I was talking to Meghan Genovese about the new Informatics class and we were laughing about how those who predict the future of education are often off the mark. When it comes to our own education – we prefer the safe haven of bricks and mortar.
My funny retort was, “As a parent, you don’t want your child’s education awarded to the low bidder.”
Although seriously – within that notion (again as a parent) – I might award the contract for *part* of my child’s education to those who demonstrate that they teach better (regardless of cost) – and then award the rest of the contract for my child’s education to the organization which will help her be the best adult she can be and help her prepare for a diverse set of career paths and choices.
They say that one never can understand education well enough to affect the education of your own children. This is sadly true – because you only learn the right thing to do afterwards! Too bad I didn’t have like six children – I could then call the first two of them “proof of concept” and “prototype” – and after making all the mistakes on the first two – be spot on for the rest of them.

At 7:28 AM, Lance Speelmon is hurtling through rural Indiana on Route 37 on the way to work – probably doing about 90 if I know Lance His random shuffle decides to pick a song that he and I listened to in New Orleans a long time ago – Bryan Lee and the Jump Street 5 – singing “Waiting on Ice”. Lance thinks of me and snaps this photo with his Blackberry iPhone and sends it to me:

At 7:47 AM I happen to be on line at home with a cup of coffee and see Lance’s picture/note. So I fire off a note saying hi with a smiley. Then I see the time of the note and fire off another note guessing that he is on his morning commute enroute to Indianapolis.
And then at 7:51, I idly wonder if his photo is GEOtagged. SO I pop it up in iPhoto and indeed it is and it was taken right here:

So he *was* on the way in to work – because his car was in the northbound lane.
Fun stuff.
At 8:00 AM, I went to Google Maps to use live satellite imaging to see if I could actually find where his car was on route 37. I quickly realized that we still have to wait a few years before Google puts 1000 cameras in low earth orbit to support live satellite imaging in Google Maps. So I gave up finding Lance on live satellite image (at least for now).
And then by 8:04 AM – I had written a blog post about it.
And then by 8:09 AM – I had a twitter about my blog post.
And then at 8:10 AM – I sent Lance a note with the URL of the blog post.
And then I went back to my coffee..
And it was still hot.
Update: At 8:15 Lance read my blog post and informed me that it was his iPhone 3G – so I fixed the post. But that got me thinking – does the 3G do Geotagging right when it sends pictures right from the phone… Now I finally might have a good reason to get the 3G.