Worldly Wednesday: Non Robot Motoman

While talking to my grandfather on Christmas Day, I received an update on the Pearl and Mary Flanders School he funded in Cambodia.  Have you heard about the Motomen in Cambodia?  As we talked, he began to explain about the Motoman project to bring internet to the remote schools and doctors.  What better topic for the first "Worldly Wednesday."



First to briefly describe the Cambodia Rural Schools Project:  This project began in 1999 as a way to bring education to rural areas of Cambodia.  Student's wishing to attend school had to walk or travel by ox-cart for miles upon miles to the closest school.  Many were just too far away. Through the Cambodia Rural Schools Project, over 400 schools have been donated.  To build a school a donor contributes $13,000 and the Asian Development Bank matches this donation.  The land for the school is donated by the village. These schools are recognized by the Cambodia government as state schools and are staffed by official state teachers.

A typical school from this project is 3 - 6 classrooms and includes basic classroom furniture such as desks and chairs.  There are many other features that can be donated such as a library, solar panels, computer, vegetable garden, nurse, teacher, water well, etc.  

We have become such a technology dependent society it is hard to imagine living without postal systems, phones, and the internet.  But even further from our "reality" is living without medical care and educational systems.  How do we not only bring school buildings but also a connection to the world?  Motoman.



So, what is a "motoman"?  It is really a quit simple means to bring the world to rural villages like Ratanakiri. You take a motorcycle, in this case a bright red Honda, and equip it with mobile access points and a 256 kb/s satellite uplink also referred to as a First Mile Solution.  First Mile Solution based out of Boston first developed this system.

Five days a week, these motomen travel across the rural village to schools and health care facilities to transmit and collect information.  At the end of the day, they return to the hub to transmit everything collected. For individuals in these villages, whose average earnings are $1 per day, the motomen could be their only connection to the world.  These schools and health center are even able to use non real time search engines!

 

B3: Be Better Blogger

A new year's resolution I can keep, B³ :  Be a Better Blogger :)

While catching up on some of my rss reads, I happened across a post, Life is One Big Top Ten, on Sue Water's TAFE site .  In it she mentioned Steve Dembo's 30 Days to Be a Better Blogger. Ok I must admit I am a total geek, but it runs in my genes.  How many people have a 88 year old grandfather that blogs? I have been totally ecstatic that our parish finally opened up a blog site!  I have been waiting for years to have an interactive site for my students.

Since the unblocking (November '08) of Edublogs, I have been focused on the integration aspect of blogging:

• Organization of blog pages


• Steps for students to earn blogs


• Trial runs with students


• Finding great widgets


• Daily Journal dilemma (keep old, use edublogs, revamp)


• and so on..

I hadn't really focused on how my blog looks to the rest of the world.  My students love it, so it has to be great, right? LOL  Ok, maybe not:)

I am officially making a New Year's Resolution to complete Steve Dembo's 30 Days to Be a Better Blogger.  Wow!  a resolution I can actually keep:)  I didn't even take a sneak peak at what was going to happen over the next 30 days of this journey. I have already completed day one which involved revamping my about page.

UPDATE:  Great suggestion @suewaters, I am going to also work through the original challenge,  31 day challenge.  From what I can tell, it won't be too time consuming to complete both.  It is also broken into two categories, so challenges are different for beginners vs. intermediate.  Pretty cool!

End of Semester

I just wanted to let all of you know that I am very proud of you and how far you have come since your first project:) I only wish we could continue into next semester, so you would get full advantage of using the blog, wiki, etc. and even more new projects:)

Make sure to stop by next year to see what technology classes are being offered. With the ending of the 4x4 block and going to a seven period day, there will be changes. Maybe one of those will be even more technology classes:) I will post the information on the blog during the summer, and you can always email me. Don't forget to stop by next semester and tell me how your new classes are going!

Have fun over the break spending time with family and friends! Be careful and "think before you do"

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I can do ALL things through Christ which strengthens me.Phil 4:13

January's Widget

Computer Science wanted to make sure and post January's widget before they end the semester tomorrow:(

I'm sure you will really enjoy it!

http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/duck-hunt

UPDATE:  We have begun second semester, so the widget has been replaced with a link to the widget due to auto playing of music.

Blogs and Wikis

We began using a class wiki this semester after testing out a few.  We finally settled on a Mindtouch wiki at tiderwiki.wik.is The students had a great time changing each others paragraphs, but they are doing good.  We are up to three pages and that doesn't even count our wiki homepage:)

I wish I could keep everyone for next semester!  It is going to be great using a blog and wiki all semester and especially having student blogs.  We have decided that the best way to implement them is to post a journal topic and the student respond on their own blog.  I saw this on another class blog and it seemed to work well.  Sorry but I can't remember the class site.  The students definitely don't like using the discussion board because of the need to scroll past all the previous posts as well as all posts being mixed together.

Hopefully there will be another student blogging competition next semester:)

Student Show and Tell

Today was Show and Tell for Web Design students.  I only have one word for it, AWESOME!  I can't believe how far they have come in such a short time:)

We are working on a Game Programming unit using Alice.  This unit will be moved to the multimedia class in the future, but for this semester I was testing it out with my web design students.  Each student was required to show the current Alice world they are working on.  Then they demonstrated a "how to" on something they included in their world.

It was great to see so many of the same functions/events configured in different ways and thus producing a different end result.  Most of the student already have the inactive component incorporated in their world.  All of the Show and Tells gave students ideas.

Way to GO!

Hey, someone needs to add an Alice page to our wiki.  That would be a great place to collaborate information.  I sure wish you all could stay for next semester:)

December's Widget of the Month

My computer science class really liked all the widget available, so we are starting a widget of the month post! Of course Christmas is on everyone's minds, so here is this month's widget:

Get the Christmas Countdown widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!

Stressed?

Well, some of you were starting to get pretty stressed on Alice today, but we had a lot of laughs with all your "learning" experiences.  I thought you might like a break during Friday's lesson:)  Of course I have to relate it to our unit, but....

My first attempt at game programming was when my brother and I created pong for our family computer. No, I wasnt a geek...we were copying it out of a book and then changed a few things to change colors and such.  Ok so we didnt have cable.  Anyway, I found a GREAT widget for you:)  

When you start feeling  aUGHHH... play a game of pong.  If it doesnt show up below then it is Smartfiltered:(

Get the Flash Pong widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!