The deadline approaches . . .

Today is the day that Google will stop accepting applicants for its 1GB Fiber competition.

According to Gigaom.com’s February post on the topic, estimates for the price of Google’s experiment in Gigabit Fiber to the home could range anywhere from $60 Million to $1.6 Billion Lets split the difference and assume that it is going to cost Google at least $500 Million to run fiber capable of 1GB speeds to 100,000 homes (estimates run from $3000 to $8000 per home).  That’s some serious cash.

Now, lets put that in terms of the exposure that they have gotten from the competitive way they offered this up to cities and towns across America.  Mayors and councilmen across the country have done amazing things for this opportunity.  Jumped in icy lakes, dove with sharks, renamed their respective cities, parks, and even local cocktail concoctions to lure in the attention of the residents of the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA.  Heck, Leo Laporte has even offered to shave a ‘G’ into his hair and dye it blue if Petaluma, CA is chosen for the prize.

Put into perspective, what does this cost? Well, if they paid going rate of around $2.6 Million (If wikipedia is to be trusted on the matter.) for this [lame] thirty second Superbowl spot, then it doesn’t seem all that expensive.  Only about 190 Superbowl commercials.  For a solid month’s worth of coverage.  More importantly, Americans are finally learning that they are way behind on the bandwidth scorecard and are clamoring for faster better access than the telcos seem willing or able to provide.

And who knows, coupled with the ‘heroic’ pullout from censored search in China, Google may just about have generated enough good will to make up for its “debaculous” ™ handling of Google Buzz!

Two to Three Year Time Horizon

This post is number three of a four-part series on the Horizon Report 2010. To start at the beginning visit the overview.

Electronic Textbooks

My oldest school-friend and I used to walk home from elementary and middle school hauling our bulky textbooks and I vividly remember a conversation we had about a not-too-distant future where we would just carry home a CD-ROM with all of our information on it. . . Well, along with my promised future of flying cars, jet packs and robot housekeepers the future is turning out to be somewhat of a disappointment.

According to the Horizon Report, Electronic Textbooks are not that far from becoming a reality in many college campuses.  I completely agree, with the increasing number of e-book readers that are hitting the market in 2010, the apparent of a long-awaited Apple Slate iPad device and the increasing ebook consumer market, the climate is finally right for electronic textbooks to have their day.  I just hope it gets done right.  Many publishers (as I learned from Hall Davidson at TRETC this year) still don’t quite get the idea that an electronic textbook has the potential to be so much more than just the pages from the print version of the book.

Opportunities:
1) Digital Texts could Redefine Our Notion of Classroom Materials
The possibilities are endless for Digital Texts to revolutionize the way we use a reference text in the classroom.  Basically, I’m hoping for an experience that transcends the linear and isolated reading experience found in contemporary printed texts, in favor of an experience that makes connections within the text, and also with other learners.

2) Potential Cost Savings
At the university level the  fact that students purchase their own books points to an opportunity for significant savings if they purchase an e-book over the dead-tree alternative.  In a K-12 setting, the cost of textbooks is taken on by the district.  Depending on the licensing agreements and subscription deals, there may or may not be a great cost savings to schools, however, electronic textbooks could be easily maintained and updated.  The textbook replacement cycle may diminish if the text remains up to date.

3) Customized Texts
Electronic textbooks might also afford schools the ability to pick and choose the content that they purchase in order to support the specific culture that they are targetting.

Challenges:
1) A model for K-12 electronic textbooks
Book vendors Digital Content Providers and Schools will really have to think outside the box to

2) Potential for a standards war
iPad, iPod, Netbooks, Tablet PCs, Web-Based, Kindle,ePub . . . there are so many potential devices that could view electronic textbooks.  To ensure success of digitally distributed content, it needs to be done right, preferably around an open, standards-based format like ePub to ensure compatibility across platforms.

3) Accessibility
This should be an opportunity, as digital texts can be adapted for all kinds of accessibility needs, but we would be wise to think of these requirements during the selection process.

Action Steps:
Is the possibility of any kind of electronic textbook resources considered when we go through the textbook adoption process?  How do we evaluate the quality of electronic supplementary resources that come with textbooks?  Is there a potential cost-savings associated with finding an innovative way of using electronic versions of textbooks.  Taking a longer view, is there someone in the district who can stay abreast of the developments in electronic textbook

Augmented Reality:

I have to admit that this is the area that I have the hardest time envisioning in education.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m psyched about the idea of a virtual Heads Up Display in my car and beamed onto my eyeballs.  Just imagine, I’d never forget a face.  But the reality of augmented reality using an App like Layar means peering through a 4-inch screen at the world.  I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, maybe in a more urban area this is the best idea since sliced bread, but I just haven’t seen it in action enough to get excited about it.

I guess that in fieldwork this could be fabulous.  I love the notion of standing in the Roman Colosseum and using an augmented reality app to fill the space with live action and crowds watching a gladiator in battle, but my imagination needs some stretching to see an immediate application.  All that being said, augmented reality was apparently all the rage at the British Education Training and Technology (BETT) show in London this year.  Perhaps I just need to see it in action for myself.

Opportunities:
Adding a layer of digital content to real life brings in a whole new dimension to the world.  Google sky map is an awesome example of what can be accomplished — just point it to the sky, and it labels what you are looking at.  It is remarkable.  I’m looking forward to a day when this can be expanded.  Imagine pointing the device at a bird and getting a precise identification and data on that specimen, getting chemical information molecular structure and data in Chem Lab.   I can imagine lots of awesome future uses, but today’s technology is still a little clunky for my likes.

Challenges:
I would be cautious of this being a technology for technology’s sake issue. If it were incorporated into an existing device, then that sounds much more realistic.

Action Steps:
Pay attention to further developments.

One  Year or Less Horizon

This post is number two of a four-part series on the Horizon Report 2010. To start at the beginning visit the overview.

Mobile Computing

The first emerging technology as it regards education is the ubiquity of connected mobile computing devices among students.  At USC this is especially true among our students.  Middle school students that I casually poll often show near 100% own an iPod (brand) device, and increasingly they report owning an iPod Touch, and beg incessantly for the wifi password so that they can get online during (before and after) the school day.  Without any formal data on the subject, I would hazard a guess that over 90% of students have a cell-phone with a texting plan of some kind by 8th grade and more and more seem to report having a 3G internet enabled Smartphone like an iPhone or Android (Google) Phone.

The report considers mobile computing to include smartphones, netbooks, smartbooks, laptops and other more specialized devices  that can access the internet via WiFi or 3G Data networks.  “Users increasingly expect anytime, anywhere access to data and services that not very long ago were available only while sitting in front of a computer linked to the network via a cable.“  Additionally, as more and more services are moved into the “cloud”, students need regular access to the network to manage their personal data, share and collaborate with other students, all on the  move without having to check into a static workstation.

This increased ubiquity of mobile computing devices presents its own set of opportunities and challenges for K-12 and post-secondary institutions.  Just take a look at how many of my Top 13 Tech Tools are cloud-based or dependent on connectivity to the internet.

Opportunities:
One of the items in the strategic plan is to investigate the feasibility of a one-to-one computing environment in our school buildings.  I would argue that we are probably a lot closer than we think to one-to-one if we count all the devices that students are dying to use (for reasons both good and bad) but are prohibited.  In USC many of our students are blessed with the financial resources to own and use these devices at home.  Institutions of all kinds are doing all sorts of belt-tightening, probably not the opportune time to recommend the investment of many tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars on a new one-to-one initiative.  Perhaps it is time to investigate some of the benefits (and risks) that could come of changing the rules somewhat.

Challenges:
We are still the cell-phone police in our school. The kids are just getting better at concealing their phones, illustrating just how important a life-line that these devices are becoming.  It’s pretty obvious that kids are texting and using their phones during school. (How many parents walk in the office and say, “you don’t have to call her down, I texted her that I am here.”?)  By banning the use of cell-phones during school-hours, but tacitly approving their concealed possession, we set up an unwinnable challenge.  Obviously we don’t want kids yapping away on their phones in the hallways when they are en route to class, but just like we expect our staff to avoid playing Bejeweled during a staff meeting, there is an appropriate way to use these tools.  Maybe that needs to be taught explicitly.  For something like this to work we would need to actively educate students about the limits, etiquette and appropriate use of devices during the school day.

Additionally there are other technical, legal and equity challenges that present themselves.  First, allowing hundreds of student devices on the network presents infrastructure challenges from the bandwidth and capacity of the system, to the challenges of verifying users as they get onto the network, and protecting against malicious software and viruses.  Filtering traffic that we serve to students isn’t such an issue, but as wireless broadband access becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous we have no ability to filter the content viewed by students.  Who is responsible for illegal or unethical content that comes across the phone company’s 3G service into the school building?  Finally, the question of the haves vs. the have-nots.  Would allowing the use of private devices come across as a message that we expect students to purchase a device for use in school?  Would we be putting those that can’t afford, or don’t want to provide a device at a disadvantage?

Action Steps:
Lets get some good data. Ask kids:

• What classes of devices (and connectivity) do kids have access to?
• How would they see their learning change if they had access to the internet whenever they needed it?
• What would they suggest as reasonable controls on their use in the school?

Open Content

The Horizon Report’s definition of Open Content is pretty broad, the coming of age of the “Internet as a global dissemination platform for collective knowledge and wisdom.”  But in the K-12 world we know that there is “a lot out there.”  But as educators we struggle sometimes with finding, evaluating and implementing what we find.  Open Content means even more in the way it is presented in the report, including the use of open content for “learning for the sheer joy of discovery.”  Isn’t that one of the main things we want to instill in our students, life-long learning?

Opportunities:
For most many disciplines, the Internet has provided an explosion of content (some great, some not so great).  The problem is not the availability of the content, but rather the curation of that content.  Open Content repositories are available in all kinds of disciplines.  Some allow instructional resource sharing, evaluation, and commenting.

Challenges: Instructional materials are just the start.  Do our students know where to look if they have a passion about something and want to learn simply of the joy of it?  Do they know how to plan out and assess their own learning and truly be life-long learners?  Are we ready for an era where a student asks to design a customized course of study as independent study in the arts (MIT offers free photography lectures and coursework), languages (Free Resources in 13 languages available through the Allegheny Library Network), or even a specialized science course?

Action Steps: Actually, we are already doing some of this in small pockets — using a blackboard course we have been curating curriculum relevant materials – a decent, but not the most collaborative approach to the project.  I worry that our focus could get hung up on finding supplementary materials that back up the ‘sage on the stage’ instead of opening up venues for unexpected learning experiences.  We should ask ourselves what it would take for us to become more open in sharing our own content instead of just consuming content.  In today’s world we are all content creators, but just passive consumers.

Photo: CC Flickr – umpcportal