Archive for May, 2006

The canker

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

A 15 year old kid, never in the library that I noticed.

And I complain like bandwidth and tech-shy teachers are the real problems with public urban education?

Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes:

The canker galls the infants of the spring,

Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,    

And in the morn and liquid dew of youth

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be wary then; best safety lies in fear:

Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

Hamlet (1.3.40-41)

Net losses; netSquared

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

be Net2The
weekend approaches, the last long weekend before the long summer.
Everything that could go wrong with tech integration at Galileo has
gone wrong this year. Final straw is the departure of our three most
tech-savvy teachers. Well, it is urban public education.

In hopes of reviving flagging spirits, I’m off next week to NetSquared, where I’m told I’ll find:

??? a dynamic mix of international
leaders in emerging technology, politics and philanthropy
together
to discuss the future of tech enabled social change work.

The line-up looks great and the non-profit angle certainly includes BAWP
and, at a stretch, public ed. It would be nice to get some advice on a
school-friendly content management system out of the experience.

School tech and politics

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

For most of yesterday morning our school internet connection offered  us 78 kbps, a download speed of about 10 KB/sec.

It’s nice that, in New York at least, Eliot Spitzer gets it:

While New York has a vast transportation infrastructure to move people
and goods, we don’t have the broadband infrastructure to move ideas and
information. If you’re a kid growing up in South Korea, your Internet
access is ten times faster at half the price than a kid growing up in
the South Bronx. New Yorkers are at a competitive disadvantage that is
simply unacceptable.

[via myDD]