BC Broadband Conference

Just been invited to participate on a panel at the BC Broadband Conference in Vancouver on June 2nd/3rd. Any of you that know me have probably heard me rant on Network Neutrality, and now I may get a platform to throw some opinions out in a more public forum. Most of my opinions are based on information I receive from blogs and articles from the Bill St. Arnaud, Michael Geist, Benoit Felten, Pipe International and other national and international Muni-fiber initiatives. I'm humbled to be offered a position as a panel speaker at this event as I don't feel I have quite the credentials to stand up next to some of the others who have managed, or will be managing, their own fiber initiatives, but I will certainly contribute in any way I can. In fact I'll do whatever it takes to raise the awareness of just how lacking we are with high speed technology in this country.

Ok, can't help but rant. Last mile access needs to be managed by a neutral party or utility upon which service providers can deliver their services in a competitive environment. Besides the fact that we don't need the equivalent of two driveways coming into every home and business, service providers can not possibly deliver cheap high speed bandwidth if they have to bear the full financial burden of upgrading their infrastructures to support the next generation services. Therefore unless communities and carriers start working together, the incumbent carriers will have to leverage their existing infrastructures with band-aid technologies in the same way that ADSL leverages the use of their old copper POTS network. Either way it is the consumer who is going to lose out by being the recipient of a technologically inferior or really expensive service

Presentation at BCSCTA

Last Friday I had the pleasure of presenting at the BC Science Teachers Association Catalyst Conference. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was in the block for the breakout session of the conference. I suppose you could argue it either way in terms of the audience expectations for the first session, but either way if there is going to be an organization problem with the setup and audio video it is going to be in the first session. But fortunately it all went very smoothly for me. I provided a handout to go along with the presentation since I learned from many past experiences not to try and jam all the information into the presentation and torture via Powerpoint. I spent a lot of time prepping for this presentation over the past couple of weeks.

A lot of my information I gleaned from sources such as Clarence Fisher, Will Richardson and Karl Fische. In fact if you read through my presentation you'll see many references to their blogs. I find these guys inspirational in their commitment to utilize technology to its fullest potential in the classroom. They are true pioneers in this industry. I also gathered awesome material from actively participating in the social networking world with applications such as FriendFeed, Twiiter, Last.FM, Youtube, Furl etc...

My goal was to try and open people up to the possibilities of social networking in education. These applications are certainly still not quite there yet for mainstream users, but I can finally see the seed of what will make this facet of the Internet more accessible. The presentation was well received, and I ended up talking and meeting with some very interesting folks.

All this has certainly consumed a fair amount of time, but I'm slowly figuring out how to streamline my use of the technology. As is always the case in this field, just when you think you have a system figured out, another shakedown of the field occurs and you have to re-adjust. Nevertheless, I'm now finding the technology in the social networking arena is spiraling on a saner course. Educators who utilize social networking technologies are certainly going to have to just jump in and adapt the technology to their style. Although there is no right or wrong way to do this, I believe there are enough resources out there to classify some best practices and learn from the successes and failures of others. There are many enthusiastic teachers who have led the way and are willing to share this information with the rest of us.