phone and cable companies is powering up for summer 2006 to get the legal power to end the prior legislative understanding of net neutrality . They will thereby gain a toll-gate monopoly of prio...

Increasing the depth and frequency of interaction is at the core of the science of education. Shaping the means and methods to this interaction for a particular learner and teacher forms the art of education. One can begin to see the converging lines for radical changes in the power of interaction. One converging force will come from radical increases in accessibility to computers and Internet resources driven by OLPC, Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child , beginning at $137 per child and dropping to $50 or less by 2010. The second converging force is the radical increase in bandwidth provided for education by Internet2 systems . A third force is the radical merger of online systems of communication, collaboration and cooperation and 3D display within Croquet. This merger borders on a new operating system and could easily be extended to be one. A synthesis of OLPC, I2 and Croquet is not difficult to imagine. As Croquet is reported to be free and requires a fraction of the code spac...

High Bandwidth Education is an online multimedia article that explores the nature of fast computer networks and their relationship to K-12 education and to local communities. Internet2 is the first national and international high speed system, but regional and city groups can design and build their own high speed networks and may or may not choose to link them to I2. Internet2's global reach, many free resources and accent on high quality video and multimedia will be a great incentive to connect. Your feedback and thought on this essay and its issues are appreciated. Please use the Comments option to contribute. To participate in a future audio or videoconference on this article, please send your email address and interest with the email subject heading of I2 videoconference to houghton@email.wcu.edu . When sufficient interest accumulates, a proposed date will be sent. The event will use Internet-based conferencing software to draw the group together. Participants will need a...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1945967,00.asp Negroponte delivered a keynote address at LinuxWorld 2006. See above link to the eWeek story. The price points for the device now look like $137 in 2007, $100 in 2008 and $50 by 2010. The 7 inch screen will have 1,110-by-830-pixel resolution in black and white in outdoor mode and 640 by 480 pixels in color indoors. Only the state of Massachusetts will receive units in the U.S.; the rest are emarked for other countries in the world. Massachusetts is the only U.S. governor and state to have endorsed the goal of these inexpensive computers in the hands of all his state's students.