community networking

by Matt Isaacs I recently started on a new project to improve the ease of use of the CUWiN network system. The project is a web application (PHP based) to allow communities and other collaborative entities to create and manage custom firmware images for their wireless nodes. The first portion is finished but not live. …read more

by Sascha Meinrath The United States is facing a worsening broadband crisis -- over the past half-decade, the US has fallen behind a growing list of industrialized nations in delivery speeds, price per megabit, broadband penetration rates, and other facets of broadband service provision. Rural and poor communities are being doubly discriminated against -- often receiving little or no broadband access and being forced to pay higher service rates when they do have access. …read more

by Ross Musselman So, you want to send an email with an attachment to your teacher? Or perhaps you want to browse the Smithsonian's website in order write a paper for your class. Prior to November, if you were a teenager on the Mesa Grande Reservation, uploading the attachment might have taken you half an hour, and browsing the graphic-laden website of the Smithsonian Museum would have been a nightmare. Before the Community Wireless Network was activated there, telecommunications infrastructure at Mesa Grande was limited to satellite television and wire-line telephone service. Now, each home has wireless broadband service thanks to the efforts of the Southern California Tribal Digital Village and the CUWiN (Champaign-Urbana Wireless Network) Foundation. Since 2000, the CUWiN Foundation has been supporting community-owned networks around the globe. CUWiN currently has networks deployed on the Mesa Grande Reservation in Southern California; in several neighborhoods in Chicago; Urbana, Illinois; Homer, Illinois; Apirede, Ghana; and Mamelodi, South Africa. The organization also organizes the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks (http://wirelesssummit.org/). …read more

by Rob Lucas Rob Lucas at Sept PSO A great lesson can change a student's life. Perhaps the most famous life-changing lesson was the one first taught by Jane Elliot who, in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, taught her Iowa schoolchildren about the profound effects of discrimination by grouping them by the color of their eyes. While few teachers or lessons achieve this level of renown, nearly everyone I meet can cite some lesson that changed the way they saw the world—a science experiment, for example, a simulation of the UN, or a poetry reading. I became a teacher because I wanted to have this kind of impact on students. …read more

by Frank Odasz Watch the video on pbs.org Bill Moyer’s recent PBS special “The Net @ Risk: Net Neutrality” relates media monopolies and their effects on local radio stations to the threat to free speech in America. At one point, a banner appeared on the screen: “For more on community networking go to www.pbs.org.” …read more