I’ve been following the FCC’s National Broadband Plans since they were sent to Congress. I’ve been excited about the possibility of the Digital Literacy Corps. However when reviewing the Broadband Action Agenda I feel a little uneasy. I see no reference to training or instruction. While I agree on the importance of access to broadband I’m concerned about lack of attention to instruction. This sort of training and funding are desperately needed. Dumping broadband access on communities that can’t afford a computer or the monthly fee for high speed access and without any instruction is like giving a 13 year a Ferrari, its a great car but he can’t afford the gas and he don’t know how to drive it. Its basically worthless. At the VERY least there should be mention of public libraries. They are the ones who will be providing access to this wonderful broadband to people who can’t afford the device or the connection fee. It also falls upon them to provide the training and instruction. Broadband is wonderful but we are not born knowing how to use the internet, not even so called digital natives. I hope I’m wrong, I hope I’m missing something and someone will





Top Ten Links Week 5
My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 1/29/2010 thru 2/4/2010 about dismantling the echo-chamber… more on the echo chamber Content Creators & Consumers (& the iPad) – an interesting post on who the audience of the iPad is. I know its not me, but I’ve had conversations with enough people who are just waiting to get one that I know there is an audience no matter what the techies feel its lacking. Facebook Is Working On A Foursquare-Killer Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures – its ok to fail, just be sure you learn something from it. President’s budget freezes library funding, omits school libraries from education increase if you haven’t heard or read about this you need to and read Buffy Hamilton’s response An Indecent Proposal Don’t feed the trolls, unless you’re feeding them tranquilizers – great article on how to handle blog comments, including how to handle trolls 10 Steps to Promote Learning in Your Conference Presentation Information and services should be equal But, I Like My Loser Friends! great post from Mary Schmidt at Lip-Sticking in response to The Most Important Success Tip:Stop Lying Down with Dogs, Already from Copyblogger
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