via Evan McLintosh's Edu.blogs
Hans Rosling, showed us last year, how animated statistical data could impress us and make a change.
This year, he confirmed that UN has made its statistical data open from 1st May and stunned us with another series of data.
Make sure you watch the video to the end. Hans has an impressive performance you would wish for in any conference presentation.
Related to a previous post, there is digged article with a comment by NinjaBoy:
"their multimedia files keep disappearing from their accounts" Where the f--k are they storing their files? On the ISP's server? Thats kinda like saying the cops steals my weed every time i leave them on top of a cop car.
I'm no fan of this by any means but today i found a ton of mp3's on my server here at work. Know what i did? Delete the files.
I was trying to get an ADSL2+ into my home. Nope, not available. The current speed is 1.5Mbps download and 256kbps upload. [I should be classified as a large volume user and I am willing to pay for my speed.] If Australia ever aspires to be a "smart"-country, we have to be faster, much faster!
From United Press:
Japanese Internet users enjoy speeds of 661 megabits per second, South Korea averages 45 mps, France has 17 mps, and Canada has an average 7 mps. The median U.S. speed was 1.97 mps, the study said.
via BoingBoing
Exetel, an Australian ISP, silently deletes all the MP3s (and mpg, mpeg, avi, wma, and any other unspecified file types they deem to be "multimedia") from its users' Web-site every right.
Effective from 1st April 2005 scripts will be run nightly that will examine all disk content and delete any multimedia content with the extensions mp3, mpg, mpeg, avi, wma and any other multi media file type.
In yesterday's post, I listed the curriculum for preparing our children for future.
For the skills that to be considered important, (useful starting today and likely be essential in the future) see Tony Karrer's post on Needed Skills for New Media. [Copy below without permission]
* Work Integration — the ability to leverage social media and personal learning as part of problem solving
* Meta-Learning — the ability to look at your own work and learning processes to continuously identify improvement opportunities
* Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
* Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix content as part of work and learning
* Scanning — the ability to quickly scan from a wide variety of sources, to focus on salient details in order to maintain a broad picture and also to focus as needed to salient details.
* Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
* Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
* Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
* Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of information and conversation across multiple modalities
* Networking Building — the ability to build a network of people who can help with a wide variety of needs
* Network Access - the ability to quickly access your network for a variety of different kinds of needs in different ways using different tools
* Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
* Knowledge Work - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information as part of work processes that captures personal value, builds network, and collects appropriate feedback
Back on April 2, 2005 I took the 95 Theses from the Cluetrain Manifesto, substituted “learning” for “markets” and “students/parents” for “customers”.
These are the results of the top 100 Web applications, 10 in each of 10 categories, determined by Webware readers.
Julien Couvreur has left a comment in David Van Couvering's post
Building P2P technology into the browser or into the browser's local server, is attractive but challenging.
I've done some small experiments building an HTTP entry point to a simple P2P service, so that I could access my personal files stored on various computers through a unified interface.
Physical Reality
This is where our carbon-based life form lives. This is kind of fundamental. Without an existence in Physical Reality, we may not have another existence in the rest of the realities I will describe in this post.
Virtual Reality
This is the 3-dimension world computer generates. You either put on a head-mount gear, wear some sensor-enabled clothing and walk in a VirtuSphere in an immersive VR. Alternately, you can control an avatar in a token-immersive VR. In both cases, the interactions of virtual artifacts are controlled by the computer. Second Life belongs to the latter in this group.
Augmented Reality
From Wikipedia, Augmented reality [snip] deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and "augmented" by the addition of computer generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion tracking data, fiducial marker recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators. Again, there are two sub groups here. Physical Reality augmented with virtual artifacts, such as Hear&There1 or Magic Eye2. Virtual Reality augmented with virtual artifacts such as Berlin in 3D for Google Earth or Las Vegas 3D Buildings. Historical events link to Google Earth, such as World War Two Google Earth Famous WW2 Battlefields Today, part 1 and 2. Last, but not the least, Google street view where physical space's photos are used to augment virtual space.
Imagined Reality
This is the scenery we found when reading novels such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, written by Mr. Mark Twain where our brain will fill in the missing parts from the author's description.
1Hear&There allows people to virtually drop sounds at any location in the real world. Once one of these "SoundSpots" has been created, an individual using the Hear&There system will be able to hear it. We envision these sounds being recordings of personal thoughts or anecdotes, and music or other sounds that are associated with a given area.
2let the user see the real world around him and augment the user's view of the real world by overlaying or composing three-dimensional virtual objects with their real world counterparts. Ideally, it would seem to the user that the virtual and real objects coexisted.
cross posted to EnRoLE
Before revealing what students must do, here is the list of what students must NOT do:
No holidays
Learning is human nature. We breathe continuously, so is learning. There should not be any term-break, weekends or holidays. Learning should occur 24/7 everyday every year continuous both online and offline. Day time is continuous. Stock market in HongKong closes and then open in London and then in New York. Things are happening continuously.
School is not THE school
Learning occurs anywhere, anytime. School is a meeting place. One of many other meeting places. School helps organise learning and support learning. Some learning may occur at school, most learning at places (including virtual spaces) other than school. School may be a virtual space too.
Learning, playing and working have NO distinction
Take preparing lunch as an example. Preparing the daily lunch is work, but is also learning because we should continuously look for improvement, collect data about the food, the preparation process. As noted before, school is NOT a specific place. Lunch can be prepared in kitchen, in park or in a commerical kitchen. Obviously, it should be and is fun too!
Here is the list of what I believe should be the curriculum in no particular order:
Languages
Minimum four languages: English, Chinese, one other human language (including sign language) and a scripting or programming language.
Reason:
English is now the default for online communication, business transactions, major publications...
Chinese is the language of one quarter of the world's population. (Still need more convincing?) China will be the economic power house in this century.
One other language is for appreciation of world diversity.
These three languages should achieve fluent speaking level BEFORE age 5. Children learn languages easily when young. These languages must continue throughout the formal education years for further development and consolidation. May be they can drop them at University level.
The scripting/programming language is for discipline training and procedural thinking development. Should start at beginning of secondary school if not earlier.
Communication skill
Knowing a language is not the same as having the ability to communicate effectively. Students should be able to communicate effectively in different genres of expression for appropriate audience under different situation using different technologies including face to face, telephone, teleconference (audio only and audio+video), web-based technologies including discussion forum, blogs, wiki, chat, ....
Reason:
Examples speak louder.
Self Entertaining Development
One musical instrument (including human vocal), one non-digital art (painting, pottery, photograph, sculpture, ..), one sport and one mental game (such as chess, bridge, or other form of quiz/puzzle).
Reason:
All work no play make Albert a dull man!
Evidence-based data-based learning
Scientific method (or the subject matter themselves although different subject matter are used as examples of practising Scientific method). Data collection, analysis and presentation (numeracy and mathematics are learnt under data processing). Note: "Religious Studies" is ABSOLUTELY not allowed to be "taught" in any school at any time.
Reason:
Today's world is filled by miracles created by the relentless application of scientific methods. All technological achievements human has made, with no exception, are based on principled understanding of the world. This will not change in the future. A sound basis to tackle problem with evidence, data and disciplined methodology is critical for future citizen to solve unforeseen problems and challenges.
Authentic learning
Learning does not occur in vacuum. When we want to achieve a goal, a game goal or a life goal, we need skill and knowledge. That's the best time to learn. Learning is organised as tasks which lead to an overall goal aligned with learner's interest. Like many times in life, we sometime practice and rehearse. These can be done with simulators or role playing games.
Final Remarks
You may notice that I do not include any traditional subjects in the above list. Not that I don't believe they are important. I just don't believe compartmentisation of subject areas are effective strategies. By organising learning goals which require understanding of culture issues will cover traditional subjects such as history or literature. By organising investigative activities will cover subjects such as chemistry, physics, mathematics and so on. A collection of mathematical games (covered in the self entertaining section) will cover interesting subject areas such as cosmology in Physics, Fractals etc in Mathematics and other interests.
Please let me know what you think? Am I too radical? or too conservative?
Our education system is too old to meet today's requirement.
This is likely to be a post not you would have expected. But just stay with me for a while.
The article (an article on an article originally published by Business Week) is about innovation processes. First the classic Six Sigma is considered not working by way of the lack of innovation of 3M:
The magazine illustrates the ramifications of ill-directed Six Sigma rigor by juxtaposing the leadership philosophies of James McNerney and George Buckley at 3M and showing how an over-emphasis on process-quality led to “sameness” and the gradual waning of the company’s innovative power. Process-obsession may in fact be opposed to “the new age of creativity” that propels hyper-customization and attempts to save brands from the “death spiral of commoditization.” If you measure everything you manage, risky ideas will not spark.
1. Network innovation – “very welcome” vs. “not invented here”
2. User first! – design around the needs of the user not the demands of the technology.
3. Discover untapped markets – listen to what your customers do not say rather than relying solely on the requirements they articulate
4. Fail wisely – allow failure but don’t make the same mistake twice
a future whererepetitive tasks will be replaced by computer and machinery, creativity and innovation are critical, communication skill, team work and problem solving skill are important, productivity must be so high that an average people will support the needs of parents who had inadequately funded their retirement and children of their own
BoingBoing has a post about a lawyer going after a DVD rental service. The owner has been publishing the email messages he's received from the lawyer. By part 6 of the series, the emails developed into unbelievable tones: [Quoting from BB]
Tourtelot [Lawyer]: Dear Mr. Corcoran [DVD rental Store owner]: I am in receipt of your e-mail to my client, Mr. XXX. I note your comments about me. I have a proposition for you. I will pay your way to California if you will agree to come and meet me in a gym, the address of which the limo driver who meets your flight will have.
Oh yes, the deal only includes a one-way ticket, as I do not believe you will be needing the return portion! Ciao, and have a good day. RHT
Corcoran: Are you proposing a boxing or MMA match?
I accept. I’ll pay my own way back, of course.
Any weekend in June works for me.
Please mail the airline ticket (departing from Logan Airport, in Boston) to the address I previously supplied.
I look forward to our bout (I usually do heavy bag work in my training sessions, but I’ll make sure to add some speed bag work to the mix over the next few weeks).
Shall we specify the same $1,000 wager that you suggested to Mr. XXX in your bet about my height?
Tourtelot: Plain and simple, pal. A street fight.! By the way, do you have a Black Belt also?
Corcoran: Please send the plane ticket.
by Graham Attwell
Eleven existing secondary schools in Merseyside will be closed by 2009 and replaced by "learning centres" where they
will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.
Youngsters will not be taught in formal classes, nor will they stick to a rigid timetable; instead they will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests.
Do you remember the days when we made toys for ourselves? It seems that our children in the developed world are not doing this anymore. I don't know whether this will become a problem later in their lives or not. The African children are full of ingenuity. See African Children’s Toys: Ingenuity Starts at a Young Age
via Harold Jarche
I found Google Apps for Education and Google for Educators in the article.
None of these are new. Just different combination of the online tools by Google grouped together and some example uses. Anyway, it is worth a look to see examples.
from Scientific American
Some sniplets from the article:
Past studies of birth order and IQ have produced a mix bag of data; studies of children found that younger siblings fare better on the tests, but research on adults and teens showed the opposite.
Petter Kristensen and Tor Bjerkedal studied 241,300 Norwegians, focusing on men. Not only did they find that first-borns had higher IQs (103.2) than second-borns (100.4) and third-borns (99), but they also say that social rank, rather than birth order per se, is the determining factor.
They reached this conclusion by looking at families whose first-borns died in infancy. In such cases, the second-borns' scores rose, to an average IQ of 102.6. Third-borns whose two older brothers died jumped the most, to 103.5.
Robert Zajonc to explain why, as children at least, younger siblings outscored their top-bunk mates. These youngsters evidently derive wisdom from the older siblings and get an IQ boost; that ends during the teen years because the older kids gain more benefit from tutoring, rather than being tutored. You handle a topic more adeptly when you have to teach it to someone else.
In any case, the study illustrates the power of the environment on IQ. The best example is the Flynn Effect, which shows that IQ scores have been rising over the generations, a rise attributable to the environment more so than to genes.
via ForeverGeek
Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.
an incubation project resulting from the acquisition of Seadragon Software in February [by Microsoft]. Its aim is nothing less than to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network.
If this sounds a little vague, consider the following four "promises" of Seadragon:
1. Speed of navigation is independent of the size or number of objects.
2. Performance depends only on the ratio of bandwidth to pixels on the screen.
3. Transitions are smooth as butter.
4. Scaling is near perfect and rapid for screens of any resolution.
Here is a good example of the difference of learning something and being able to do something (after learning it).
Watch any of the 20 magic tricks from this. Now, do the trick.
[I'll wait. Go ahead, do it!]
Are you successful in performing the trick?
If you are like me, the answer is "no".
In order to perform the magic, after knowing the secret, you need to practice.
In our discussion on learning, we seem to focus only on the learning part and have completely ignored the practice part which is at least equally important if not more.
Question: how can we encourage (or ensure) practice so that the skill will reach mastery level?
Here is a review of 14 word processors including 3 online alternatives.
The author's (Zaine Ridling) summary:
my only advice is to look beyond any one word processor and seek openness in your choice of file format. Do not allow yourself and your data to be locked-in to the whim of any one vendor. ODF can be used by any word processor if the vendor so chooses, and it satisfies the criteria outlined by Sam Hiser of: "(1) being developed and maintained in an open, multi-vendor, multi-stakeholder process that protects against control by a single organization; (2) being the only openly-available standard, published fully in a document that is freely available and easy to comprehend; (3) being the only format unencumbered by intellectual property rights (IPR) restrictions on its use in other software, as certified by the Software Freedom Law Center; and (4) offering interoperability with ODF-compliant applications on the common operating system platforms of Windows, GNU/Linux, and OS X, along with most online word processing apps."
Every now and then, I need to make some images available to an unspecified number of people, such as those reading my blog. Where should I put these images?
I hot-link to the original image if I can. (ok, I am stealing someone's bandwidth.)
Alternately, if copyright allows, I get a copy and upload to flickr. Get the URL of the image and link.
Well it seems that there are many choices too.
All you can upload allows you to upload your image, copy the link and post.
From TechCrunch:
Well known and often controversial BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay has launched BayImg, an uncensored free image hosting service.
bayimg.com is a place where you can host all your images. We do not censor them. We believe in freedom of speech, it's of utter importance to us. As long as your pictures are legal they will be hosted here, but we reserve the right to remove images due to technical reasons though.
The proceeding of EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Spring 2007 Focus Session on Immersive Learning Environments: New Paths to Interaction and Engagement is now online. I have not had a chance of go through the material yet. It certainly looks very interesting.
Here are the list of available material.
# Generation G and the 21st Century
Speaker: Richard Van Eck
# Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Learning Environments for Gen Z
Speaker: Gary R. Bertoline
# Cognition, Learning, and Literacy in Virtual Worlds
Speaker: Constance Steinkuehler
# Virtual Learning Environments in 3D
Speaker: Phillip D. Long
# The Bar May Not Be as High as You Expect: Considerations in Implementing an Immersive Learning Environment
Speakers: Heidi Trotta, Jeffrey K. Sarbaum, Phillip D. Long, Alan Levine (Moderator)
# Student Cameo 1 - Using Adaptive Interactive Narrative to Guide Discovery Learning
Speaker: Jim Thomas
# Student Cameo 2 - Visions of the Underworld: Transforming Classical Texts into a Virtual Reality Experience
Speaker: Patrick Paczkowski
# Student Cameo 3 - Online Time Consuming Real Time
Speaker: Whil Piavis
from TreeHugger
This Encyclopedia aims to become the definitive one stop destination for all things environment, climate change and sustainable development.
[snip]
"there are many resources for environmental content, but there is no central repository of authoritative information that meets the needs of diverse user communities."
Laurence Rozier responded to my previous post:
I think Albert Ip provides some reasonable definitions of the terms peer-to-peer and mesh networking but as with a forest(especially a rainforest) precise definitions of trees, to degree they can be said to exist, tend to obscure the forestness of the tree.
Croquet is p2p at it’s core but each instance of Croquet is perfectly capable of simultaneously behaving as a client and/or server. Similarly, Jini/Javaspaces are not inherently p2p but can be configured to function as a p2p service.
A previous post here.
Among all the interesting questions James Kariuki posted, here is another one: What should students know in order to ask questions about the future?
I would rephrase the question as "What should students know in order to be effective in the future?"
Our world is changing, fast, very fast! Information is doubling every couple of years. This is exponential growth! While it is not true that whatever we know today, it will become irrelevant in couple of years time. But it is true that whatever we know today will be only a smaller part of we know in a couple of years.
The job market in the future will consist of jobs that have not been invented yet. How could we prepare today's students for tomorrow's world when we do not know what will happen tomorrow?
See some of my thinking in Learning for 2020
David Warlick was challenged by Gary Stager on "How is information changing?” He gave a few very good points about how the information-scape has changed.
1. Information has become increasingly networked. I suppose he meant there are increasingly more hyperlinks within information. We can find referred or linked information more easily via such hyperlinks.
2. Digital convergence of information is continuing at rapid pace.
3. We are overwhelmed by information.
I can think of some changes as well.
4. Information can spread rapidly these days. News published at one end of the world can be read instantly from the other end, usually by almost everyone connected to the Internet.
5. Because of 1 and 4 above, we are now capable of reading multiple viewpoints of current affairs. [Bloggers play a significant role in this.]
Back to how information has changed, I think:
1. Information creation is increasingly collaborative, e.g. Wikipedia, and hence more information is a manifestation of a community instead of an individual.
2. A few new information genres have evolved over the past years. Email as a format of information (cf letters), webpages (full of hyperlinks see 1 above), blogs (cf with personal diary) ... More and more information is now written as first person observation of world rather than from a third person description.
3. More information are published by novice, students and other groups which traditionally do not have a platform to reach millions. (Is it part of the explanation of 3 above?)
Implication for learning: [obviously an incomplete list]
Two life-skills:
1. ability to evaluate accuracy, authentication and viewpoints of information
2. ability to filter, yet have a general "feel" of a vast amount of information and make sense of out such a body of work.
A learning strategy:
3. participation of information production is now a necessary strategy in learning
Some other good points from the comments in David Warlick's post:
I also think one area that has NOT been touched upon is that that teachers need to be preparing more for the PRESENT and the FUTURE…..and many still teach in the comfort of the past.
I would add to your Item 2 about information becoming digital the discussion of SIZE and DUPLICABILITY. E.G. the book War and Peace can be shrunk to an electronic footprint that is so small we can pass it to others with little regard to the taking of physical space. Duplicability allows us to make one thing and provide it to millions of people almost instantly.
At the very least the tangibility of “frozen” media (whether print, video, etc.) gives it a different affect than the purely oral tradition that preceded it.
[snip]
The distinction between print and electronic forms has, perhaps, some small relevance, but in the end it is all physical (physical pits on a DVD, electron transfers in RAM, etc.) At most we might be talking about the difference between “light through” media (stained glass) vs. “light on” media (paper), and volumes have been written on this topic, none of which have enlightened me much on the issue you raise.
As David says, the print vs digital question is a false dichotomy.
Information is information is information, whether its from the neighbor, the teacher, the Weekly World News ( as we all need a little Wolf Baby now and again), or some other source.
Taking my lead from Danny Hillis, ‘The Pattern on the Stone’, Gregory Bateson defined information as “the difference that makes a difference”
Hillis goes onto argue that computers have made a difference. So I agree with David Warlick’s second point, about the importance of the change to “being digital”, a point made long ago by Negroponte (book title)
I also like the McLuhan / Alan Kay / Philip Armour suggestion that the important thing is that we are undergoing a shift in the dominant media that we use to transact knowledge. Philip Armour said it this way:
“Software is not a product. It is a medium in which we store knowledge. Historically there have been 5 such media: DNA, Brains, Hardware, Books, Software.”
Software is a superior medium to print, more powerful things can be elegantly represented (eg. simulations of systems), it is more readily searchable etc. So I disagree with David Thornburg in playing down the importance of this shift. The future is (almost) here it just hasn’t been distributed yet.
It’s dangerous to talk about information in isolation and I agree with Tom Hoffman and David Thornburg that we need to be clearer about the terms and also look at the interplay between “data, information, knowledge and understanding” (David Thornburg)
But this is not the only perspective. Hugo (in Hunchback) provides a brilliant analysis of how printing competed with the architecture of the church. Grand cathedrals, with their stained glass and sculpture, were books built of stone and glass, telling the story of the bible. To “read” this story, one had to travel to the church. As Hugo remarked, the book let ideas be more like a flock of birds in the square that would scatter themselves way beyond the edifice. To Hugo, print destroyed the power of the edifice, and THIS was the threat to the church.
Again, the point was access.
We have perhaps been deceived by the relatively stable texts of the print-age into thinking that information is static, but surely it isn’t. Change the reader of the Bible, for instance, and you generate different information. Convert the Bible to a Charlton Heston movie, and you have yet different information. I’m certain that the Bible in Japanese or modern English is different again from the Bible in Hebrew. Decide that the Bible is written not by God, but by Moses, say, and you get even different information.
This is the official blog for project EnRoLE, a Commonwealth funded initiative to encourage role-based learning in eLearning environments.
from the website:
Sloodle is an Open Source project which aims to bring improved learning support to 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments. Our first objective is to develop a range of tools and methods for learning activities in the rich interactive and user-created virtual world Second Life with the Open Source and modular web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) Moodle.
by James Kariuki
James posted a list of interesting questions (not in any particular order, he said):
Is the teaching and learning field broken? Does it need fixing? What need to be fixed? Who should fix it?
Are educational institutions fighting for freedom through education or freedom for education?
What is the importance of teaching and learning? What is the importance of scholarship of teaching? What is the importance of the culture of teaching? What is the importance of learning materials?
What should students know in order to ask questions about the future? How would students be encouraged to define and create their world views? How do students learn? How do we teach? What is defined by the culture and heritage? How are we encouraging students to drive innovation in Higher Education? How are we realigning the teaching and learning in the wake of technological innovations?
Is good teaching a skill that can be taught? how?
How do we shape our schools and teachers for teaching and learning?
What are we using to evaluate the success of teaching and learning? Can we justify the use of the evaluation tool?
If marks are what motivates students to learn, then why don't we link evaluations to mark?
Why do academics fail to use or adopt elearning? For those who do, why do they use it?
What is the role and responsibility of government in improving the quantity and quality of educational output?
While Christianity is in conflict with science (creationism vs Darwin's Natural Selection), Buddhism seems to be embracing Science very well.
Dalai Lama wrote:
Science shows us ways of interpreting the physical world, while spirituality helps us cope with reality. But hte extreme of either is impoverishing. The belief that all is reducibnle to matter and energy leaves out a huge range of human experience:emotions, yearnings, compassion, culture. At the same time, holding unexamined spiritual beliefs-beliefs that are contradicted by evidence, logic and experience-can lock us into fundamental cages.
via BoingBoing
When working the crowd, with security personnel surrounding him, US President lose his watch in daylight publicly. [Video in Dutch website]
Photo showing the watch
Photo showing the watch has gone
Can you spot who took his watch?
by Gina Trapani
When you type in about:config in the address bar of the Firefox browser, you enter into the Firefox's configuration page. Here are some tweaks to make your browsing experience more pleasurable. The following are the tweaks that I have put in.
Fetch only what you click
Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed.
* Key: network.prefetch-next
* Modified Value: false
Turn off chrome tooltips
All versions: [snip] Like you, I already know what all the buttons on my browser chrome do, so the tool tips aren't necessary. To turn them off, set the browser.chrome.toolbar_tips key value to false.
* Key: browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
* Modified Value: false
Enable spellcheck
layout.spellcheckDefault = 2 turns on Firefox 2's spell-checking in input fields as well as textareas. (That means no more typos in Lifehacker post headlines!)
Hide the Go button at the end of address bar
* browser.urlbar.hideGoButton=true turns off the rarely-used Go button at the end of the address bar, for more room to see long URLs.
This is a 4 Corners program by Australia Boardcasting Corporation (ABC) on Virtual Worlds, Second Life in particular.
The first group of chinese radicals, according to the ChangJie Input method is "Philosophical group" consisting the words 日, 月, 金, 木, 水, 火, 土.
The first two: 日 and 月, being sun and moon respectively, represents the Yang 陽 and Yin 陰in the Chinese YinYang 陰陽 Etymology. Sun is also commonly known as 太陽 and moon is also occasionally refers to 太陰.
金木水火土 are the Five elements 五行 in Chinese philosophy.
金 literally means Gold and is generalized as metal [金屬]
木 is wood. 森林 means forest, lot of 木!
水 is water. But as a radical, it is usually appears as 3 dots on the left such as 海洋 [ocean].
火 means fire. 炒 is stir-fry and 炸 is deep fry when you talk about cooking.
Finally 土 is earth. 土地 means land.
Because YinYang and the 5 elements form the basis of a lot of Chinese concepts, they are radicals of many words. We shall look at some words with these radicals in the next lesson.
Another great resources for Music by San Francisco Symphony
From Neatorama:
The San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas has created a fabulous website devoted to Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica. The section called Explore the Score is especially valuable. The music plays as you follow the score, with the option of highlighting themes, keys, and markups, offering an excellent insight into the details of the composition.
I have the opportunity to hear the Dalai Lama speaks at a public meeting this afternoon. Here are a few personal impression of this man.
At the start, he told us that there is NO miracle. He is just an ordinary man like you and me. He jokingly said if there is any miracle, he would like to meet as well because he has an itching skin and hoped that miracle can cure him.
He offered to speak to the people at the gathering (I believe there must have over 10,000 people there) on a man-to-man level.
The main teaching is "compassion" to others. Compassion to other is NOT for the sake of others. It is for oneself. I may write more about this if I can understand that better.
A few interesting answers from Dalai Lama really shines through to the deep of understanding/wisdom he has.
An 11-year old girl asked him the meaning of life and why. He said he did not know and then proceed to explain why. He said scientists and experts are still trying to learn the meaning of life, so he did not know either. He suggested the girl is still young and can search for the truth herself. (I later learnt from the friends that Buddhism refuse to question the origin of life, instead, Buddhism encourages living the life to the fullest. The analog is "when you are driving a car, you don't worry about the mechanics or the make of the car, you concentrate on driving the car and don't hit a post. I would add that this whole true for the Buddhist Monks. Scientists may make it their purpose to understand how life has evolved!)
Wikipedia's article on 14th Dalai Lama (the current Dalai Lama) is accurate: He has also stated his belief that modern scientific findings take precedence over ancient religions. At least I believe Buddhism does not corner itself to the contradiction of the findings of modern science - great contrast to Christianity (as I understood it).
As a religious leader, Dalai Lama's teaching is remarkably non-religious. He appeals to fundamental good human nature. He objects using fear, hatry and force.
I really want to learn more about this man.
Laurence Rozier is optimistic that Google Gears (GG) can be extended to include "mesh" and "peers" based on security page for Google Gears:
Sometimes web applications on different origins may want to share resources. We are investigating ideas for granting permissions across origins.
via OLDaily
WOW!
From Stephen Downes:
displaying the spread of the human population across the globe through history, connecting the story with the artifacts and artwork that documents the history
On one side, we have OLPC, with Sugar interface running a version of Linux supported by open source using AMD processors.
On the other side, we have Intel teams up with Asus offering $3 software bundle.
Is that a winner-take-all game? or both can survive and serve different clientele?
via Stephen Downes OLDaily by John Connell which in turn refers to Ron Burnett's paper Learning to Learn in a Virtual World
John did a great job summarising Ron's key idea which is further summarized by Stephen:
"Is the whole process of teaching a paradox? When teachers teach and learners learn, what is the nature of the causal link between the two, if any? How does teaching produce learning? Does teaching produce learning?"
Here are a couple of games based on Wikipedia:
1. Joining Back [The name I give this game]
To begin, a random page on the Wikipedia database is loaded (Random page link in the left navigation menu). The player is then given twenty seconds to orient him/herself to the subject matter on that first website (called the 'Homing Page'). Once this 'Reading Period' is up, the player is then transported to completely different topic page after a series of hypertextual selections ('clicks'). More specifically, this displacement is caused by first selecting a random link on the Homing Page and then on ten subsequent pages.
[Snip]
After arriving at the final page in the randomized succession, the player must reorient him/herself and begin playing the actual game. It is the object of the game to find one's way back to the Homing Page using as few clicks as possible. The player can use any wiki-link inside the contents of any entry page they come across. These links can appear as either images or words."
Get the list of all the categories that an article belongs to (at the end of the article), your opponent must guess which article it's describing.
grab a laptop and challenge someone else on a different laptop. Both people go to Wikipedia and start in the same spot. [...] Then someone calls out a word or term or person, like "Bob Dylan," and they race to see who can get there first. The rule is you can't type anything; you can only click on links. And you can't go backwards.
First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created.
by PZ Myers
I am not going to discuss the validity of the content of the referred book.
What worries me is that religion is now mixing into /interfering with politics and decision making at the highest level. I remember (but not very sure) that the US president once said he sent US troops to invade other countries because God told him to do that. I really hope I have mistaken. Otherwise, what is the difference between USA and an Islamic-extremist-governed country?
Religious wars kill people. Unlike couple of centuries ago, the weapon today are more dangerous.
Sound, evidence-based education is the only tool to fight against this. Teachers, again, are at the front line.
May reason and common sense bless America!
Recently it was revealed that Apple’s new DRM-free iTunes tracks come with the buyer’s name encoded in their headers.
I must admit that my family members and me included are suffering from Procrastination.
From Wikipedia:
Procrastination is the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time. For the person procrastinating this may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of productivity, the creation of crisis, and the chagrin of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. While it is normal for individuals to procrastinate to some degree, it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological or physiological disorder.
Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
[snip]
The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't).
BBC has a report on a survey.
One in four adults in a poll of 2,000 for the services website, Directgov, said they wanted an online alert if their child did not turn up for school.
[snip]
Speaking in focus groups on the subject, some parents said they wanted to be able to play back video of lessons to help with homework.
A bit more information is coming out about the Intel and Asus's $200 Laptop:
The ASUS Eee computer will cost a mere $199 for the 7″ LCD model whereas the so-called $100 OLPC costs $175. Given the fact that Eee can run Linux or Windows XP and it can boot off NAND flash memory in a mere 15 seconds, the Eee slaughters the OLPC with ease.
While everyone is putting forward about how great Google Gears (GG) would be, pushing it to include "mesh" and "peers" [I assume is peers to peers (p2p) is a bit over the edge.
I agree that GG would potentially be able to increase the capacity to serve more concurrent users in a collaboration system. However, creating a browser-based solution do "mesh" or p2p is a totally different ball game. First of all, for security concerns, scripts will not be allowed to call arbitrary servers (AJAX is no exception) and hence one user logging to multiple "collaborating" servers is a technical challenge. Establishing connections to other peers without an intermediate server acting as a post office, meaning each user is both a client and a server at least after connection is established, is even more difficult.
...to provide an alternative to the One Laptop Per Child project, Intel announced plans on Tuesday to team up with Asustek to produce a notebook for developing countries that could cost as little as $200. The 'Eee PC' will be a full-featured low-end notebook, whereas the OLPC is more aimed at children. Intel has criticized the device in the past for being too simple, and not having enough functionality to even make it worthwhile.
I set out to do a "read/write" focus to learning Chinese. So far, I have explained some Chinese way of expressing ideas and have not given much information about how to input Chinese. Here it is.
The particular input method I am recommending is "ChangJie" method. Please review lesson 1 if you have not installed the input option.
ChangJie method (倉頡輸入法) was invented in the seventies by Mr Chu Bong-Foo (朱邦復) and has been in the public domain ever since. I met Mr Chu in the Nineties when he was working on hanzi 聚珍 Chinese operating system (My company in Hongkong helped in promoting this product) before it became public domain.
From Wikipedia about 朱邦復:
During the development of Cangjie method, Chu found that his invention is not only an input method, but also a character encoding method for computing systems. Unlike An Wang's encoding method of the time, or later methods such as Big5 and Unicode, Cangjie method dose not sort characters by their usage frequency, stroke count, or radical, but is based on their composition aspect and inspired by the "pictophonetic compounds" principle of Chinese.
Chu therefore began to develop a theory (which he would later call "Chinese DNA", "Alphabets of Chinese Language", or "Chinese character gene" theory). The theory states that the forms selected by Chu are the "genes" of Chinese. Proper arrangement of these "genes" can provide all functions of the characters. Therefore Cangjie method as a character encoding is very useful, since it contains not only an ordered set of characters, but also precise references of shapes, pronunciations and semantics of the characters. Therefore the system is an efficient base for a variety of Chinese information technology: smart dictionary; operating system and application software; programming language; hardware architecture of PC and embedded systems; and even strong artificial intelligence.[3][4]
The recent Guild Research Report on Immersive Learning Simulations (ILS) revealed that in the next 12 months there will be a projected 72% growth in simulation/scenariobased learning and 37% growth in e-Learning games.Though the use of ILS is on the rise there are still a number of barriers that prevent organizations from using this approach for e-Learning — from perceived difficulty in building this type of e-Learning to questions about the costs to build ILS to the appropriateness of using “games” for e-Learning.
