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Will This Redeem Alltel? by cogdogblog
posted 7 May ‘08, 10.13pm MDT PST on flickr

My battle to escape jail of my wireless internet provider seems in vain, but they did send me, for free, a newer USB mode, that actually has software for the Mac and promises to be a stronger connection (time shall tell).

Still it tooka call to tech support as they had not updated my account. But the thing works so far, am getting about 800 kbps download and am actually able to tun Second Life.

So I call this a partial victory. My new device seems to be providing good connectivity (in 2 locations so far in Arizona), and since it has the software now running on my Mac (and is a device that clearly is compatible with OS X), I guess I am in business.

I got the new device, a UM150 USB wireless thingie, on Tuesday. I installed software, tweaked preferences, and was unable to connect. I called “Rick”, the Alltel Executive Customer Rep who called my in Austin and arranged delivery of th enew device, but got his voicemail. I had to wait a day until I knew I had a couple of hours free in case I had to wade through the Seven Layers of Customer Support Hell, but actually, it took about 15 minutes, as the advanced tech person had to activate my device in the system.

This morning I got an early call from Rick, who had said he went and called tech support and asked them to make sure I was connected. This is the kind fo service everyone who calls Alltel should get, not just the headcases who make a big deal on the internet.

So while I lost the war to break free of my contract (which seems utterly hopeless anyhow), I consider this a partial win, as the ruckus Devon, Phil, Larry and others made online seemed to have an effect.

Or at least I think so.

My hunch is that you can have happy customer stories or horror tales with all carriers, so its a matter of just keeping the pressure on your jailer.

I really do not mind Starbucks as an establishment. They are comfy places and serve my favorite drinks, yes at inflated prices, but I succumb. My own, silly pet peeve is that stupid language thing when you order a drink. I want a “big” drink, so I describe it as “large”, and they say, “Venti”.

That is just plain stupid. WTF is “venti”? “Tall” is “small”? C’mon, speak English will ya? So my new silly travel game is to try and make Starbucks Speak English.

It goes like this. Order your drink, using real descriptive terms, “Small”, “medium”, “Large”. When they respond, “Venti?”, respond with, “no ‘Large’. If you can get them to say the real size, then you win! And we subvert StarbuckSpeak one franchise at a time. So if you are successful, or heck, just of you try, then add a coffee cup pin to this Google Map at http://tinyurl.com/49z88p (if it is set up right, it is open for others to edit)

View Larger Map

Let’s light up the map at establishments where proper human language terms are used. Go out there and use your charms to make ‘em speak in words people understand, not snobspeak.

This podcast is a few months old now, but I still believe it is a good listen. I spoke with Mary Ramsey, learning spaces coordinator, and Paul Schwartz, Teamwork Center coordinator, about Penn State’s development of collaborative learning spaces and Teaching and Learning with Technology’s involvement in this process. Collaborative learning spaces enable students to get together in one space to work on team presentations or team projects. Some spaces allow you to share documents on one large monitor, and some are comfortable lounge-type setups with wireless access.

Mary and Paul discuss the innovative design of these spaces, the technology involved, and how they enhance learning here at Penn State.

Take a listen: learning-spaces-podcast

Wireless classrooms - necessarily a good thing?

Student at Middlebury College in Vermont finds students ignoring lectures to surf on their laptops “overly annoying”.

What do you think? What can we tell students and faculty who are dismayed at the amount of students ignoring lectures and abusing wireless connections during class time?

Marco Satyro, associate professor with the Schulich School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, has been using the Teaching & Learning Centre’s services and facilities to offer a graduate-level chemical engineering thermodynamics course since September 2006.

Videoconferencing allows Satyro and John Shaw, a professor and NSERC/AERI Industrial Research Chair in Petroleum Thermodynamics at the University of Alberta, to interact in their respective classrooms and Elluminate software lets them share documents, slides and websites during their lectures.

Satyro finds that offering a joint course with a teaching partner who shares his love for the subject offers students a much richer, livelier experience. “The biggest benefit of teaching the course by videoconference is that the students get different perspectives from two professors simultaneously,” says Satyro. “They see our discussions in real time and are exposed to in-depth, many times complementary and a few times controversial, points of view on different areas of thermodynamics. Essentially they get the best from both of us.”

If team teaching doesn’t appeal to you, the TLC also helps instructors share their courses with other institutions through videoconferencing. This works well when enrolments at one institution do not justify running a course, but combined numbers make it viable. The experience is seamless for students and offers another possibility for expanding your reach. And the TLC is there to help you every step of the way.

“I really can not speak highly enough of the Teaching & Learning Centre staff at both U of C and the corresponding U of A facility,” says Satyro. “The technological barriers are low and with the support you get from the Teaching & Learning Centre you are never on your own. We experienced a few snags in the beginning when working out a format we liked, but after a few lectures we simply forgot about the technology. The Teaching & Learning Centre is a great resource at U of C. Period.”

Hmmmm, this blog post title sounds like either a bad idea for a recipe with a food processor or a headline of a New Zealand rural road accident report.

But noooo, neither, it is this awesome video done by Clint Lalonde where he mashes up Brian Lamb for an intro to a keynote Brian did for the Distributed Education Conference at Camosun College.

Dr Mashup gets mashed up himself!

I think Stephen Downes’ voice has never sounded more natural And check the credits, “made with 100% free stuff”

See the wiki bits of Brian’s presentation Confessions of an unrepentant doomfreak… It’s all coming apart, but that may not be a bad thing but I am sure it pales to the in person experience.

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I live on a ranch outside San Antonio Texas.  If you ask a native Spanish speaker in San Antonio: “where in Mexico do you come from?” the answer is often “San Antonio!  What part of Mexico do you come from?” It turns out, the border crossed them, they didn’t cross the border.

I feel the same way about virtual worlds and learning/education.  We launched Whyville in 1999 as a learning community, based on 17 years of research (while running the Caltech PreCollege Science Initiative) on how to most effectively use computers and networks to engage kids in learning.  We were identified as a virtual world later.  We believed at the time that this structure of Internet space would be particularly effective in engaging kids in learning.  We believed if we were right, they would come and stay. They did and have.

In my view, it is wonderful that an organization as significant as the MacArthur Foundation has been able to engage the considerable abilities and expertise of researchers like Doug Thomas, Yasmin Kafai, Constance Steinkuehler and others in the study of virtual worlds and learning.  This is important and interesting work.  I also believe that many of the comments by Doug, Yasmin, Constance and Connie (the Director of the MacArthur program) are right on.  The issues raised in these blogs are interesting and thoughtful, and probably I could write a book in response (perhaps I will).  However, I really want to cut to the chase - and identify what I think is the most remarkable feature of Whyville, and not incidentally what I personally believe to be the most important measure of the effectiveness of virtual worlds for learning or anything else. 

How many users are REALLY there, and how much are they REALLY engaged and for how LONG?

Connie mentioned that the Kofi Anann event attracted almost 200 Whyvillians, many of whom activily participated in the discussion (which BTW continues on Whyville).  But broadcast videos aren’t the way we most effectively engage our kids.  When the CDC launched their virtual vaccination campaign the end of last year and kids could protect themselves from the much dreaded ‘Why-Pox”, 134,000 children participated in 6 weeks (and invited 6,000 of their grandparents to get virtually vaccinated too).  5% of Whyville’s users in 2007 visited the Virtual Getty Museum (and 3/4s of Whyvillians surveyed know the Getty is in LA).  Our citizens made 587,000 requests of the site’s dietitian on how to stay healthy eating virtual food.  Many citizens have stayed healthy eating virtual breakfast, lunch, and dinner for more than a year.  In 2007, our citizens published almost 2,000 original articles in the Whyville Times, made more than 500,000 entries on internal discussion boards, sent 3.6 million Whymail messages to their friends, and generated 585 million chat phrases.  Oh yes, and our kids have contributed 700 videos about Whyville on their own on YouTube (an order of magnitude larger than for Teen Second Life).  Overall, of the 3.4 million users who have registered in Whyville since April 1999, 1.7 million re-logged into Whyville in the last year, including 10% of the users who registered in the year 2000. 

So, I am happy to leave it to the academics to place a larger frame around why Whyville works (until I write my book J ).  In fact we have an open door policy for academics.  But for certain, one key to whyville’s success has been our focus, from the outset, on building a community of learners, supported by a sophisticated community management system that involves our citizens too, and YES we designed Whyville to be our kids first life (not their second life), and YES our children love Whyville and want to be involved.  We know they also believe that Whyville is “their world” managed by benevolent adults (which they also apparently regard as increasingly rare in their real worlds).  But most importantly, if they keep coming and engaging, we are doing our job, because learning and education is the most engaging thing we do as humans.  It’s what we care about first and foremost in Whyville - and our kids know it.

As they say in Texas “if they ain’t there, you can’t learn-um.”