[LINK] NBN white-elephant-to-be ...

[Tom Worthington]

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> ... So, is the point of the NBN to enable a student in Strahan 
> to video conference with a kid in Catherine?  ...

Students being able to communicate with each other would be an excellent
use for the NBN.

In 2000, at the University of WA Albany centre, I watched an online
poetry reading, with students participating across Western Australia:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/gsr/visit1.html#uwaac>.

ps: This morning Alice Downey asked me if the web rewires our brains and 
makes us dumber, for an item to appear in Reportage Online 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/08/linear-narrative-easier-to-understand.html>. 
This was promoted by a Wired magazine article "The Web Shatters Focus, 
Rewires Brains" (Nicholas Carr, 24 May 2010): 
<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/all/1>.
I don't think the web harms student's comprehension. Poorly written 
documents will be hard to understand in any media. Telling stories well 
online requires similar skills to stories off-line.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/