February 2014

Getting Ready To Go Blended In North Texas

One of Texas’ largest charter networks, Uplift Education -- with 28 K-12 schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex that serve 9,600 students -- will be making a big investment in blended learning.

Thanks to a $360,000 grant from the Morris Foundation, Uplift will start blended learning pilots in two of its K-3 schools and another school serving grades 6-9. In 2013, the network began using digital curriculum like Reasoning Minds and ST Math in a few classes to test out the tools in a less formal way. Now, with this grant, Uplift will begin purchasing hardware and software licenses, and preparing their bandwidth infrastructure. Here’s the plan according to Deborah Bigham, Uplift’s Chief Development Officer. In the K-3 schools, Uplift Meridian Prep and Uplift Mighty Prep, students will go through two 90 minute blocks in both math and reading, rotating between three different stations every 30 minutes. Stations will include small group instruction with a teacher, computer-based instruction with adaptive software, and independent activities. Every class of 25 students will get 15 Chromebooks to support the stations. Administrators will give teachers a chance to vet digital curriculum like Reasoning Minds and ST Math to decide which they’d like to try out and pilot.

New Retransmission Attack Targets Multicasting

Broadcasters could be barred from affiliating with two or more of the Big 4 TV networks and multicasting the signals, under a new retransmission consent reform proposal being pitched by the pay-TV industry at the Federal Communications Commission.

In addition, the ability of broadcasters to negotiate retransmission consent rights for unaffiliated stations in separate markets could be constrained, under another retransmission reform proposal being promoted by pay-TV lobbyists during recent FCC visits. “Specifically, we asked the FCC to clarify that a broadcast station’s assignment of its right to negotiate retransmission consent to another broadcast station constitutes a ‘transfer of control’ that requires commission approval,” said representatives of Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, DirecTV, Dish Network and the American Cable Association, according to a Jan 30 lobbying disclosure filing on the FCC’s website. Under one of the new wrinkles in the retransmission reform campaign, the pay-TV companies are now urging the FCC to crack down on the ability of broadcasters to offer more than one Big 4 TV network-affiliated signals over their own channels by multicasting, according to the disclosure letter.

Rep. Anna Eshoo Aiming for Top Spot on House Commerce Committee

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) put her hat in the ring to succeed Rep Henry Waxman (D-CA) as ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee.

“Last week, Representative Henry Waxman, the ranking member and former chairman of the House .. Commerce Committee, announced he would retire at the end of this Congress after 40 years of extraordinary service to his constituents and our country. Since then I have received the encouragement of members of the committee and the caucus to seek this position. Today, I am announcing my decision to seek the top slot at … commerce. I do so with great enthusiasm because it is the ‘Committee of the Future’ and the most dynamic by its jurisdictions. It is key to shaping America’s future, just as my Silicon Valley congressional district is."

Former Rep Boucher: Government Should Set Sunset Date for PSTN

Former House Communications Subcommittee Chair Rick Boucher (D-VA), who was instrumental in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, has plenty of advice for his former colleagues according to the Internet Innovation Alliance, including sun-setting the public-switched telephone network (PSTN) by the end of this decade in favor of Internet protocol (IP)-based communications.

Boucher, now honorary chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, said there is an urgent need for "deregulatory parity" among similarly situated ISPs, and that any legislation should take a "light touch" to broadband. He also suggests restructuring the Federal Communications Commission in recognition of cross-platform competition for voice, video and data among stakeholder, including cable and wireless.

Cable companies want to block cities from building fiber networks. Here’s how the FCC could intervene.

Around the country, local governments have taken it upon themselves to build their own fiber-optic networks. This effort was met in Kansas with a bill written by cable lobbyists who sought to ban cities from building municipal broadband projects.

While the state cable association has since agreed to amend the bill in the face of public criticism, the incident is a reminder that public infrastructure projects can be especially fraught when it comes to Internet service. But what so far has been a fight between states, cities and established commercial incumbents may soon become an issue for federal regulators. A recent court decision has given the Federal Communications Commission a green light to intervene in these situations, industry analysts say. While it's too early to tell whether the FCC intends to exercise this power, mayors would find a powerful ally in Washington if they could convince the FCC to intervene.

Tech companies say tens of thousands of user accounts were subject to national security spying

Several of the nation's leading technology companies released new data detailing the extent of National Security Agency surveillance of their users. Numbers released by Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Facebook show that in the first six months of 2013, the NSA submitted requests for private information from at least 59,000 user accounts.

Of the five companies, Yahoo appears to have been the favorite of NSA analysts. The Sunnyvale company received national security requests for "content" from at least 30,000 users. Microsoft fielded requests affecting at least 15,000 accounts, while Google requests affect 9,000 user accounts. Facebook said that its requests affect at least 5000 users. LinkedIn said it received fewer than 250 national security requests. The companies may also have received requests for "non-content" information, such as data about the times, senders, and recipients of e-mail messages. Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all said they received fewer than 1,000 of these in the first half of 2013. The data come with several caveats. The companies are barred from disclosing the precise numbers of national security requests or users affected, and must disclose the figures in ranges of 1,000 instead. The government also requires a six-month delay before reporting figures about national security surveillance, which is why the reports only cover the first half of 2013. Some companies took the opportunity to release several years’ worth of data. Google's data, for example, shows that national security requests affected fewer than 3,000 user accounts in the first half of 2009. By the second half of 2012, the figure had soared to more than 12,000 accounts. Data requests to Microsoft affected at least 11,000 user accounts in late 2011, a figure that grew to 15,000 for the first half of 2013.

Bringing the rural classroom into the Digital Age

[Commentary] Why is rural America subsidizing Internet connectivity for more densely populated areas? It's partly because of the administrative hurdles in the E-Rate application process. It can take hours of paperwork, months of waiting, and an understanding of E-Rate's convoluted and antiquated rules to even have a chance of obtaining funding. The most successful schools tend to hire outside consultants to navigate the process for them -- an option that many schools, especially small and rural ones, can't afford.

More important, they shouldn't have to. We need a student-centered E-Rate program. That starts with simplifying the process by reducing the paperwork needed to apply for funding and distributing aid to schools on a more equitable per-student basis (rather than the complex discount formula that the program now uses). And that means giving schools the flexibility to spend E-Rate funds on technologies that directly benefit students. We also need to end the subsidies that result in citizens from rural states like New Hampshire paying for technology services in higher population states like New Jersey. Preparing our children to succeed in the digital world of tomorrow requires us to connect them today. E-Rate must reflect the needs of today's students, regardless of which school they attend. A student-centered E-Rate program would give smaller schools in rural areas a better chance to compete with their urban and suburban counterparts. It would help deliver a brighter future for children in New Hampshire and throughout rural America -- and we stand ready to work with President Barack Obama to ensure that E-Rate lives up to its promise.

HealthCare.gov can’t handle appeals of enrollment errors

Tens of thousands of people who discovered that HealthCare.gov made mistakes as they were signing up for a health plan are confronting a new roadblock: The government cannot yet fix the errors. Roughly 22,000 Americans have filed appeals with the government to try to get mistakes corrected.

They contend that the computer system for the new federal online marketplace charged them too much for health insurance, steered them into the wrong insurance program or denied them coverage entirely. For now, the appeals are sitting, untouched, inside a government computer. And an unknown number of consumers who are trying to get help through less formal means -- by calling the health-care marketplace directly -- are told that HealthCare.gov’s computer system is not yet allowing federal workers to go into enrollment records and change them, according to individuals inside and outside the government who are familiar with the situation. The Obama Administration has not made public the fact that the appeals system for the online marketplace is not working. Legal advocates have been pressing administration officials, pointing out that rules for the online marketplace, created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, guarantee due-process rights to timely hearings for Americans who think they have been improperly denied insurance or subsidies.

Media Companies Join Presidential Employment Initiative

A host of major media companies have signed on to a White House effort to hire the long-time unemployed, which President Barack Obama called for in his State of the Union speech.

The President met with the CEO's of a number of companies who had agreed to help in that effort, which is essentially to pledge that advertising for jobs does not discourage the long-term unemployed and that there are not hiring screens that disadvantage them. The media companies signed on include AT&T, CBS, Comcast (NBC), Disney (ABC), Time Warner Cable and Viacom.

Minneapolis sees civic push for open data

Minneapolis has kept a tight grip on the information it collects even as cities across the country open up streams of public data to developers, journalists and the public. But this past November’s election has spurred calls at City Hall to liberate that data, from food inspections to landlord violations, so it can be analyzed and manipulated for the public good.

Benton

Search