So, I just finished reading an article about wordpress.com going down for a bit and began thinking about whether or not the “Cloud” is a good or bad thing.

I’m worried that the cloud is just the latest manifestation of consumer laziness. We live in a world that is dominated by computer devices, but how many of us know rudimentary coding or computer science skills?

It makes me think of books. When books had to be written individually by scribes, they were expensive and literacy was a mark of nobility. However, once the printing press was developed and books were mass produced literacy rates soared. Why isn’t the same thing happening with coding and computer science?

We live in a world where code is easily accessible. With a little motivation and a few Google searches you can find how to code just about anything. Additionally, the coding languages are getting easier and easier to use but still very few users understand even the basics of programming. Instead we have the few that understand programming and they are considered a special class of user.

What would the world be like if instead of sites like YouTube, we had individual web servers at each persons home? Those home servers could submit their content to large aggregation tools such as Google or maybe they would interact with each other in an unimagined version of peer to peer social media.

I think the cloud is going to make a whole generation of lazy consumers that see the Internet as a strange black-box technology, instead of creating a group of highly motivated and innovative consumers that are defining for themselves what the Internet is and can be.

If you’re running a 1-to-1 in a rural area or have long bus rides in your district check this out. For many of our students this is the last Internet they have before they get home.

by totalAldo @ flickr CC

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kids_dont_blog_maybe_they_never_did.php

Can’t help but wonder if we should be spending more time helping students balance their real-world and virtual world lives. As always, I’m a bit concerned over the implications that a blog post is too in-depth a process for a teenager to engage with. Maybe it has to due more with the fact that teenagers think they have to be connected at all times and the only way to accomplish this is a superficial attachment to everything instead of an in-depth understanding of just a few things.

Maybe it is a result of their education system being a mile-wide and an inch deep? I can’t help but wonder if this trend is mirrored in other industrialized nations with much higher levels over Internet connectivity.

I think there is a weird dynamic playing out here that will have repercussions, both positive and negative in the years  to come.

So, needless to say I’m not nearly as impressed by the iPad as I had hoped. It doesn’t have have flash, it doesn’t have a camera, and it based on the iPhone OS. My geek gene gets excited at the potential for gaming, the multi-touch pressure screen, and the inclusion of iWork apps but my beware of proprietary software gene is also freaking out.

I’ve been hearing the iPad described as a new metaphor or paradigm for computing. Sure this seems like the smart thing to say given the initial response to the iPod and its future commercial success. But if the iPad represents the “new” model of computing I don’t want it!

First, this is not a creation device. The iPad is the exact opposite, the “ultimate” consumption device. IMHO Apple has created a device to monopolize your consumption of music, film, media, gaming, and books. Already, we have a population that is losing its ability to be creative and the idea that an iPad would become the norm just accelerates that downward spiral. It doesn’t record, it doesn’t take video, it doesn’t take pictures, and it doesn’t provide an easy method to transfer these things from other devices. It just deliverers content to the consumer. Of course, iWork offers some hope but Keynotes without multimedia are sort of 90s so where can I pull my content from?

Second, the iPad is not stand-alone. At the end of the day if you want your pictures, videos, and music you still have to sync to a computer. Jobs can bash netbooks but at least they don’t need a mothership to function. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of iPhone OS or intentional but it is very lame.

Finally, I’m deeply concerned by the potential for Apple to control who and what gets seen by potentially millions of consumers. In theory, and without violating your user agreement, you cannot tap into content from any other source except the iTunes store. I find this incredibly scary given Apple’s erratic approval process for apps. If the iPad takes off, and I believe that it most likely will, Apple will have a powerful grip over the future of not only the entertainment industry, but gaming, film, publishing, and more that we haven’t even imagined yet.

While the iPad device is a huge innovation in multi-touch device and flexible user interface, I believe the wide-scale adoption of computing premise could stifle innovation and create the next big computing monopoly, a la Microsoft. That would be a shame and would mean another decade of stunted innovation. It would also mean an end to the resurgence of creativity amongst normal folks as their new device will only allow to express themselves in ways that Apple finds acceptable.

Why is that you will also get a tech emergency email 5 minutes before you leave on vacation?

Not 5 minutes before boarding the first leg of my holiday travels I get a message noting that our entire cloud cluster is down. D’oh!

Turns out it was just power, but seriously!

Have a great holiday season.

Here is the BT cluster racked up. Brings a warm fuzzy feeling to my inner geekdom.

Running a mix of OS X server and Linux VMs that power our blogs, wikis, and moodle.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/12/harvard-medicine-elearning-sys.php

Brilliant idea! Imagine being able do this with key vocabulary and other types of basic data. I could totally see HS and MS students loving this.

Tap that phone!

I keep waiting to hear this.

We are just coming into the first critical deadline for our Senior Exit Project Blogfolio pilot. It is only a matter of time before this comes down the pipeline.

Times and technology changes but I bet that teenage procrastination is a constant.

My current project has been making the news.

We appeared as the cover story in THE Journal and it was recently mentioned in the NY Times.

The extra news coverage has allowed me connect with a variety of interesting projects throughout the country. I look forward to sharing those resources as our relationships develop.

In the mean time, I’m still working on the basics of how you can setup a great K-12 cloud environment that will allow almost any district to move forward with blogs, wikis, and even a social network that is under the control of the school district. It is a walled garden but at least it will get kids headed down the right road.

I just finished migrating the bulk of our Beyond Textbooks project from an Apple Wiki to Deki Wiki.

If you haven’t checked deki yet you should! It can easily be run from a VM. It has huge potential as a great teacher intranet to a compelling method for creating student portfolios.

I’ll keep you posted.