We are piloting a Nimble network (intranet) in the remote fly-in community of Whatì (NWT Canada) this summer with a view to delivering a course on the possibilities of community intranets in the winter 2021-22. One of the goals is to explore the feasibility of a community intranet as an alternative to prohibitively expensive internet connectivity for many residents.
Our kit has a battery and 20"x40" solar charge panel by Jackery and three of the “cockroach” mesh antennae with an approximate range of 300 yards each. I’ve been testing the solar panel’s ability to maintain the battery at 100% while powering a 100w bulb. It does OK until clouds come along.
We had the joy of unboxing the Nimble components from UAlberta live in their April 28 session at the 2021 Cascadia Open Education Summit. By coincidence, we were delivering one of their digital literacy courses at the time and had local students attending from the very project they were presenting at the summit.
Last week we had an interface co-design session with northern adult educators and partners to determine what would make a welcoming and intuitive interface for our context. It is important that any smartphone can use the content without needing an internet connection to download additional apps. Connecting to the Wi-Fi takes a user to a WordPress landing page with graphic menus to access additional features on the server. For the pilot we offer Jellyfin media streaming and Jitsi video conferencing. Future iterations will include the ability for users to upload content and access educational offerings.
Aurora College has plans to expand this project in the next two years to include a local Moodle server that periodically synchronizes with the college’s server via a controlled internet connection so students without internet access can take any of the asynchronous online courses offered by the college. I’m hopeful that this will push course design toward a more advanced (or retro) asynchronous learning structure and away from heavy dependence on live video conference lecturing.
BTW Alan, I remember reading your posts about the story box in 2011 and regretting that your tour didn’t bring you up here. I thought about that again when we started with this project.