WiFi for the pi

I have been interested in the Raspberry Pi for some time and have two of these great little single board computers. I have the latest version 2 board  operating as a media center/ HTPC. This replaced the older version of the Pi that I am now using to have a play with in recognition of the new world in which our learners live. One where they can develop and explore electronics and making like never before.  I want to be able to talk with and relate to this group of learners.

And So ...

To keep learning I have decided to try and build a photobooth similar to the one created by drumminhands .

One of the first things I felt need was to get the raspberry pi working with a Nano Wireless card so that I could connect to it remotely using ssh and/or VNC.

Working Wifi Cards

There are two cards that I would recommend and one I would not

Recommend using the EDIMAX EW-7811Un adapter or One of the cards Identified by Element14

This Edimax Card I got from PBtech worked for me out of the box.

The card I would not Recommend is the TP-link

TL-WN725N while earlier versions of this card worked with the Pi the later ones do not

Getting it going 
Note this assumes a working Rasperry Pi with Raspberian OS installed

What I did was start the Pi with a network cable attached. Identify the ip address of the Pi using the device list table from out router and then SSH into from the terminal on my mac. You can use the SSH client for Chrome referenced below.


Then I set up a VNC

Instructions

Log in to your Pi and install the Tight VNC Package

$ sudo apt-get install tightvncserver

Next Run TightVNC Server which will prompt you to enter a Password and an optional View Only Password

$ tightvncserver

Once that is done you can start a VNC server from the shell prompt. This example starts a session on VNC display zero (:1) with full HD resolution:

$ vncserver :1 -geometry 1920x1080 -depth 24

(If fonts appear the wrong size, add '-dpi 96' to the end.) Or you could create a script to save typing in the whole thing.

$ nano svnc.sh (call the file whatever you like)

When logging on to the pi VNC server we need to add the right port number to our request to get a working connection

I used VNC viewer for chrome as wanting to develop understanding as to how learners with chromebooks could work with this

To set this to autostart

Blogpost

Display zero ( :0 ) is port 5900, display one is port 5901

Because I initiated using vncserver :1 my connection address was 192.168.20.112:5901

Once logged in we have a graphical user desktop and can add the wifi connection.

With the details saved I was able to reboot the Rasberrry pi without the network cable and connect to it using SSH and VNC 

Stage 1 is Complete 

Here are the two chrome apps that might help those working with Chromebooks

SSH - Chrome app for SSH

VNC Chrome app for VNC

Future Focused Innovation

Moving into the future usually involves some hard decision making. One of the issues is that possibilities and options are expanding over time. 

What basis should we use to choose our next move when there seem to be so many ways to do similar things?

I have been exploring how we can choose moves and innovate quickly. I believe in doing this through the development of strong communities of practice and operational collectives as Russell Burt promotes. 

In these environments the community accumulates together an evolving knowledge base or meme of how to do things. Innovation is focused on shared vision, pedagogy and agreement. Here is a graphic showing how I have experienced innovation and community agreement as being important in the development of cohesive improving system.


I have been working with my wife (Jude O'Neil) as she introduces #chromebooks #gafe etc to her students. 

New to the environment Jude might operate in many different ways for example to share a learning document with a student "you could":

• email the document link
• share the document through a web link
• smart share through teacher dashboard
• link the document through a blog
• embed it in a learning site with other learning and supports
• write it on the whiteboard

Each of these alternatives is an adjacent possible (a possible next step see below) but the way we decided was by thinking about the learn create share pedagogy which meant that the document was embedded on a learning site with other learning and support. 

Thinking about a pedagogy helps the community of Manaiakalani schools to adopt systems innovations that support their vision. 

What the community affords is a rigorous group investigation of all of the various "you coulds" to arrive at a best practice systems position. This can undoubtedly change over time as other innovations get tested. 

In my mind powerful innovations can often be measured against their ability to be taken up widely by the Operational Collective and then spread wider. 

This is a type of networked innovation that is able to deliver an almost adjacent probable to those pondering over a few adjacent possibles. This is one of the reasons I value being part of the Manaiakalani community.

Postscript Came back to edit this post to link to Dorothy Burt's post http://manaiakalani.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/our-teachers-share-their-learning.html about the Manaiakalani folk who recently offered their innovations and inquiries as professional development to a wider group of teachers.

Adjacent Possible 

One of the speakers at the GAFE summit held
Auckland recently was Lucy Clarke who talked about the adjacent possible. 

"The adjacent possible is the basic motivation behind all human progress. "

It’s the ever-present set of opportunities at the boundaries of our reach. And:

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations.

The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.Sep 28, 2010