Friday, May 18, 2007
Massive Biology web site "Encyclopedia of Life"
http://www.eschoolnews.com Contents Copyright 2007 eSchool News. All rights reserved.
Scientists compile massive biology web site 'Encyclopedia of Life' to contain information about all 1.8 million known species on Earth, free of charge online From eSchool News staff and wire service reports May 10, 2007
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one web site, open to the public free of charge.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information were shown May 9 in Washington, D.C., where the massive effort was announced by some of the world's leading scientific institutions and universities. The project will take about 10 years to complete.
"It's an interactive zoo," said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 52,000 miles long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
The MacArthur and Sloan foundations have given a total of $12.5 million to pay for the first two-and-a-half years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone--students, teachers, scholars, and others alike.
The pages can be adjusted so they provide useful information for both a schoolchild and a research biologist, with an emphasis on encouraging "citizen-scientists" to add their sightings. While amateurs can contribute in clearly marked side pages, the key detail and science parts of the encyclopedia will be compiled and reviewed by experts.
"It could be a very big leap in the way we do science," said Cristian Samper, acting secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, one of seven museums, universities, and labs to launch the encyclopedia. "This is a project that is so big, not even the Smithsonian could do it by itself. It is a global effort."
Other institutions helping to head the undertaking are Harvard University, Chicago's Field Museum, the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, the Biodiversity Heritage Library Consortium, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Atlas of Living Australia.
The project will try to be like Mexico's Conabio compilation of all 70,000 named species in that country, but bigger, Edwards said.
"They are going to do something extremely ambitious and important," said Conabio's founding director, Jorge Soberon, now a professor at the University of Kansas.
For more than a decade, scientists have tried to compile simply a list of all species on Earth, but have failed. It's been too complicated, too expensive, and too cumbersome.
This effort might succeed where the others have faltered, because of new search-engine technology--the same kind that Google uses. It will scan the web for scientific information on the internet and "mash up" all of the material into a file that then gets reviewed by expert curators, said Harvard's James Hanken, a steering committee member.
For scientists, especially those in developing countries, this can open up new worlds of research, said Samper, who has worked as a biologist in Colombia studying South American plants. And that means more science from different areas, he said. Research papers that used to be limited to northern science libraries will be easily accessible in remote Botswana, he said.
"The democracy of science can't be overemphasized," he added.
And the democracy will be spread to people without doctoral degrees. Edwards said the public will be able to send information to scientists that they wouldn't have otherwise.
"The public can contribute, and that makes a big difference," Soberon said. "It's one thing to be a passive spectator, and another when the public can contribute."
This could be crucial in tracking invasive species, Samper said.
Sample demonstration pages on the polar bear show what the scientists hope to do. They offer pictures, maps, research, and data on the molecular biology, genetics, reproduction, and diet of the polar bear.
The information can be accessed at the "novice" level, which says: "Polar bears inhabit Arctic sea ice, water, islands, and continental coastlines." At the "expert" level, it says: "Polar bears occur in low numbers throughout their range and are most abundant in shallow water areas near shore or where current or upwellings increase biological productivity near ice areas associated with open water, polynyas, or lead systems."
And as new species are discovered each day, they'll be added, scientists say. They estimate that Earth actually has 8 million species or so, but only one-quarter of them have been identified and named as separate species.
After that, long-gone species--the fossil world--will be added.
"If we don't include dinosaurs, we'll have lost 6-year-old boys," Edwards said.
Link:
Encyclopedia of Lifehttp://www.eol.org/
www.eschoolnews.com info@eschoolnews.com 7920 Norfolk Ave., Suite 900 Bethesda, MD 20814 (800) 394-0115 - Fax (301) 913-0119 Privacy Policy Manage your FREE eSchool News eMail subscriptions here Contents Copyright 2007 eSchool News. All rights reserved.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
TRUE DIGITAL Assessment BEGINS with the END (Intention) in MIND!
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Assessing 21st century skills
If we’re going to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy skills in schools, we need ways of determining whether or not those skills have been learned by students. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills notes that answering the question ‘How do we measure 21st century learning?’ will be critical as we try to prepare students who can be productive citizens in the new technology-suffused, globally-interconnected economy.
Over in the United Kingdom, the British government’s Key Stage 3 ICT Literacy Assessment for 12- and 13-year-old aims to assess higher-order thinking skills in conjunction with ICT use. For example, as part of a task to draft and publish a journalistic article, students must use search engines to collect and analyze employment data, e-mail sources for permission to publish their information, and present data in graphic and written formats using word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all within a simulated computing environment. Student actions are tracked by the computer and assessed for both technical and learning skills such as finding things out, developing ideas, and exchanging and sharing information. If you’re interested, you can download a demonstration file and see for yourself.
Other interesting projects in the U.K. include Northern Ireland’s Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment A-Level Examination in the Moving Image (students must create and assess digital film clips), the Ultralab International Certificate in Digital Creativity (students must defend their digitally-produced film, artwork, and music to a panel of peers and professionals), and the eViva e-portfolio initiative (online space where students can receive feedback on their research and communication, data analysis, and presentation skills). If anyone in the U.K. is reading this post and has experience with any of these assessments, I’d love to hear your perspectives in the comments section.
Over here in the United States, ETS also is attempting to create new assessments of 21st century learning skills. I had a chance last fall to get a personal demonstration of the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment. Like the Key Stage 3, ETS’ assessment is a scenario-based test. This is a completely new paradigm for ETS, which the ETS representative said is challenging but also exciting for its psychometricians to try and wrap their heads around. I encourage you to visit the demo site and see how the test works. It may not be ideal, but I think it’s a lot further from your typical standardized test than one might expect. It’s an interesting attempt to blend both the technology and information literacy skills needed by future generations and at least offers some food for thought. Also check out the News and Research links to find out more about the results from ETS’ pilot tests.
We will see the birth of many new 21st century assessments in the years ahead. Like these early attempts, most of these assessments will be performance-based and thus will avoid some of the objections we hear about current standardized tests. Most, if not all, also will utilize the multimedia, simulation, and tracking power of digital technologies to create more authentic assessments of real-life tasks. It should be an interesting journey.
Credits
Much of the information in this post, including some very close paraphrasing, comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills report, Assessment of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. If you’re interested in 21st century learning skills, this report should be an important addition to your reading list.
Other resources
- Partnership for 21st Century Skills
- Calls to action
- Are They Really Ready to Work? [Partnership for 21st Century Skills]
- Tough Choices or Tough Times (executive summary or full report) [New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce]
- Rising Above the Gathering Storm (executive summary or full report) [The National Academies]
E-Portforlios and DIGITAL Assessment
Digital-Age Assessment
By Harry Grover Tuttle
February 15, 2007
URL: http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604246
e-portfolios are the wave of the future.
Effective 21st century assessment reaches beyond traditional testing to look at the broader accomplishments of learners. Assembling an e-portfolio, or electronic portfolio, is an excellent method for assessing students' progress toward school, state, or national academic standards, as well as 21st century skills. An electronic portfolio is a purposefully limited collection of student selected work over time that documents progress toward meeting the standards. Work may be collected over a semester, a year, or even several years, passing from one grade level and teacher to the next. E-portfolios reflect more in-depth, more comprehensive, and better thought-out evidence of student learning than on-demand tests. For instance, a student's three-hour state benchmark essay offers the feedback of a 5/6 score, while an e-portfolio allows students to document the many aspects of their essay writing improvement over the course of a year.
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Getting Started
Educators can begin by showing the students sample e-portfolios so they understand the overall format and the richness of artifacts—digitally produced homework, classwork, and projects—that can be put into it. A common e-portfolio format includes a title page; a standards' grid; a space for each individual standard�with accompanying artifacts and information on how each artifact addresses the standard; an area for the student's overall reflection on the standard; and a teacher formative feedback section for each standard. Within the e-portfolio, the evidence of student learning may be in diverse formats such as Web pages, e-movies, visuals, audio recordings, and text. Elementary students might explain the biology standard through e-movies of plant experiments and explain their cultural art to another class via a recorded videoconference. Middle school students might demonstrate their understanding of community by posting interviews to a Web site, or for P.E., display their understanding of life-long fitness through a spreadsheet of their wellness activities. High school students might document their comprehension of negative numbers through digital pictures or record a radio show where they role-play the parts of authors discussing common book themes for a humanities class.
Storing Artifacts
Students need to be able to store all their digital artifacts in one location such as on the network, on a flash drive, or on their class laptop. The ideal scenario is to store them in multiple locations and archived on a CD or DVD. Some teachers have students store their artifacts within a digital folder labeled for the standard such as 1Understand. Others have students save each artifact with the number for the standard such as 3Comparetwopoems.doc. Students spend more time in thinking about the artifacts and less time in trying to figure out what the file contains if the artifact file name is very descriptive.
The Process
Another advantage to e-portfolios is that they encourage self-guided learning. Students take the lead in selecting appropriate artifacts for a given standard and explaining how these exemplify the standard's requirements. Next, they write a reflection, learning that it is not the rewording of the standard nor a description of the learning experience, but rather a statement of what they did not know beforehand, what they learned during the creation process, and what they have yet to learn.
Tools
Educators can select from many possible tools to create e-portfolios. Some use commercial software specifically designed for e-portfolios such as LiveText, Grady Profile, Scholastic Electronic Portfolio, and Sunburst Learner Profile; others use noncommercial software such as Open Source Portfolio. Another avenue is to create e-portfolios from generic software such as word processors, an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, Web pages, multimedia tools, or blogging. Students feel most comfortable with these generic e-portfolio software programs when the instructor provides a high degree of structure through a template.
Assembling the Portfolio
Using the template as a guide, students choose which of their artifacts will go in the final e-portfolio. Because they already know how to word process, they will find it easy to add all the germane parts of their projects into one long document. For example, science students open up a word processed lab report which they've saved, copy the part that illustrates a particular standard, and then paste that portion of the report into the appropriate location under the Standards section of the template. In addition, they may put in any other already created digital artifacts such as images, movies, or sound. The only new work they have to do for the e-portfolio is to write their reflections for each standard.
Blog e-portfolios
Many word processed e-portfolios are predominantly text-based with a few images, and these can be saved as a PDFs to maintain all of the e-portfolio's formatting, such as alignment and font size. In a blog e-portfolio, students create an individual blog entry and give it a name, such as Standard 2. Students enter the e-portfolio parts in reverse order so that the title page is the most recent entry and, therefore, at the top of the blog listing. The reviewer can click on the listing of previous blog entries to see each component. Artifacts can be in the form of text, image, video, or other digital content. Teachers provide a template that each student can copy into the blog since the teacher cannot format each student's blog.
PowerPoint E-portfolios
For students already comfortable creating multimedia presentations, assembling a PowerPoint e-portfolio is not difficult. Each slide may reflect one component of a standard and therefore a single standard may comprise five or more slides. Students can link pages together to help reviewers navigate. However, PowerPoint is not a good vehicle for long text passages such as an essay. When students use Web pages, they create a page for each standard or a page for each part of the standard. They can link from standard to the supporting artifacts so that the reviewer can easily navigate the e-portfolio.
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The Downside
A disadvantage of these generic software e-portfolios, however, is that there is no management aspect—a teacher cannot compare how well all students have done on a certain standard without manually checking each e-portfolio. Therefore, program evaluation becomes very time-consuming. Also, these student e-portfolios are not cumulative from year to year, so teachers cannot see a growth on the standards over several years in a single e-portfolio. In addition, students who do not understand the mechanics of resizing photographs and other images for their e-portfolios can create files that are too memory intensive for transfer. Furthermore, generic software, unlike many other e-portfolio packages, does not contain an archival space for the students' artifacts.
21st Century Skills
E-portfolios support 21st century skills in a variety of ways. Self-assessment becomes a regular part of learning as students frequently select or re-evaluate which of their work is the best evidence of their skills and strive to create even better evidence in their future assignments. Formative assessment also plays a key role through regular teacher feedback. He or she might comment that a student did a great in-depth explanation on a part of the standard but still needs to address the whole standard in a more comprehensive fashion. Or a teacher may note that the student's critical contrast of two literary works would have been more analytical if the student had contrasted the theme for both novels in the same paragraph.
As we continue to move more deeply into the digital age and increasingly ask students to create and innovate, the e-portfolio is likely to all but replace high stakes and other traditional testing as a method of authentic evaluation.
Harry Grover Tuttle is an educator-in-residence at Syracuse University.
Ten Tips
Creating an Electronic Portfolio
- State and explain the specific standards and the
subparts of each standard that will be evaluated in the e-portfolio. - Tell how the e-portfolio will be assessed and by whom. Share the assessment rubric with students and let them know whether the teacher, a team, or a group of experts will assess the e-portfolio.
- Model several e-portfolios for the students so they understand the e-portfolio's purpose and general format.
- Provide a detailed e-portfolio template for the students so they understand what is required for each part of the e-portfolio.
- Label each class assignment, homework assignment, and project with the appropriate standard; therefore, the students can quickly identify all of the possible artifacts for a particular standard.
- Provide network and other storage for the students'
digital artifacts to facilitate frequent archiving. - Model how to select an artifact for the e-portfolio based on how well the artifact reflects the standard.
- Model a reflection on a standard so that students show their growth in the standard.
- Include regularly scheduled e-portfolio days in which the students archive artifacts, decide which artifacts best support the standards, assemble their e-portfolios, write their reflections, and, possibly, present it. Some teachers schedule e-portfolio days every 5 weeks, and others do it every 10 weeks.
- Have an e-portfolio review and provide each student with an assessment of the e-portfolio.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Changing Michigan's Schools / Detroit News Editorials
Changing Michigan's Schools
Sunday 2-11-2007
Local school districts balk at education reform
Michigan is already stepping back from its new commitment to education reform, just as it is trying to catch up with other states and the world.
Less than a year after Michigan passed much-heralded statewide curriculum reform for high schools, school districts are balking at fully implementing it, saying they will teach it through trimesters rather than semesters, allowing them to keep more elective courses as well as teachers who aren't qualified for the tougher classes.
In doing so, they are sabotaging students' access to the content they most need to prepare for college and the work world.
"It makes a mockery out of these high school graduation requirements," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center and one of the country's foremost experts in student achievement. "Unless the legislators do something about this, it will be really hard to correct later on. Otherwise, it's a sham."
Today, The Detroit News kicks off a weeklong series on Michigan education, exploring how the state can dramatically improve students' K-16 success if it is willing to stand up to the special interests controlling the schools.
Never before has education mattered so much to our future well-being.
Yet at the school and district level, many administrators, teachers and union leaders are proving reluctant to follow state leadership on the high school curriculum reform passed last spring.
At the state level, both Democrats and Republicans resist or do not initiate reforms, using the respective excuses of union rights and local control to protect their core supporters.
These so-called traditions are holding the state back from educational and economic progress.
"I really am a local control guy," says Mike Reno, a Republican member of the Rochester Community Schools Board of Education. "But at this point, local control is out of control."
The problem is not ignorance. We know what to do. Other states have shown us.
Nor is the problem simply funding. Money helps, but it has not driven successful reforms elsewhere.
Texas, Virginia and North Carolina and other states have undertaken bold state-level reforms to effectively boost their students' academic success. As a result, they are increasingly closing their socioeconomic achievement gap.
By contrast, Michigan did not pass a statewide assessment until April 2006. The state has not improved its college attendance rate significantly, and its student achievement is continuing to fall behind compared with other states' performance growth.
"We need another approach," Shakrani says. "Other states have taken another approach, and it is bearing fruit."
This week, we'll look at how Michigan can -- and must -- take another approach to K-12 education.
If Michigan is to regain its educational edge, both political parties must put children before their partisan supporters and embrace a more open-minded, 21st century interpretation of their core beliefs.
_____
About the series
How Michigan must reform the state's K-12 education system to catch up with the rest of the world.
Today: Opponents use excuses of union rights and local control to frustrate school change.
Monday: Why Michigan's student achievement is falling behind, and what we can do about it.
Tuesday: We explore the special interests that fight reforms to turn around the state's dismal dropout rate.
Wednesday: How other states have overhauled teacher management to improve student performance.
Thursday: Michigan must cut its skyrocketing administrative costs to save money for the classroom.
Changing Michigan's schools
Monday 2-12-2007
State must play stronger role in education reform
Just 10 years ago, Michigan students significantly out-performed the national average on achievement. Today, their performance is barely average compared with other states -- and fails miserably compared to other countries.
Michigan students didn't grow worse; they just didn't grow at all. While our state's performance stagnated, other states' students blossomed under careful cultivation.
Years after other states launched dramatic changes to improve their schools, Michigan is just trying out overdue education reform.
Last year, Michigan implemented a sorely needed statewide curriculum reform. While we applaud this new mandate, we realize that schools need further state leadership to guide instruction, textbook policy, teacher management and other issues to ensure the educational system leads the country once gain, and the world.
Other states have embraced bold statewide reforms. They are seeing real results. Yet Michigan clings to outdated, rigid traditions of local control and union rights that need to be modernized.
We have always believed that government works best when it is closest to the people. But Michigan's local school boards have proven incapable of breaking the stranglehold of education unions and implementing common sense reforms. We cannot deny what is working in other states.
Experts and activists agree the state must take the lead on improving student performance by providing more guidance on instructional methods, and addressing school structures and educators who resist reforms.
Michigan can wipe out its education deficit if the state:
Provides more guidance on instruction. Many school districts are struggling to figure out how to implement the new state curriculum.
Overhauls middle school instruction and structures to better prepare students for high school.
Recommends textbooks, if not mandate them, to reflect the needs of the new global economy. Michigan instruction is based on textbooks. If the books change, the teaching will follow.
Michigan's rigid teacher bargaining agreements and interpretation of local control has continued to thwart reform.
"This is a state that has prided itself for many, many, many years that the decisions of education are made at the local, local, local level," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center and one of the country's foremost experts in student achievement.
Mike Reno, a businessman and Rochester school board member, adds, "With local control comes responsibility to make sound decisions. Look at most school boards: I don't think they make bad decisions; they just don't make any decisions. If they had done their jobs, we would not have needed the state to lead reform. But we do."
Michigan's cultural attitude must also change. North Carolina upended its old belief that "not everyone is meant to go to college" and mandated that middle schools eliminate tracking. Now, every middle school student is taking rigorous college preparatory classes and they are closing their socio-economic achievement gap.
Michigan needs a similar comprehensive reform of education that starts with taking the schools back from special interests.
Sunday 2-11-2007
Local school districts balk at education reform
Michigan is already stepping back from its new commitment to education reform, just as it is trying to catch up with other states and the world.
Less than a year after Michigan passed much-heralded statewide curriculum reform for high schools, school districts are balking at fully implementing it, saying they will teach it through trimesters rather than semesters, allowing them to keep more elective courses as well as teachers who aren't qualified for the tougher classes.
In doing so, they are sabotaging students' access to the content they most need to prepare for college and the work world.
"It makes a mockery out of these high school graduation requirements," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center and one of the country's foremost experts in student achievement. "Unless the legislators do something about this, it will be really hard to correct later on. Otherwise, it's a sham."
Today, The Detroit News kicks off a weeklong series on Michigan education, exploring how the state can dramatically improve students' K-16 success if it is willing to stand up to the special interests controlling the schools.
Never before has education mattered so much to our future well-being.
Yet at the school and district level, many administrators, teachers and union leaders are proving reluctant to follow state leadership on the high school curriculum reform passed last spring.
At the state level, both Democrats and Republicans resist or do not initiate reforms, using the respective excuses of union rights and local control to protect their core supporters.
These so-called traditions are holding the state back from educational and economic progress.
"I really am a local control guy," says Mike Reno, a Republican member of the Rochester Community Schools Board of Education. "But at this point, local control is out of control."
The problem is not ignorance. We know what to do. Other states have shown us.
Nor is the problem simply funding. Money helps, but it has not driven successful reforms elsewhere.
Texas, Virginia and North Carolina and other states have undertaken bold state-level reforms to effectively boost their students' academic success. As a result, they are increasingly closing their socioeconomic achievement gap.
By contrast, Michigan did not pass a statewide assessment until April 2006. The state has not improved its college attendance rate significantly, and its student achievement is continuing to fall behind compared with other states' performance growth.
"We need another approach," Shakrani says. "Other states have taken another approach, and it is bearing fruit."
This week, we'll look at how Michigan can -- and must -- take another approach to K-12 education.
If Michigan is to regain its educational edge, both political parties must put children before their partisan supporters and embrace a more open-minded, 21st century interpretation of their core beliefs.
_____
About the series
How Michigan must reform the state's K-12 education system to catch up with the rest of the world.
Today: Opponents use excuses of union rights and local control to frustrate school change.
Monday: Why Michigan's student achievement is falling behind, and what we can do about it.
Tuesday: We explore the special interests that fight reforms to turn around the state's dismal dropout rate.
Wednesday: How other states have overhauled teacher management to improve student performance.
Thursday: Michigan must cut its skyrocketing administrative costs to save money for the classroom.
Changing Michigan's schools
Monday 2-12-2007
State must play stronger role in education reform
Just 10 years ago, Michigan students significantly out-performed the national average on achievement. Today, their performance is barely average compared with other states -- and fails miserably compared to other countries.
Michigan students didn't grow worse; they just didn't grow at all. While our state's performance stagnated, other states' students blossomed under careful cultivation.
Years after other states launched dramatic changes to improve their schools, Michigan is just trying out overdue education reform.
Last year, Michigan implemented a sorely needed statewide curriculum reform. While we applaud this new mandate, we realize that schools need further state leadership to guide instruction, textbook policy, teacher management and other issues to ensure the educational system leads the country once gain, and the world.
Other states have embraced bold statewide reforms. They are seeing real results. Yet Michigan clings to outdated, rigid traditions of local control and union rights that need to be modernized.
We have always believed that government works best when it is closest to the people. But Michigan's local school boards have proven incapable of breaking the stranglehold of education unions and implementing common sense reforms. We cannot deny what is working in other states.
Experts and activists agree the state must take the lead on improving student performance by providing more guidance on instructional methods, and addressing school structures and educators who resist reforms.
Michigan can wipe out its education deficit if the state:
Provides more guidance on instruction. Many school districts are struggling to figure out how to implement the new state curriculum.
Overhauls middle school instruction and structures to better prepare students for high school.
Recommends textbooks, if not mandate them, to reflect the needs of the new global economy. Michigan instruction is based on textbooks. If the books change, the teaching will follow.
Michigan's rigid teacher bargaining agreements and interpretation of local control has continued to thwart reform.
"This is a state that has prided itself for many, many, many years that the decisions of education are made at the local, local, local level," says Sharif Shakrani, co-director of Michigan State University's Education Policy Center and one of the country's foremost experts in student achievement.
Mike Reno, a businessman and Rochester school board member, adds, "With local control comes responsibility to make sound decisions. Look at most school boards: I don't think they make bad decisions; they just don't make any decisions. If they had done their jobs, we would not have needed the state to lead reform. But we do."
Michigan's cultural attitude must also change. North Carolina upended its old belief that "not everyone is meant to go to college" and mandated that middle schools eliminate tracking. Now, every middle school student is taking rigorous college preparatory classes and they are closing their socio-economic achievement gap.
Michigan needs a similar comprehensive reform of education that starts with taking the schools back from special interests.
Friday, February 09, 2007
HOW Can EDUCATION BENEFIT from WIRELESS OAKLAND Initiative?
Microsoft joins Wireless Oakland team: Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson announced that Microsoft Corp. had signed up as a member of the corporate team behind Wireless Oakland, the effort to offer free basic wireless Internet service everywhere in Oakland County. During his State of the County speech, Patterson announced that Microsoft will "develop and maintain all content and advertising on the Wireless Oakland portal," the home page for the system that will come up first on users' computer screens. WWJ Newsradio 950's Web site is offering a podcast of Patterson's remarks, at this link. There's also a podcast of an interview on the speech with Oakland County CIO Phil Bertolini, who is leading the Wireless Oakland effort. Installation of the system began in Troy Jan. 19. Other pilot areas in Birmingham, Royal Oak, Madison Heights, Oak Park, Wixom and Pontiac will be live with service available by April 30. At that time, Bertolini said, the county will release a schedule for rolling out service in the rest of the county. All areas of the county should see service by early 2008, Bertolini said. The system will offer Wi-Fi service free at 128 kilobits per second, at no cash cost to the county. The companies financing the system will make money selling faster service tiers. More at www.wirelessoakland.com.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
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