Water Balloon

Exploding (so last year)


Not Exploding (so cool)


Note the elasticity of the balloon.

Australian Parliament Says Sorry

[Photo from NineMSN.com.au]
Today is a great day in Australian History and should go down the history book as one of the most significant day. Our Prime Minister Kelvin Rudd, as the first business of the government for the 42nd Parliament delivered a sincere apology [news from ABC and the whole speech] to the past wrong of several previous governments resulting in the removing of aboriginal children from their families.

Two notable absences from today's celebration: former PM John Howard and Mr Tuckey (the member for O'Connor in Western Australia).

History will also note that!

Here is a comment I found in ABC website:

Well done and thank you, Kevin Rudd. I am glad you represent me, a multi-coloured new Australian. I live in Wilson Tuckey's electorate and am ashamed by his red-neck and immature actions and his ignorant, callous and superior attitude. His actions have been un-Australian in the extreme. He does NOT represent me.

On the issue of potential compensation claims:

One small step for Aborigines, one giant compensation bill for Australia!

Kevin 07 ?

Told you you'd be sorry.


Now we sit back and watch the record compensation claims roll in.

However, it seems to me the consensus is:

Yes. Compensation should be preserved for really important, worthy cases of true suffering, such as when Mr. Bolkus fell from his bicycle inside parliment house, or that poor armed robber who broke his leg climbing out of parramatta gaol.

Just because compensation would be expensive doesn't mean it is undeserved.

HOWEVER compensation was not the agenda item here, but recognition.

Oh and by the way did anyone else note the irony of John Howard officially declining to attend ? technically he has given his apology for the the apology :)

Tell us [name omitted], if it were you is that what you'd want? Is it? Have you heard a single thing Fred Chaney has been saying lately?
Oh, and I'm not sorry.
I'm happy and proud once again that we're governed by generous, imaginative, bold thinking men and woman and that the punishers and straighteners are back in their box for a while.

Today is really a proud day for Australian.

Full Text of PM's speech:
"Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia."

Rubik's cube

Hi teachers, if you want to impress your kids, practice the solution provided in these videos:

psrt 1


part 2

Chinese New Year of Rat

Today is Chinese New Year of Rat, wishing you a rewarding new year.

My friend sent me a slide show which I am sharing with you all.

BitTorrent Traffic Vs the rest of Internet Traffic

I read with horror how a chief technical officer at APConnections publish an article with misinformation (i guess the aim is to convince users not to use BitTorrent).

Here is what I disagree; [My comments in square brackets like this]

First of all, lets look behind the scenes at how BitTorrent can affect a large ISP's network.

Torrents create thousands of connections. If you use a BitTorrent program on your laptop and attempt to download content (music, movies, et cetera), your computer will locate and find as many sources of this specific content as possible and download from all sources simultaneously. [true]

Conceptually, this is like simultaneously downloading separate chapters in a book from different sources, and then putting the chapters back together on your computer when the downloads complete. Your motivation is time; downloading all the chapters simultaneously is much faster than downloading them in sequence. [good conceptualisation]

In addition to looking for multiple sources for a single file, BitTorrent clients allow the user to attempt more than one file download at a time. [that's the beauty of BT!] This behavior further multiplies the number of active connections from your computer to the Internet. The amount of concurrent connections generated by one home user to the Internet can reach into the thousands. [Untrue! Most torrent client sets the TOTAL connections to around 400] Compare that number of connections with somebody who passively browses the web, and perhaps runs an AIM messenger client on their home computer; their connection total would not exceed fifteen or so at any moment in time.

But multiple connections generate tremendous overhead for a provider, too. [FALSE]

Each connection from your computer across the Internet must be accounted for [???] in various switching points (routers) in order for the data to flow. [OK, data packets go through] You can imagine these switching points as little traffic police standing at the intersection of a street during a 5K road race telling the runners where to turn. Now imagine thousands of races running all over the city at one time; each starting and terminating at a different location. Obviously the traffic cops would get overwhelmed and have to restore some order, like making sure organizers did not run their races all at the same time. [Bad conceptualisation. The effectiveness of Internet traffic is based on packet switching. That means that each packet may traffic from source to destination on different paths. The little traffic police at the switch does not care whether this packet is for the same connection to the last packet. Each packet is routed on path depending on the current traffic situation. CONNECTIONS do NOT increase any workload for the traffic police. The amount of traffic DOES!] In a nutshell, that is one of the motivations for a service provider to try and limit torrents. [I don't think the motivation is because of number of connections. Rather it is more related to the AMOUNT of traffic] The spontaneous and overwhelming number of connections they can create can overwhelm their circuits.

Where do all these BitTorrent files come from? Who is serving up this content?

When you set up a BitTorrent client and start downloading files you also unwittingly become a BitTorrent host/server. Any file you download to your computer can also be sent to other users while your BitTorrent program is active. [True]

From a content provider perspective there is great value in having your data hosted by millions of home users connected by BitTorrent; they can reduce your distribution costs. A content provider that distributes content from servers hosted on their private servers would be charged accordingly for the amount of data uploaded from their hosts. By using a BitTorrent model for distribution, however, a content provider becomes a parasite on third party sites allowing them to replicate and distribute content like a benevolent virus. [Bad comparison and deliberately biased against bitTorrent! Are you saying that you are objecting your users to host home-base smaill web servers. They are serving content as well. When a user connects to a website, the initiation is also out-going traffic! Again, a packet is a packet and is a packet. To the ISP, except for accounting purposes, incoming or outgoing packets should be treated the same and have similar load on routers.]

So who is absorbing the distribution cost when a content provider distributes their data by releasing it into the BitTorrent cloud? [Good questions, but it should be asked from an accounting point of view rather than technical.]

The additional cost of delivering BitTorrent content is essentially shouldered by the major ISPs who likely did not account for this traffic overhead when building out their networks. [No!, ISP do NOT have another additional cost except users are actually requesting the ISP to meet the sale agreement. For unlimited quota plan, most ISP will offer different prices based on different speed limits. So users using BT only INCREASE the amount of traffic, which is agreed in the price. For limited quota plan, BT users are godsend. They need more traffic and you have a great reason to ask them to upgrade! Another point to note, once a physical link is built (eg an optical fibre) the cost of running the fibre is small compared with the capital investment. Amount of traffic does NOT have any effect on running cost! Quota is a mechanism in accounting!]

If I am wrong in my interpretation of Internet technology, I stand to be corrected. Please cite sources when pointing out my mistake.

Students demo cheating & my reaction

Jason Schultz posted 4 videos of kids demonstrating their favorite cheating techniques. Jason's reaction is "it's fascinating to see all these kids disclosing their favorite techniques"

Here are the videos. I will disclose my reaction after I saw these vidoes after them.





My reactions;
1. How clever these kids are (1st and 2nd videos) and how well they can present the information! Education has already succeeded!
2. The technical skills used in the third video already show that this guy can find a job in media with no difficulties.

Back to the 'problem' of "cheating". Yes, there is a problem here. But it is the way the examination is set up, not the students. Isn't obvious to you that the so-call cheat are memory-aides? When questions are set to measure memory recall, which any educator can atest to you is one of the lowest level of mastery of knowledge, these memory aides become cheat. when the questions are set to measure higher skills, they are useful information to help solving problems.

I program in Javascript day in day out. But every now and then, I need to do search on Javascript functions which I use less frequently. Is that cheating? Yes, of course. But that's part of the work process.

Our children are growing up in an era where information are abundant. Information are literally a few clicks away. To them, memorizing pieces of information is a waste of time and energy.

I wonder when school will reflect the reality and teaches our students to properly use the memory aide in solving authentic problems.

4-screen Laptop

This is how I get 4 screens for a workhorse computer and optional control on my second laptop.

Configuration:
Workhorse laptop is running Windows XP and a low-cost laptop running Windows Vista Basic Home (This Vista laptop is basically useless except I need it for testing.)
I have two old monitors. So each laptop gets a secondary display. Via the windows display property, I extended my desktop to these secondary display.

Now, on my workhorse, I have two screens. On the vista, I also have two screens.

But I want to have 4 screens for my workhorse when I am not testing using the idling vista. If I can control the vista from my workhorse, then I don't need to move my hand to the vista's keyboard. (BTW, my workhorse has an external keyboard and mouse which make editing so much easier!)

I bought Mirror Pro from Maxivista.com. (I am upgrading from a previous version, so I am paying only half price. If you don't need desktop mirroring, you can opt for the Professional. I would not suggest you to go for the Standard version!)

Install the software on my workhorse. During installation, it will prompt you for generation of client viewer. I asked for two client viewers.

Copy both client viewers to the vista and install both. Configure one of the client viewer to link to the laptop's primary screen and the other to its secondary screen.

From my workhorse computer, activate extended screens of both Maxivista viewers. I can see the background of the vista changed to the workhorse background. Open the workhorse display property and move the screens to their correct positions.

Viola! I use 4 screens at the same time. Optionally, I can control the vista using Maxivista too! Sometimes, finding the cursor from these many screen estate can be difficult. I use a custom set of cursors (brighter and bigger!) to help with my failing eye-sight!

This software solution requires both computer connected to a network, which is my case anyway.

There is no additional hardware and less cable than using KVM switch.


This is a printScreen of my current desktop.

In fond memory of Marie Jasinski

I remember Marie as a lady with a big smile, infectious laughter and infinitely energetic.

We first met in the early 2000 when she participated in one of my role play simulation workshop. After the workshop, she came to me and said she would help me in spreading the idea. Few months pasted, I got an email and she had organised a workshop for a group of TAFE lecturers to design an online role play using Fablusi - X'mas Party from Hell' [Note: the demo linked in Marie's post has expired. The updated link will be posted later] was born.

She asked me to be a mentor to the TAFE group and I visited Adelaide three times for the workshop. Instead of mentoring the group, I received one of the most rewarding mentor from her!

Marie has made important contributions to my understanding of how online role play simulation (RPS) differs from other learning strategies. Here are some of her contributions:

1. One of the first learning opportunities presented by RPS is asking the players to develop a role profile. This requires the player to have an understanding of the circumstances in which the role play will take place. Marie suggested to use the term 'role embellishment' to describe the concept. From then onwards, we faithfully provide only a sketchy description of the role and ask players to embellish their character in any way they like.

2. During the trial of X'mas Party, my server connections was bad - constantly disconnected due to ISP malfunctions. As a mod, Marie "evacuated" the building within X'mas Party and ended the role playing. Here came the idea of a mod is also a story teller - constantly adjusting the story line to meet circumstantial needs. [see this]

Marie also introduced me to Thiagi [and Eastern Indian dining].



Marie, you are an inspiration. I miss you.

Here are the links to video clips of Marie on "Role play" recorded for National Summit on Online Role Play in October 2002.
# Why use role-play?
# "There’s three key things teacher need to be aware of…"
# "Moderators need quite a complex lot of skills…"
# " A lot of time with role-play you debrief afterwards – we found it is necessary to debrief any time it is appropriate…"
# "It’s the immersion…"
# "Students don’t have to play a role alone…"
# "I’ve just been involved in a role-play that was spread across Australia…"
# "No matter how good your design is, it’s the players who bring that design to life…"

Here are some online tributes to Marie;
Stephen's Web
Full Circle Associates
Janine’s blog

RIP: Marie Jasinski

Died peacefully at Hobart on January 21, 2008. Much loved wife of Martin Cielens. Beloved daugheter of Dorothy Jasinski and Leonard Jasinski (dec.) Cherished sister of Jenny and John. Much loved sister-in-law of Janet Plater, Viesturs and Andrew Cielens, Kym Tilgals and Michelle Marsh, and daughter in law of Tatjana Tilgals. Adored “Auntie Rie” of Sam, Grace and Max Jasinski. To all of us, a friend, companion and guide; someone who wove webs of joy and adventure. An exceptional person who will be deeply missed yet lives in all of us.

I am saddened by the news.

To celebrate her wonderful life and her effect on some many people, an online event has been organised by Janine Bowes (see her tribute to Marie). Details:

Elluminate Live! session:

Name: Tribute To Marie Jasinski
Type: None
Starts: Jan 25, 2008 05:00 PM Eastern (EDT) (This is Australian Eastern time, GTM+10)
Ends: Jan 25, 2008 06:00 PM Eastern (EDT)

Format of the session - This celebration for Marie will be informal but will of course have a moderator. People attending may like to come along with a memory to share - it could be a favourite moment, a funny situation, a particular inspiration, a URL that illustrates a point, a game to play, whatever. Some of us in Hobart will attend having just come from the funeral service and audio of some of the presentations at the funeral may be available (technology permitting!). If anyone has media they would like to be pre-loaded, please email to Frankie Forsyth on [frankie at bigpond dot net]

RSVP for virtual catering purposes (please indicate any special dietary requirements) would be appreciated but not essential (RSVP to Janine Bowes [janine dot bowes at education dot tasdot gov dot au] by replying to this message and editing the subject line)

Position possibly vacant (moderator for this session)We have 3 possible moderators so far all of whom will be attending Marie's funeral service. Traffic jams are unusual in Hobart but you never know on a Friday afternoon. Thus, if anyone else is able to take on the moderator role it would be preferable. Volunteers please email me or phone on 0417 350 956.

Janine Bowes

INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE TECHNICAL TEAM
(thanks Cathy, Jyothi, Jenny for setting this up so quickly)

To join the session, please click on the link below
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=995&password=M.F7C543063CEC856877486925D4E59B


To view the hardware and software pre-requisites for Elluminate Live! please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support

You can check to see that everything is working fine by going to the PRACTICE ROOM before the session, found on the networks site here -

http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/flx/go/home/projects/2007/cache/offonce/pid/259;jsessionid=23D2A8149F804E7B73C9B11FAAEC7616


Networks Administrator

Phone: (612) 62074832
Email: networks at flexiblelearning dot net dot au

Here are some contributions of Marie to this blog:
Maiden Voyage - Engineer's Journal 1
E-learning models

No Child Left Behind…There’s More Cheating than Ever, and the Teachers are Doing it

It may sound impolite for me to say that it is NOT new. In Chapter 1 of Freakonomics, titled "what do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common", the authors explain the phenomena clearly.

It is no use to trying the catch the cheater. It is the system and to solve the problem, we should fix the system.

What if when a school is found under-performing, a huge amount of resources are poured in to help. Then every school, in chasing the resources, will push up its standard to look under-performing!

Got it?

Should the 500 teenage party host pay for the $20,000 damage bill?

In the last week-end, a 16-year teenage issued an open invitation on mySpace while his parents were away on holiday. As a result, 500 teenagers turned up. Somehow, the party spiralled out of control causing damages to neighbours and police cars. The Victorian Police Chief wanted to send the damage bill to the teenager (or his parents). [see news here and here]

I am not endorsing this act. However, the notion of punishing the teenage sounds inappropriate.

1. In our society, we don't blame one person because another person behaved badly. The teenager(s) who caused the damage should be billed, not the host. In the case where the police cannot get those involved, that is NOT a reason to send the bill to the host.
2. Before the issue is settled in a court (or after a proper procedure), anyone should be presumed NOT guilty. Some reports suggested that alcohol was served at the party. That's wrong and illegal if the teenagers were under 16. If the teenagers were over 16, but under 18, an adult must be present. Again, any charge of this should be properly served and go through the proper procedure.

Again, I must emphasis that I am NOT saying that teenagers should be allowed to host unsupervised party while parents are away. What I am questioning is whether our Police Chief has stepped over a fine line. What is your opinion? Please leave a comment.

Coverage Equity - Part 2

The issue of a syllabus and the limited time we have as a teacher/instructor/guide is the tension between the breadth and depth of treatment of a subject area. Traditionally, as an information gatekeeper, the issue on breadth is an important choice to make. Today, when information are just a few clicks away, learners potentially can access whatever information that interest them. The information gatekeeper role has long gone!

I have been careful not to use 'knowledge' in a general sense to describe information. I believe there is a huge difference between 'information' and 'knowledge' - and this is particularly important in the information era. Bloom taxonomy and many other similar scheme come into mind when we are dealing with "knowing" something, but that is for another day or another occasion. The distinction here is that something needs to be known before it can be qualified as knowledge. The process of helping someone to "know" information is the task for the teacher/instructor/guide. The availability of information is now given.

When we give someone a piece of paper with something printed on it, this is NOT teaching. When we can ensure that the information has been read and understood, then that piece of information (not the paper on which information reside) has been transformed to a piece of knowledge for that special someone who manages to read and understand that is written on that paper.

However, this process of transformation - from information to knowledge - is an inner task which can only be performed by the learner. We cannot do that for anyone. One can only lead a horse to the water, right? The obvious task is to make the horse thirsty at the first place before we lead it to the water!

That comes back to the issue of coverage of a subject area again. How can we design a course which make the learner more thirsty the more the learn knows about the subject area?

Like pushing drugs, satisfying the immediate need is NOT the secret of the selling of drugs. It is the addictive nature of the drugs which sell themselves.

If we can arrange the coverage of a subject area in a way similar to drug - addictive to the learner and urges the learner to want to know more, we have a solution!

Hardware Review of XO laptop

If I were to make one general comment about the OLPC XO-1, it’s that its mechanical design is brilliant. It’s a fairly clean-sheet redesign of traditional notebook PC mechanics around the goal of survivability, serviceability, and robustness...

The post goes on to describe the design of the XO laptop.

How to cross a road (in India and China)?

This is how a road junction traffic looks like in India:


This is an attempt to cross the road:


And this is how it looks like if you are in one of the car:



Both, according to the description are shot in India. In my last visit to Beijing, China (Dec2006), the same applied.

Only God Gets Things Right First Time

I really like the title.

Whether there is god or not, it is OK for us to make mistakes - not only the first time, but many times, again and again ... until it works!

Small successes generate fulfillment and encourage more try and error.

Small failures build experience and resilience.

"R & D" is "Repeat and Duplicate". Only after successfully repeat previous experiments and duplicated results that we can start making small change which may or may not lead to improvement.

Aha moment is the sudden connection between seemingly unrelated concepts which give insight (or a different angle) to the solution of a problem. Again that means the concepts have been in our mind for a long time and the problem has persisted enough to recognise the significant of the sudden connection. Experience, experience!

Coverage Equity - Part 1

Are teachers obliged to cover every part of a syllabus?

When I was teaching in Hong Kong, I used to tell my students that "I teach things that won't be examined and I set questions which I have not taught" (教不考,考不教.) Of course, in an examination oriented system, I got lots of protests.

BUT, I can explain. I told my students that there is no way I can predict what will be set in a public examination (even for those serving as question setters, they should not let their students know the question in advance, right?) The only way I can teach them (my students) to be well prepared is not by teaching them how to answer "a" question. The best way is to teach them how to answer "any" question. So those that I used as examples in my lessons, I promise them that they will not appear in the papers that I set for their examination. (This explains the first half.) For those questions that I set for their examination, I won't discuss in class! That's the other half.

It is better to teach how to fish rather than just give them fish!

But the same proclamation has also protected me from not covering every part of a syllabus.

I always asked my students to come to my lesson "unprepared". They need to bring no textbook (unless I explicitly asked them to do so in the next lesson). They only need to bring a working brain, a rough sketch book, pen and ruler to my class. I emphasis on a working brain, explaining that "day-dreaming" brain is NOT a working brain in my class!

I believe science is a journey, a process of exploration and discovery, a joy in discovering something new about nature and the things surrounding us. I ask questions, get them focus on the issue at hand and ask them to find the answer.

Discovery and innovation are slow and expensive (compared to duplication or copying, - just simple transfer of information). Hence it is often the case that I can only cover that much of material in the allocated time.

It was over 15 years ago. My role as a teacher was still very much an information age keeper. Obviously some students would/should hate me. But in real life, I found that I was one of the most favorite teacher. When I walked into a class empty-handed, students would love the class. When I walked into the room with a textbook, they knew that I was forced to cover material, in a quick hurry!

Today, information is widely and freely available. Many a time, students could be more knowledgeable in a special area than the teacher. Teacher no longer is the information gate-keeper. What should be our role? Should we insist on covering every aspect of a syllabus (to give the students a more "balanced" perspective on the subject area)? Should we allow students to specialise into parts of a syllabus? How should an evaluation system be designed to meet the new reality?

Problem-based : Role Play Simulation

Is role play simulation (RPS) a form of problem-based learning (PBL)?

Both starts with considering a problem situation and try to provide an authentic learning experience to the players/students.

PBL typically has ONE problem (although it may be complex and involve several steps) to solve and it is also typical that there is ONE best solution. ALL learners are expected to solve the same problem.

RPS presents a complex situation, with multiple (conflicting) stakeholder interests. There is typically NO single correct solution. Students play our the situation in the sole of the roles (each role may represent one or more stakeholder interests). The game goal can change as the simulation progress (indicating either the result of the learning experience or the need to adapt to different strategy).

PBL does not finish until a solution is found. RPS focuses more on the process and it is normal to end a RPS without reaching a solution. (For example, Andrew Vincent's Middle East Political Simulation can have an end as it reflects the real life. History will not stop!)

Some RPS do NOT have any embedded problem. While the simulation designer may create a scenario with a compelling kick-start episode, the kick-start episode not necessarily represents the actual problem/issue that the RPS has been designed to 'teach'. Mary Noggle's "Scarlet Letter Simulation' for American Literature is designed to give the students a "stage' to experience the life at the Puritan era. The kick-start episode is just a start and there is no obvious problem for the players to solve.

Both PBL and RPS are not designed for transfer of information, they act as motivator for students to seek out and understand information necessary for solving the problem (PBL) or handling the situation/issue (RPS). The design motivation is the same.

Science Project for the holiday

What you will need:
a plate
full cream milk
food colours
detergent

An improved procedure [source]

1. Pour some full cream milk into a dinner plate
2. Squeeze some drops of food dye into the milk (one colour on one side, other colour on other side)
3. Add a drop of detergent onto the edge of the plate so it runs down into the milk
4. The colours begin swirling like a psychadelic pattern
5. You can add more detergent if the motion stops

Explanation [The explanation in the above video is incorrect]

Like milk itself, this classic experiment is actually quite complicated. Milk is a suspension of tiny fat globules (about 4% by volume) in water, plus a whole range of proteins, sugar (lactose) and nutrients like calcium. Detergent is a form of surfactant (short for surface active agent) - individual detergent molecules can bind with both water and oil.

The swirling effect in milk is probably driven by the detergent molecules racing around and coating the fat globules. As the detergent molecules are "consumed" by the fat, they create currents. You'll notice colours from the opposite edge of the plate appearing near the detergent and then shooting across the surface.

9-yr Old Review of XO laptop

BBC reporter brought back an XO laptop and gave it to his 9-year old son for a review.

With no help from his Dad, he has learned far more about computers than he knew a couple of weeks ago, and the XO appears to be a more creative tool than the games consoles which occupy rather too much of his time.

Frankly, at the price of a game console (for 2, one is denoted to the needy), everyone should consider buying XO laptop to give to their children - as christmas present perhaps while helping the kids in the under-developed countries.

Season Greeting

To all my readers and friends:

Wishing you all an

Awesome Lively Brilliant Entertaining Rewarding Terrific

holiday

Yahoo! Answers: Teachers' Nightmare or Blessing?

From Slate:

The blockbuster success of Yahoo! Answers is all the more surprising once you spend a few days using the site. While Answers is a valuable window into how people look for information online, it looks like a complete disaster as a traditional reference tool. It encourages bad research habits, rewards people who post things that aren't true, and frequently labels factual errors as correct information. It's every middle-school teacher's worst nightmare about the Web.

This highlight the need to enable our students to be able to distinguish between correct and accurate information from false, incorrect or deceptive information. Teachers are no longer the gate-keeper of information. Instead, teachers should aim to help students develop critical analytical skill to handle the vast amount of information available.

Instead of asking students to provide information to some traditional essay type paper, why can't we ask the students to identify incorrect or misleading information from sources such as Yahoo!Answers. Is it a much more valid exercise?

Yahoo!Answers may be a nightmare for the librarians, for the creative teachers, it may be a blessing - a prefect opportunity to let students exercise their critical and analytical skills in processing information.

Review of XO laptop

XO laptop, aka $100 laptop which is now costing some $180, is reviewed by David Pogue at The New York Times.

Hey, XO may be a potential ebook reader killer!

EnRoLE network members at ASCILITE Singapore 2007

Congratulations and thanks to EnRoLE network members representing the online role play community at  ASCILITE Singapore 2007

Workshop: Online role play: What it means for learners, developers and educators Ann Davenport and Judi Baron The University of Adelaide

Papers presented in Online Role Play Symposium :

Online role play Symposium
Chair: Sandra Wills

Jamaludin, A., Ho, M.L.C. & Chee, Y.S. The impact of structured argumentation and enactive role play on students' argumentative writing skills

Demetrious, K. Playing a critical role: Experiential learning resources and analytical media studies in higher education

Jones, S. Adding value to online role plays: Virtual situated learning environments

Ogilvie, A. & Douglas, K. Online role plays and the virtual placement: Aiding reflection in work integrated learning

Davenport, A. & Baron, J. Meeting the 21st century challenge: The situational learning initiative at U Adelaide

Lambert, S. & Macdonald, D. Reuse of a role play for new university teachers

Devonshire, E. Peer review: A process of EnRoLE(ing) as a reuser

Roberts, A.G. Beyond a participation focus

Leigh, E., Meyers, W. & Rosser, E. Learning design discussions: A conversation tool

Cross posted to EnRoLE

How does Richard Dawkins gain the respect of John Grahm-Cumming

In John Grahm-Cumming's post title Double-checking Dawkins, John double-checked one sentence written by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. After some research, John found out that in 1986 when Richard was busy writing the book on an Apple ][, Richard has actually spent time to poke around inside his computer's ROM.

This is a respect well-deserved. If Richard has been so careful to make sure a minor fact in his book is correct, I have faith that the rest of the facts would have been more than double-checked. My salute to Richard Dawkins!

The Power of Mush-up

The following three youTube videos are based on the same song. Which one you think is better?

Here are my choices.

Place 3:


Place 2:


and the Winner:


Do you agree?

Here are two other based on different tunes. For those who have lived in Hong Kong, the tunes in the next will be very familar.

Use Google as Your Own P2P Network

More than just teach me how to Google as my own P2P network, I also learnt a few tricks as well.

1. intitle: in google search
2. that a period (.) in the search keyword stands for ., _ or space
3. making a bookmarklet (for firefox)

cool!

The Unique Effects of Including History in College Algebra

via Scout Report:

A team of mathematicians at Black Hills State University {...} decided to investigate what the effects of including historical modules in college algebra might be in regards to students' understanding and mathematical communication.

The result - 'Over the last three years at BHSU, great strides have been made in improving student outcomes in College Algebra with the inclusion of history in the course.':
1. increase in following enrolling (triagonometry) - 5 students in 2003 and 2004 to 20 students in 2007
2. significant improvement on test problems where mathematical vocabulary and notation have created difficulty for students in the past.
3. 10% increase in the College Algebra passing rate since 2005 has come since the addition of the historical modules

The faculty feels that including historical development of mathematics is of key importance and believe that the full benefits of history inclusion have yet to be reached.

Zeitgeist - the greatest lie ever told

Here are some comments about Zeitgeist - The movie from the post.

1. use cheap graphic effects with bad rendering and metaphors

2.

loosely plagiarized version of the God Who Wasn’t There, complete with much of the same archive footage. The premise is that Christianity is based upon previous religions. Fair enough, apart from the plagiarism

3.

usually means nothing and is patently false but incredibly seductive

Do they qualify as triangulation [see Where is the truth]?

The post coined FEBL (Fucking Entertaining Big Lie). I would add FEBLBP - FEBL Blog post!

Where is the truth?

In a comment left to Zeitgeist - The Movie, my reader asks

Ok, I understand that I shouldn't take this film as gospel and I need to find the answers for myself, but where? Wikipedia is apparently a joke. The internet is full of false information, and after watching this video I don't know if I can trust history books anymore. If we are in fact being lied to, then what resources exist that I can actually trust? I'm feeling very cynical about this. Can anyone ever really know the truth?

Good question. Where can we find the truth?

Different people will have different answers to this question. To me, where is only one way: Triangulation from multiple independent sources.

For scientific facts, If I were doing science, I would repeat the experiment myself and verify to my own satisfaction that the outcome is really as described. Unfortunately, under most circumstances, not everyone has the resource to repeat an experiment. The second best would be find other data of similar experiments and verify the data and calculation to see if the same conclusion can be drawn.

For historical accounts, such as 9/11, again triangulation from multiple independent sources. Some sources will have more weight than others, for example those first person account IMMEDIATELY after the event, those TV interviews on that terrible day. Other important things to look for are minor details - details that rehearsed versions will not cover.

By now, I have forgotten most of "Zeitgeist - The Movie", however there are a number of questions still remain in my mind which I don't have a satisfactory answer:

1. How to explain the claim that multiple explosions were heard by people escaping from the collapsing towers on that day. These people escaping from the falling towers did not have any motivation to tell any lie. They were saying what they felt/heard. May be the "explosions" were floors hitting one another. But the speed of collapse (at free falling speed) could not support floor hitting each other.
2. How BBC could have reported the collapse of building 7 BEFORE the building had actually collapsed? Millions of people would have seen that news (and there are plenty of that video on the web) and none have come forward to claim that that news was fake. So, how can we explain that?
3. I remotely remember I saw a photo of ground zero showing huge steel column with a clean skewed cut. If my memory of that photo is correct, how can we explain that clean cut would be caused by burning of airline fuel?

Back to the main issue of this post: Where can we find the truth? The answer will not come from those with vested interest. We should be looking at elsewhere, from sources with NO motivation to lie. We should forget about the theory and look for evidence and form a theory for ourselves.

Monkey keeps a pet cat

This monkey in a zoo is keeping a pet cat. Enjoy!

Free online citation tool - Zotero

from the website:

is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.

Look like I will be putting proper citation in future blog posts more.

Same Issue, different viewpoints

Shanghaiist has posted an interesting article: Made in China: Australia's Channel 7 vs. Al-Jazeera. Two youtube videos side by side, one by Australia's Channel 7 and other by Al-Jazeera.

Australia's Channel 7:


Al-Jazeera


I learn at least the following after viewing both videos.

1. While the Australian are complaining about the quality of products made in China, we must remember that it is the business that have created the issue in the first place. The workers who painted the toy with lead-based paint are at greater risk than the children who may play with the toy. If we are to lay blame, we should catch those who profiteering.

2. China has 1/4 of the world population. The sweatshop is not limited to those within the geographical borders.

3. Extending the issue, China is only one of the developing countries. As she progresses, she will definitely move out of the "sweatshop" era. However, there are many more under-developed countries. Would we, in the affluent countries, help these people?

Watch this as well:


and one of comment said it well:

Therefore, please, kids, China is not the point here. The point is Wal Mart, Capitalism, Globalization.
It is just happened that Wal Mart has found china to be the most cost effective place to produce its products at this moment. Tomorrow there will be other place, such as India or South Africa, even more cost-effective tha China.

When Wikipedia Is the Assignment

via OLDaily

The use of wikipedia as an assignment should (and *will* as more teachers understand the value of doing so) definitely receive great support and wide appreciation. The assignment suggested by the article has the following advantages:
1. a real introduction to the community of practice the students are aspired to.
2. a solid contribution to the broader community by the work done by the students.
3. a good motivator for students - the work is REAL and is appreciated by many.

I believe there is ground of improvement too.

Not all academic work and progress are made in a big step. In fact, small steps are the norm. As students begin participation of their chosen community of practice, we should encourage them to take part and contribute in smaller steps. Instead of asking students to submit a whole article (and potentially creating the disappointment of being merged or deleted by the wikipedia community), an equally valuable contribution would be to make positive improvements to existing articles.

If the weighting of the assignment is 40%, students can be asked to make 40 improvements to a broad range of relevant articles (of their own choosing preferably). If the improvement survives after a given time interval (depending on the revision cycle of the article), the point is awarded. Those who made contributions which do not survive the wikipedia review process, they may be given an opportunity by making another improvement to another article etc (time permitting, of course under the current "fixed time" slotted school system).

This change will help to cover a wider range of topics too.

Sketch gets student, 7, school suspension

I am seriously troubled by this story.

7 year old boy suspended from the Dennis Township schools for a stick figure drawing he created depicting one figure shooting another figure with a gun or water pistol.

1. School is a place for learning, ie making mistakes and learn from the mistake with little consequence *outside* the learning environment, ie the school. Suspension is hardly an educational device. You cannot educate people by denying the opportunity to educate them.
2. The mother re-confirmed the kid that he was NOT in trouble. But at the same time, the power of suspension as an educational device (which is wrong, but it seems that some people believe that it has) will be gone by equating suspension to "NOT in trouble"!
3. As far as I know, Americans glorify weapons culturally (Top Gun is a great example). How can we expect a 7-year old not to be fascinated by gun!
4. "Zero-tolerance policy for guns" applied to drawing (a form of expression). On the same token, we should also apply to the more common form of expression - language. The word "GUN" should be banned in school as well. Then the policy should read "Zero-tolerance policy for xxx" to be politically correct! Hey, isn't USA as the first amendment about "freedom of speech"

Airline food

For those who fly to conferences everyday and worry about what is put into your body, you may like to check out this web site before you book your next flight.

Students say...

200 students collaborated on ONE online document to bring us this 5-minute message (via Couros Blog)

The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Brains

Some key points:

"Use It or Lose It"

the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but consumes over 20% of the oxygen and nutrients

Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every hansgrohe-downpour-air-royale-14in-shower.jpgnew day in a constructive way.

The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments.

The Physics Behind Four Amazing Demonstrations

In my first lesson to a class I have not taught before, I liked to hang a large metal ball in the middle of the teacher's area at about head high. As I walked into the class after the students have settled in, I deliberately walked pass the hanging ball, pull it close to my face to the other end of the room. I would release the ball and start to greet the students.

I can assure you that the students will not be looking at you. Instead they will be watching the ball as it swang to the other side of the room and came back to your face looking like to hit you soon.

As long as you keep steady, the ball will never hit you. But the dramatic effect will sure to hold your students attention to you for the rest of the year.

Here are 4 other dramatic demonstrations from David G. Willey.

Let's make Physics interesting, to the students!