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The goal was to create a network that didn’t depend on other parts of the network to operate- one of the key features of TCP/IP.

Instead of one computer having authority over others, computers generally operate as equals.

This ambitious project was initially named ARPANET after the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

How does the computer know where to send each packet of data if multiple applications are running?

UDP is great for broadcasting data- such as streaming radio music.

ach card has a unique physical address that is set at the factory, and can’t be changed. Essentially this is an identifier for the computer it is installed on.

Instead of looking at every bit of data on the internet, logical addressing allows for computers to just look at data on a home network or subnet.

A router is a device used to read logical addressing information, and to direct the data to the appropriate destination.

TCP/IP includes protocols that tell routers how to find a path through the network.

Instead of having to remember an IP address, name resolution allows you to remember Google’s name.

This handy service is accomplished on name servers, which are just computers that store tables that translate domain names to and from IP addresses.

just ask them why ARPANET designers pressed for a decentralized protocol suite!

In summary, up to this point, education has been based on a model of scarcity because it was very hard to get good academic material. It was hard to get the right kinds of books. It was hard to get access to the teachers. So naturally, school formed a solution, an economical way of delivering information, using the classroom model, using the teacher model. What you basically got is a really constrained environment. Today, it’s about abundance: what do the models for learning look like now?

But it’s not about the technology. It’s about the way that your culture is organized.

College is becoming, for many undergraduates, a social experience.

But absent a one-on-one tutorial, it’s very difficult to do that. You get into small groups, and you have active discussions, but once you scale the group up, it becomes very difficult because you can’t push sixty people individually to the limits of their knowledge.

you can create an online environment where those sixty people can push against the limits of their knowledge. And that becomes something different and very important. That’s what simulations are good for.

© 2004

Because one of the most effective uses of simulation is as a mechanism to surface assumptions. You put the simulation up there, and people play it out, and in the course of playing it out, they question the underlying rules of the game.

One of the hallmarks of a good game is that it creates a game community. In order to play this game, players have to get information from other sources. They have to explore. They have to communicate. They have to post.

They are handing off and reinforcing each other’s learning. You don’t get that in a classroom. Not often.

You really have to think in terms of how to bring learning to networks of people, to groups of people.