eCROP Blog

Increasingly our computers and smartphones are becoming the centerpiece of handheld, desktop and room-sized communication studios where we communicate our ideas, our personality and our 21st century digital literacy in a live setting. Webcam videoconferencing and microphone audio conferencing are a growing part of the social fabric of twenty-first century living which adds new elements to our social skills. Many webcam users are not in ideal lighting situations. Be on the lookout for some of the newest webcams which come with one or more LEDs to raise the light values of the presenters face. Search for "webcam light" to find specific products. The example on the left can be found at LightInTheBox . For more, read Communicating Online Live: Best Practices .

Ereaders are erasing the distinction between a book and a library. Readers are familiar with paper book sizes and weights that range from those that fit in the palm of a hand to paperback and textbook size to poster size. Now imagine digital equivalents of great variety, lighter weight and notably thinner, think clipboard thickness. More importantly, these devices will hold not just one book or article, but hundreds of books initially. Moore's Law (long article) will push this capacity into the stratosphere in the years ahead. The end of familiar careers? Not a chance. Now everyone will need a personal librarian and personal cataloging system. Everyone may also need the equivalent of personal first grade or primary level teachers to periodically update and review digital reading basics (long article). The range of such devices currently extends from the iPod Touch and iPhone in the palm of the hand to the larger and more paperback to magazine sized reader products. They include:

The IPSO Alliance recently announced over 50 members were now leading the movement towards the establishment of Internet Protocols for physical objects, an Internet of Things, an alliance including Cisco, Intel, SAP, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments. However, news of finished agreements from the Internet Engineering TaskForce (IETF) are not yet available. As this planning is finished, expect to see an explosion of designs and products from these global leaders that broaden the opportunity for compositions that incorporate sensors and remote control . For education, this raises the question of the curriculum goals needed to prepare students for this future. This should raise a number of questions for educators, including: How many ideas can you imagine that would incorporate sensors and the Internet? What should the educational goals be? What should the curriculum competencies look like?

Many see the advantage of every student having their own Web-book, their own computer in the classroom. Recent reports show purchase of netbooks doubling around the world while sale of laptops, etc. are flat. PriceGrabber shows numerous models from $200 up. Is it time for schools to begin major investments in them? PixelQi thinks $75 is within reach in the near future. In addition to cost, I'm thinking that the palm, netbook, and touch tablet designers can still greatly improve battery life and screen readability for differing light conditions, which will come with new screen designs announced summer 2009. Here's more detailed thinking on this topic with references that could also use some reaction. http://bit.ly/3qRRt

Much as been made over the trivial nature of the tweets of many Twitterers. However, that critique could be leveled at much that is composed in many forms, not just Twitter.com on the Web. The greater challenge for Twitter is to build sufficient twiteracy to create useful and interesting roles for the application. So, let's push the envelope. What are the rank-ordered top ten problems or challenges that Twitter can address or even solve? I've parked a couple of ideas on this page, Twiteracy Top Ten in hopes of adding more. Comments that can be added to the page are welcomed!

P.S. For those who Twitter, this post can also be found at http://tinyurl.com/dkwfp6 If you want to Google (search) for the perspective of someone from a different country or if you want to find someone with an email account, or media created by someone in a different country, then in the search string use site: followed by the country code. For example, if looking for a history professor in Germany then one might search "history professor" site:.DE and yes there is a period between the colon and the letters DE. Odds are that the history professor's Web pages are in German requiring you to know the German translation for history professor in order to do the search. Of course, knowing the country codes can be a challenge. So here's some country code solutions. I copied down the country code text from wikipedia and saved as text file from Word, then imported into Excel, then imported into Blist. The Blist database is titled Web Country Codes . Now anyone can search

It has taken some time since he September launch of the GeoEye satellite, but the fine tuning is done and the images have been pouring in to the Google Earth database. The first fabulous samples can be found here: http://earth.google.com/geoeye/index.html Even more important is the new version of the app, Google Earth 5.0, which includes the multimedia options for making narrated movies of traveling across Google Earth to see the scenes from under the ocean to across all land masses.