Two stories about the use of robotics in music caught my eye this week. On Thursday, Toyota demonstrated a robot that can play the violin. From a technological standpoint, that’s pretty amazing. I can barely make noise with the thing, and my children have spent years learning to play what are still very elementary pieces. This robot plays with the technical proficiency of a late … Continue reading Robots and Music
It was my first year teaching computer applications in a new district. After half a year of complaining, I received a new computer for my office. It had everything I could possibly need. With it, I could send and receive email and access the World Wide Web. I could create and edit word processing, spreadsheet, database, and presentation documents. I could print to network printers. … Continue reading How Far Have We Come?
I resisted blogging for a long time. Initially, weblogs had the reputation for being online diaries where people rant about inane things, chronicle the minutiae of their lives, and generally ramble on about the grilled cheese sandwich they had for lunch. There was no point in wasting your time reading this stuff, let alone bothering to actually write one. Some would argue that things haven’t … Continue reading Another Grilled Cheese Sandwich
A couple weeks ago, my daughter’s first grade class started blogging. They were doing a unit on the pilgrims, and had written some journal entries. They took turns typing these into blog posts on the classroom blog. They’re taking baby steps at this point. They’re not accepting comments or linking to other blogs or anything of the sort. Right now, they’re just typing their journal … Continue reading Student Blogging
The United Kingdom is considering legislation that would make it a criminal offense to lose a laptop containing unencrypted personal data. We have all heard the horror stories about laptops being lost or stolen that contain thousands of social security numbers, credit card data, or other personal information. Here’s an excerpt from the Computerworld UK article: [Deputy Information Commissioner David] Smith told the Lords constitution … Continue reading Protecting Data
Let’s say you’re planning to take the SAT Reasoning Test. If you’re a college-bound student in the United States, chances are good that you’ll either be taking this test or the ACT (or both) in order to get into college. This is a fairly high-stakes test. It’s only offered a few times per year, and due to college application deadlines, most students only have a … Continue reading Free SAT Prep Resources
I’ve heard Will Richardson speak a number of times, including twice last month. In his keynote addresses, he usually includes this: We have to figure out who we can trust. We can’t have our kids simply looking at something and accepting it. I know many of you have seen this. Martinlutherking.org. This is the stump site for people talking about information literacy. For those of … Continue reading Problem Number Three
This is an example of an album. Albums consist of one or more galleries. This is the extended version: [album=1,extend] … and this is the compact version: [album=1,compact] That’s all…. Continue reading An Album
Another test. A slideshow of me… And a single pic with a web2.0 effect… [singlepic=69,320,240,web20,] Continue reading Another Gallery Test
This should be a thumbnail list: Continue reading Gallery Test 1
Computers store information as binary digits. We frequently explain it like a light switch. A switch can be “on” or “off”. So that switch can store two values. We represent these as numbers. A zero is “off” and a one is “on.” This is a bit. If we put two bits together, we can store up to four values (00, 01, 10, 11). If we … Continue reading Details
I’ve been struggling lately with situations where we seem to be using technology for its own sake. Sometimes, it seems like we use technology just to show we’re using technology, or to show that we’re beeing innovative, or cutting edge. But sometimes, technology just makes things more complicated than they really need to be, or it provides a small benefit for an enormous cost of … Continue reading Because We Can
