eCROP Blog

The story on What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York in the Nov 2010 issue of Wired explores 311 applications, and puts an accent on Open311 . The growing set of 311 applications help citizens report problems such as open manhole covers, graffiti and broken water mains. It was discussed that they also might evolve to collect ideas for areas of need for a community and to direct citizen volunteers to assist in various projects. I see 311 type projects as one more class of question systems , but a type which provides a more substantive focus on real world solutions. Both types provide schools with a ready source of problems that can be used for real problems that can used in different curriculum content areas such as science and language arts.

Ah, the promise of Rome - no, not sparkling fountains. Sorry. The goal is an application suite for the full range of the digital palette for 21st century composition and problem solving (see graphic for elements). That would certainly make our fountains of creativity sparkle. Adobe's decided to leave the rarified air of professional design and come after the home/small business/school market with a highly integrated media suite called Rome. The Rome app includes composition editors for text, graphics, images and animation. A simplified animation editor is huge. I can also see a way to insert video and audio, but there is no evidence that I can yet see that it includes an audio editor (features from their Soundbooth would be nice). So it doesn't offer a challenge to GarageBand. I see nothing yet for a video editor (features from their Premiere would be nice). So, no challenge for iMovie. Or have I just not found those Rome tools yet? It does not include live collaboration tools...

The university library at Western Carolina University has been swamped by requests to checkout its Kindle e-readers. Schools, such as the Standish-Sterling Community Schools in Michigan have started limited pilot projects with just selected classes so far. But it has them thinking. As part of their 3 year technology plans they are exploring 1 for each student. Let's help them out. The ereader market is just part of the mobile digital literacy scene . Is it too soon to buy in big? How would you use them in your classroom? What educational challenges would these devices help solve? Join the online discussion. Click the Comments link below.

Curt Hopkins wrote a neat posting titled Our Network is Alive seeking a new name for the Net or Web. Fun! The comments from responders so far have included these names: The Culture, emergence, noosphere, consciousness of Gaia, noocortex, metamind, knot, fabric, mesh, nodes, network, iweb, awakening, enlightenment, overmind, reflexive, 
intervines,
the collective,
 exchangeable,
 avastent ,
avast, 
pangeant, media maze, slice, VALIS-Vast Artificial Living Intelligence System, flambango, metaverse, global digital brain, cellular neural technical network, anti-singularity, rhizome, now-now, flutternet, thinkhammer. Go add your own. "The Web" seems in a slight lead among these options. Should the name define how it is structured or what it does?

It's fascinating to watch the doubling of pixels for camera resolution for the same price, making it almost worth while to buy a new camera every year. The innovation curve for image making continues to shoot upward. Keep an eye out for new developments in image creation and comment away with news of the latest changes.