<![CDATA[I wonder if school buildings are shelters from bad weather and bad influence or if the walls are prison wall keeping the students locked up and isolated.

When creating on-line learning environments modelled after traditional school the prison element is very true and also very true... or maybe such systems seem to be more concerned to preventing anyone breaking into the system than making it possible for insiders to reach out to the world outside.
Most of the learning management system I have seen are more of a student prison than a place to reach out to the world and I have came to the conclusion that the computer lab at my school - the place where I usually meet my students - is one of the worst places for learning. If learning takes place there it is in spite of the surrounding that works in many ways as a barrier to learning.

Everything is locked because of security reason and common tools are not provided because of policy (such as no firefox because we only use IE ) and the systems changes without warning and what worked yesterday or last semester is not working today because the machines have been set up with new drivers in different ways etc. This week when school started I could not even log into the teacher computer (the one connected to the screen projector). But at least I got Internet connection which I am grateful for. And electicity which I of course take for given.

I have very little confidence in schools as good environments for change such is taking place in our society. Schools are cultural environments that resist change.

Update:
I found out that Firefox is now installed in the computer labs and this summer our first unix server was set up. I can now have both elgg, mediawiki and moodle access on our linux server and the computer staff has been very supportive solving all the technical problems that always pop up when you are moving in new directions.]]>

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Wikimania 2006 - Arbitration panel, originally uploaded by fuzheado.

Here I am testing flickr and showing my students how to blog pictures from flickr.com
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<![CDATA[I am now in Boston, attending the Citizen Journalism unconference. There are about 100 people, I guess most of them are in someway involved in journalism. In conferences like this you have to be alert - there are three channels right now - first the presenter with powerpoint slides projected on one schreen , second there is Doc Searls documenting the unconference and his points are projected on the second screen. The third channel is a backchannel or a irc channel on irc.freenode.net #citmedia.

You really have to be multitasking to participate in this kind of conference]]>

<![CDATA[I am now at the Wikimania conference in Boston listening to the opening speech of Jimbo Wales. His most frequently used word is "free culture movement" refering to Wikipedia as one part of that. Wikipedia is getting more political and getting more into education.

http://hlssun3.law.harvard.edu:8888/ramgen/encoder/2006_wikimania_float.rm)

project to try to improve the political discourse
http://world.wikia.com

Announcements by Jimbo Wales
* one laptop per child project is including Wikipedia as the first element in their content repository
* Wikiversity approved
- a center for the creation and usse of free learning materials and activities
- create and host a range of free-content multilingual learning materials, for all age groups in all languages
- host scholarly/learning projectss and communities that supoort these

The coming year
* we will be creating an advisory board
* Wikiwyg (the technological barrier to entry)
* Quality Initiative (turn attention in English Wikipedia away from growth to quality)- biology of living persons
* Image tagging
* ten thing that will be free (update from last year):
-in English and German
* We are still not doing much for people in developin nations
* free the wiktonary - WiktionaryZ
* free the curriculium - wikiversity Beta

Andy Carvin is also blogging from the conference about the opening session:
http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2006/08/jimmy_wales_announce.h

technorati tags wikimania 2006
http://technorati.com/tag/wikimania2006

Joho the blog
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/wikimedia_jimmy_wales

Ethan Zucherman
Jimmy Wales keynote at Wikimania
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=922
Lessig’s Keynote at Wikimania
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=924
Wikimania: Omission and Accuracy?
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=923

Ross Mayfield
http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/jimmy_wales_kic.html]]>