Keep it Simple, Stupid

If you have read my earlier post 'Where to from here' you'll have realised that I've been worrying for a while now, trying to work out how you can offer an open wifi system to students, encouraging them to bring their own devices to school (laptops, phones, PSP's etc) and at the same time ensure that their teachers are able to cope with the array of devices in the room (Apples, Windows PC's and Linux machines, as well as a whole array of phones and other portable devices).

Well I think I've cracked it. Really when you think about it, it's down to the software and web browser you use. If you standardise on these, it doesn't matter what machine the students have because the teachers will be familiar with the web browser and software they are using.

With laptops the decision is an easy one, Openoffice would be the software of choice and Mozilla Firefox the browser, as these are both open source and available on all machines. No need to worry about MicrosoftOffice and Internet Explorer. Just make sure the kids have all got Openoffice and Firefox on what ever Laptop they bring to school. Oh and what a surprise, the new era of Linux mini laptops all come with these two pre-installed.

Simple Really.
Easy Peasy.
Lemon Squeezy.

Then you can use Google Docs, Moodle (CMS), Elgg (eportfolio/social network) and a sprinkle of other web2 programs to taste.

With the phone and other portable devices Opera mini would be the browser of choice as this can be installed on most phones/portable devices.

Now that makes me feel a lot better, because I now realise that what ever machines or combination of devices our students have, we won't need to worry. By keeping it simple, stupid we'll be able to concentrate on the pedagogy not the technology.

Using web2 programs will make life easier too as we won't need to add extra software to hundreds of machines or spend extra time putting complicated images on students machines.

The new era of 1:1 is here, facilitated by web2, mobile devices and cheaper mini PC's/webtablets. All we have to do now is ensure that we have a fast internet connection and wifi set up ready to accept any device.

1st PSP on the Network

Is there no stopping them! Last week one of the boarders in my class noticed he could pick up southwellhost (our wifi connection) on his PSP and asked me if I could connect it for him. Well no sooner had I done one, when another one came out of the woodwork, then another, and another, and another making a total of six in three days. One boy even told me he had two and would be bringing in the other one tomorrow. Pretty amazing really! I wonder what the tally will be by the end of the week.

Well, what can they do with them once they are connected, I hear you ask? Quite simply just about anything you can with a mobile phone browser. They connect to the internet using an Opera mini browser or so Mark tells me.

They can pick up our school webmail and we even managed to post a comment to a forum in Moodle this morning. We haven't tried to connect to Elgg (our private social network) on them yet, but I don't see any reason why not! I can do it on my mobile so I expect to see them blogging from their PSP's before long.

The PSP doesn't have a camera and you don't have a flash enabled browser but the screen size is pretty good and it fits nicely in your pocket. Not bad for a gaming device but then again wasn't that what the first computers were?

Cloud Computing and Mobiles

It's been a while since I last blogged, but here is a subject that I have a real passion about and that's the sort of thing you need to get yourself back into it. I subscribe to the Opera Mini blog (no surprise there) and they informed me that they had added a neat feature, whereby you can zoom into any image before you download it. This was available on Opera mini 3.x and is really useful when you only have a small screen like a phone. Anyway the clever part is that they did all of the updating on their servers and like magic that functionality was suddenly available, for what could be up to 100 million people (this is Operas estimates of Opera mini users). This is the real power of cloud computing, where the 'real' power is in the server farms that they operate, just like Google does. You no longer need power hungry processors and huge amounts of memory and operating systems on the device. It just becomes a connection to the 'cloud'. I also received an interesting feed looking at how a simple browser on the phone can replace all the in built applications found on any modern smart phone, like mine. I already use my browser a lot rather than the inbuilt applications, because it is faster and I won't always have a smart phone as I believe that cloud computing is the future and I will have a phone with an advanced browser connecting me to the clouds. Hopefully people will think that my head isn't in them!