The new rules for technology that every kid should learn. They’re surprisingly cautionary (“Every new technology will bite back”), coming from former Wired editor Kevin Kelly. Could he be returning to his Whole Earth Catalog roots? (via Bill Kuykendall)
Sep 192010
It’s a pen! It’s a voice recorder! It’s both–and Livescribe’s advocates claim it will revolutionize note-taking in class.
In an age when the Canadian government is muzzling scientists, religious groups are using special search engines like Jewogle to filter out unwanted results, and one in five Americans believes the earth is at the center of the solar system…you might just want to hear Randy Olson speak.
Season seven of this venerable intermedia festival finds newly minted U-Me MFAs mixing it up with the likes of Fluxus mainstay Dick Higgins and DJ paul j. bosse, the “junky but funky beat mechanic.”
Sep 132010
Most students just “rent” textbooks anyway, so why not rent them digitally?
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/ifElS7LIESQ/ via Byline With the rise of tablets and e-readers, software developers and textbook publishers are making yet another effort to take textbooks digital. The latest entrant is Inkling, a textbook app for the iPad.
http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=21c0e6da1ab7be6b447910b9959a1abc via Byline
… psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.
The Apertus is an open-source high-definition movie camera. New media programs (not to mention governments like Brazil and the state of California) have been looking to save cash by using open-source software like Open Office or Ubuntu. So why aren’t schools buying up open-source hardware as well?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/08/30/1639248/Apertus-the-Open-Source-HD-Movie-Camera?from=rss via Byline osliving writes “This article takes a tour of the hardware and software behind the innovative Apertus, a real world open source project. Led by Oscar Spierenburg and a team of international developers, the project aims to produce ‘an affordable community driven free software and open hardware cinematic HD camera for a professional production environment’.”
While the Apertus may not have the most professional-quality lenses and sensor yet, its users may benefit from the lack of an implicit video format license, namely the h.264 codec. From a Slashdot commenter:
MPEG-LA [the organization that controls h.264] basically claims certain financial rights over your project in exchange for the right to use the h.264 codec. This means that if you shoot a scene in h.264, but switch to something else to release on the web, they still have rights over you. If a contractor shoots in h.264 but sends you the video in a different format, they still claim rights over you. As far as I know, pretty much all HD cameras shoot in h.264.Some of this is definitely winnable in court, some isn’t. But if you’re an independent filmmaker, you don’t have the money to go against one of the biggest legal groups in filmmaking.
So yes, this particular situation is a bit Orwellian.
Sep 032010
Do RFID tags in clothes for preschoolers make them more or less safe? Check out the ACLU’s timeline of cracked RFID schemes.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/dont-let-schools-chip-your-kids
“On Tuesday, preschoolers in Richmond, California showed up for school and were handed jerseys embedded with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. RFID tags are tiny computer chips that are frequently used to track everything from cattle to commercial products moving through warehouses. Now the school district is apparently hoping to use these chips to replace manual attendance records, track the children’s movements at school and during field trips, and collect other data like whether the child has eaten or not.
“While school officials and parents may have been sold on these tags as a “cost-saving measure,” we are concerned that the real price of insecure RFID technology is the privacy and safety of small children. RFID has been billed as a “proven technology,” but what’s actually been proven time and again (PDF) since the ACLU first looked at this issue in 2005 is just how insecure RFID chips can be:
“RFID chips in US passport cards were cracked and copied from a distance of 30-feet using $250 in parts bought from eBay (2009).
“RFID chips used in building access cards across the country were cracked and copied with a handheld device the size of a standard cell phone that was built using spare parts costing $20 (2007).
“California State Capitol RFID-based identification cards were cracked and copied and access was gained to member-only, secure entrances (2006).
“RFID chips implanted in humans were cracked and copied (PDF) (2006).
“The RFID chips used in the Dutch and British e-passport were cracked (PDF) (2006).
“Without real security, RFID chips could actually make preschoolers more vulnerable to tracking, stalking, and kidnapping….”
Blogs, wikis, videoconferencing? “No thanks,” say most professors; “PeopleSoft and PowerPoint will do.”
http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=dc5d41dd3901e39f763a0f16e9afa2c3 via Byline The Android App Inventor from Google is intended to help nontechnical types create their own apps. An intrepid explorer plunges into do-it-yourself territory….
Truth is, Android App Inventor is only the latest in a long line of “programming for the rest of us” kits: HyperCard, Automator, Scratch and so on. Each, at its debut, was hailed as a breakthrough. Each promised the dawn of a new era. And not a single one wound up delivering the idiot-proof, drag-and-drop software-creation process they promised. It may well be that “programming for nonprogrammers” is simply an oxymoron.
From the XKCD school of Web design. [Link]
Aug 142010
Why stop at grades? Why not bet on whether you’ll make the rugby team, or whether you’ll get married in five years? Or maybe you could play hedge fund manager and bet that you’ll flunk out–at least you’d have some change to make it through the summer.
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/08/11/2150206/Website-Lets-You-Bet-On-Your-Grades?from=rss via Byline crimeandpunishment writes “College students who expect to get good grades can get a good payoff, if they’re willing to put their money where their mouse is. A website is taking wagers on grades from students at 36 American colleges. Students have to register, upload their schedule, and give the site access to official school records. The site, called Ultrinsic, then calculates odds and the students decide whether to place their bets. Ultrinsic’s CEO Steven Woldf insists it’s not online gambling, since these wagers involve skill. He says ‘The students have 100 percent control over it, over how they do. Other people’s stuff you bet on — your own stuff you invest in.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Aug 102010
Animator or game design wannabe? This equation is for you.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/q0mznEX_SNM/ via Byline Want your next animated short to look more real than a Bugs Bunny cartoon? Study up on the equation at the heart of every 3-D rendering package.
Have you ever wished you could use Jedi mind powers to speed up your boring professor’s PowerPoint presentation? Or force the words “Happy Birthday Jennifer!” suddenly to appear on his screen? Now you can, thanks to Dutch researcher Niels Teusink, who combined an Arduino board and Metasploit software to demonstrate how to hack a presenter’s computer by hijacking his remote.
Several NMD courses at U-Me this fall will be using iPads–though I don’t believe it’s so much to read textbooks as reinvent them.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/DSyc9zuJNsw/
The iPad is about to have its academic chops put to the test this fall in a number of programs around the country. Colleges and universities are looking to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving device.
Several NMD courses at U-Me this fall will be using iPads–though I don’t believe it’s so much to read textbooks as reinvent them.
http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/DSyc9zuJNsw/
The iPad is about to have its academic chops put to the test this fall in a number of programs around the country. Colleges and universities are looking to adopt the iPad as a collaborative tool, a standardized mobile device to integrate into curriculums, and, in some cases, even a cost-saving device.
Jul 142010
This interesting and worrisome study suggests creativity is declining among younger generations. I’m with the Slashdot commenters who blame standardized tests, tinker-proof technologies, and not enough time outside.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from an article at Newsweek: “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. … Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test — a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist — has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect — each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling. Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. ‘It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,’ Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America — from kindergarten through sixth grade — for whom the decline is ‘most serious.’”
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NXTy2rYSvUQ/The-Creativity-Crisis via Byline
Jul 142010
This interesting and worrisome study suggests creativity is declining among younger generations. I’m with the Slashdot commenters who blame standardized tests, tinker-proof technologies, and not enough time outside.
An anonymous reader writes with this quote from an article at Newsweek: “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. … Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test — a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist — has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect — each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling. Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. ‘It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,’ Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America — from kindergarten through sixth grade — for whom the decline is ‘most serious.’”
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/NXTy2rYSvUQ/The-Creativity-Crisis via Byline
Anna Chapman has nothing over on zealous exam proctors. When will universities learn it’s much easier just to design unique assignments tailored to each student?
Bruce Schneier’s blog highlights a New York Times piece on high-tech methods for detecting student cheating. Schneier notes, “The measures used to prevent cheating during tests remind me of casino security measures.” “No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside. The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot. Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later. When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.” The Times article quotes from research published a few months back suggesting that the more you copy homework, the lower your grades.
Anna Chapman has nothing over on zealous exam proctors. When will universities learn it’s much easier just to design unique assignments tailored to each student?
Bruce Schneier’s blog highlights a New York Times piece on high-tech methods for detecting student cheating. Schneier notes, “The measures used to prevent cheating during tests remind me of casino security measures.” “No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside. The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot. Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later. When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.” The Times article quotes from research published a few months back suggesting that the more you copy homework, the lower your grades.