eCROP Blog

- Latvia (Wikipedia) Dr. Artur Puga, head of FSU (Forward Studies Unit, Latvian Union of Scientists), offered a most thoughtful reply to my blog post titled "Beyond Computer Literacy" Revisited. A link to FSU is provided above. This appears to be a current summary of Dr. Puga's area of interest. http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-site/whoswho.cgi?action=detail&id=102392&authorid=701916 More details into his thinking can be found in this Powerpoint presentation. http://www.innovation.lv/baltdyn04/ presentations/Session4_Universities/15-15_Puga.ppt I will share some of my response here. It is so humbling to have people reach out to me in my own language when I cannot respond in theirs and delightful that cyberspace makes such interaction so easy. Dr. Puga and I share an understanding of the word community as a highly scalable term, from the interactions of the community of ideas within our heads, to teams, departments, organizations and nations. He wrote in his Powe...

Click the title of this posting to see Stephen Ehrmann's essay to which I am reacting. Let's try another perspective. Once there were two highly competent professors, Socrates and Plato, the former rejecting the invention of writing, the radical new transforming technology of his day, and the latter, reinventing it for his thinking. Staying with the tried and true did not harm the wisdom or the values of the thinking of Socrates. However, Plato did have to speak for him by writing some of his ideas in ways that would reach us across time. Digital technology also offers new ways to reach across time and reach across space in ways more relevant to the highly interactive nature of human beings. On that I think Ehrmann and I would agree. My first disagreement is with his college level perspective; the digital desert of the public school desktop would also greatly benefit from computer literacy. My second is with Ehrmann making the case for change by leading with examples of wha...

Image FAQ Audio FAQ This was great fun! Can you hear the crunch of the damp leaves along the river bank? Resting on the warm river sand, I could shoot upwards at low hanging branches, capturing backlit fall color against a clear blue autumn sky. iCROP meta-thinking: Click the title of this posting for a page that describes how to get image, audio post and text in the same posting display.

Listen to the streams trickling into pools along the river. Paddling down the river, there were many nice places to stop in the warm afternoon sunshine and photograph the rich fall color. Click the title of this posting or see paddle map for a link that goes to a map of the paddling route that was taken below the Dillsboro Dam. The photograph entered yesterday was taken not far from where the paddlers are in this picture. Meta-iCROP thinking. A part of the content for 21st century learners is to learn how advances on the net increasingly make certain types of communication easier than the tools previously provided for desktop computer applications for doing similar things Further, they make other things possible that cannot be done in paper communication, such as adding comments and related source material directly into the original publication, as this blog technology allows.

This Wednesday, 13th October 2004, the market price leader in PocketPCs, Dell, announced their X50 PDA series. Its outstanding features include Bluetooth and 801.11b wireless capacity, provides an SD slot and a CompactFlash slot, and seems designed not only to handle music downloads but to also prepare the way for a new level of computer graphic display. Cost of models runs 299, 399, and 499. The CompactFlash slot makes it possible for sensor/probe companies to keep their products viable with the current level of features in PocketPCs. There is no discussion yet of whether this can be turned into a cell phone via 3rd party cards or installation of software using an internal microphone and speaker.

Combo phones biggest disadvantage may be their explanation. Their feature set though is here to stay. Mossberg's July 29 piece reviews the basic features of the HP iPAQ h6315. The model seamlessly integrates a handheld computer (PDA) with cell phone. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20040729.html Palms Treo line has been doing this for some time. What makes HP's product much more valuable is the integration of slower speed cellular systems with high speed Wi-Fi networks with wireless data access ($500). Competition soon from Noka and Motorola will hopefully drive this price down. Combining computer networks with cell phone networks will come in many variations, such as Vocera Communications products which are voice activation only (no keypad). http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2004-09-12-biz-cell_x.htm

Seeing the relationship between textbook questions based on the reading of a chapter or a story and authentic problems is a challenge for the school classrooms. Answering the challenge is essential in giving students the motivation and confidence that they can tackle real world problems. See this link to T. Lowrie's solution to this problem using cultural artifacts which can easily be collected from the communities of learners. For those adults immersed in real world problems, this issue is different. The adult problem is more one of spotting and sharing the problem. Communication systems which tie adult abilities to find and share problems with teachers seeking classroom useable authentic problems would be helpful to both. iCROP uses its SUP (Still Unsolved Problem) database as one model of such a system.