Friday 28 November 2008

Atheist Bible Reading and Forum

I have started a blog: Atheist Bible Reading and Forum

Hope you can visit it and participate in the gentleman debate whether religion should be included in education.

Thursday 27 November 2008

Astronaut demos drinking coffee in space

Wednesday 26 November 2008

Creativity Quotes

I am matching some quotes that I found on the web with my two conditions of creativity:

Sufficient condition of creativity
Alan Alda: The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. [Every journey starts with a first step, then a second step, then a third step. Keep on trying.]

Edward de Bono: It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Linus Pauling: The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Ray Bradbury: Life is "trying things to see if they work."

Eureka Moments
A. A. Milne: One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. [This is an excuse of being disorderly rather than fostering creativity. ;-)]

Albert Einstein: You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Peter Senge: New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works ... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

William James: Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

You'd better watch out

A friend just sent me this. Like to share with you all.

You'd better watch out
You'd better not cry
You'd better keep cash
I'm telling you why:
Recession is coming to town.

It's hitting you once
It's hitting you twice
It doesn't care if you've been careful and wise Recession is coming to town.

It's worthless if you've got shares
It's worthless if you've got bonds
It's safe when you've got cash in hand
So keep cash for goodness sake, HEY

You'd better watch out
You'd better not cry
You'd better keep cash
I'm telling you why:
Recession is coming to town!

Finance products are confusing
Finance products are so vague
The banks make you bear the cost of risk So keep out for goodness sake, OH

You'd better watch out
You'd better not cry
You'd better keep cash
I'm telling you why:
Recession is coming to town.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Which direction should the screens face in a computer classroom

Today, I was talking to Dr Ki Wing Wah, a good friend from Hong Kong University. We touched upon the monitoring issues of students working in a classroom with computers. As a teacher, we cannot deny the duty of care including the kind of websites the students are accessing. In Hong Kong, many such classrooms have the computer placed in rows with students sitting facing the teacher. Effectively, there is no way the teacher can see what is happening on those screens.

Ki mentioned that he has seen a teacher who arranged the students' computer screen to face the teacher. When the teacher is talking, all the students will turn around to face him. Hence no one will be using any computer. When working alone, students will face the screens with backs towards the teacher. The teacher can effectively see all the screen activities and provide necessary assistance.

A simple change in screen orientation, a great improvement in classroom management!