Technologies are only part of the solution - not at all the entirety!

However, to avoid digressing from the topic of your question, my answers are several:

First, there is simply not the same incentive to create educational technologies as there is to create faster processors or larger hard drives. The benefit of a faster computer is clear and immediately actionable. The results of improved educational opportunities don't become clear for quite some time - 20 years or more.

Second, and more importantly, the comparison of Moore's law to education is inherently incorrect. Would your supposition be that the human cognition must double its... processing capability?... every few years, guided by increasingly powerful educational technologies?

If there is an opportunity, it's the opportunity that we're trying to capitalize upon: that armed with an understanding of how people learn, and coupled with the low costs of producing high-quality educational technologies, we can begin to make a difference.

The most important thing, in making that difference, is that technologies are used in such a way that they add something valuable to the experience of learning - whether it be visualizations with an explanation beyond what a teacher can reasonably provide; or equity; etc. Otherwise, the time required to set computers up, train teachers to use, develop lessons, etc., simply detracts from the educational potential of schools.

If anyone here - LAMP volunteers, especially - would like to become involved in making that happen, please let us know! But, in the meantime, please don't use Moore's law as a point of comparison.

Cheers,
--Dave

... to hire their new Open Source Community Engagement Expert, to run it? Can't find the link, but it was /.'d a few days ago...

now only if I could change it to say something more erudite...

first post!

Unfortunately, here's yet another reason to MOVE MY PHONES AWAY FROM VERIZON. Recently, we found out that Verizon was charging for data (1mb of data transfer) when I accidentally hit the "Get it now" key that is hard-coded, pre-programmed, into my phone - without any labeling and without any option to repurpose the keystroke.

This seems to come on top of everything else as yet another reason to choose another vendor - Google, hopefully! - and not Verizon.

Yes -- and pizza is all the better. It's great to know that the challenge is being shared, IF it's a healthy, collaborative effort.

OTOH, if it's an over-the-shoulder kind of assistance, that's rather frustrating. Not so generative, and it's simple enough to know the difference...

Hey there, I've put together a couple sites in Drupal and DotNetNuke recently, and Joomla beforehand, and must state that Drupal is far more useable and powerful than either of the other two CMSs. Here are the general differences: Drupal is a little more challenging to learn, but far more flexible. I can easily create data types and taxonomies, and relate information across modules and locations in the site. Its theming is relatively simple, and it's not a pain to incorporate social / profile elements in a standard way, across the site. Theming login modules and other user elements is simple enough. Its code is pretty good - very good, in many cases. On the other hand, DotNetNuke is like legacy software stacked upon legacy software upon legacy software. It has been nothing but trouble. Its modules don't communicate easily with one another and, unless you want to recompile the entire clunky thing, its code is a pain to change around. I definitely don't recommend it for a big-time site, no matter what they state on their homepage. Otherwise, it's somewhat easy to change *content* on pages - but again, not as powerful as Drupal. Finally Joomla is somewhere in the middle. Very easy to use, but on the other hand, not as powerful. It's fine for a beginning site, but probably not the tool/base I'd choose for a very advanced site with multiple social features and custom needs. Cheers! --Dave

Most cities have Grottos - chapters of the National Speleological Society (I'm in the Boston Grotto which, predictably enough, is in Boston. Others have less predictable names). I wonder if the NSS will ever establish a Grotto on the moon? --Dave

p.s. in response to a couple questions, yes, please, come one, come all - just send a note through the contact form on http://www.plml.org/ and I'll get back to you with some next steps. Thanks & cheers, --Dave

Would you like to help develop the project? It's PHP and CodeIgnitor - and needs some interested people to help start it back up! We had created a lot of connections to mine as supports once it's minimally supported... --Dave, http://www.plml.org/

Hey there, We created Codekindness, http://www.codekindness.org/ a site that links volunteer programmers and other techs with nonprofit organizations. Interestingly, the project itself needs some support, and so if you (or anyone else) who reads this would like to take it over, please contact me (through the contact form on http://www.plml.org./ The site has been successful in the past, but there simply isn't a time to run it now - despite that the need is greater than ever. Want to make a difference? It's an open project! Cheers, --Dave

We're doing a lot of social outreach, and measured by metrics like how many new members join through our outreach. We're still searching for the best metric to measure our progress in this realm. To that extent, we had to develop our own tool (!), available for free to others at http://www.sociafyq.com/ . Cheers, --Dave

Many sites rely on Google in ways that aren't immediately evident - for instance, during the outage, Google Analytics connections were lagged, which meant that all our our sites that incorporate Analytics were ALSO lagged.

What's amazing is the extent to which an outage on a single entity can bring down ALL of the other entities that surround it -- not just those who rely more visibly, e.g., Google Docs., on their services.

Yikes!

--Dave

This makes a lot of sense. The healthcare bills, and the societal cost, for caring for the health challenges associated with obesity are enormous.

However, the imposition of a tax will require a significant cultural shift. Entire isles of grocery stores are dedicated to sweet, often unhealthy, foods. Television programs, and even youth culture, promotes candy. Heck, when I was young, I loved candy (and still do!)

And, not only do people love sweet things, companies make a hefty profit on their foods. So the switch is both an individual, and a profit-motive, switch that needs to occur.

In that sense, it challenges our culture -- and I'm curious to explore how that's navigated (as it has been, for instance, at some schools).

Thoughts? How does one roll a change like this through the political process?

--Dave