Tech 911
Google Launches Site for Teaching Tech to Your Parents
"Ever go home for the holidays and find your parents asking you to help them with “techie tasks” like uploading photos to the Internet?
You’re not alone. A bunch of folks over at Google find themselves in this situation nearly every time they visit their families around this time of year. That’s why they’ve launched TeachParentsTech.org, a “tech support care package” that’s meant to help kids teach parents about computer basics."
“Real face of education” – China Daily
What's creativity?
Real face of education - China Daily
"China's education stresses textbook knowledge rather than a fundamental understanding of subjects. Both teachers and parents look at education with an eye on fame and success. For them, a successful education means entering a prestigious school and getting high grades on tests, while neglecting the fact that education also plays a crucial role in nurturing a healthy and complete personality."
(Via Scott McLeod)
“Teachers as Makers” – O’Reilly Radar
"Making" can lead to informative writing...
Teachers as Makers - O'Reilly Radar
"When I began talking with folks from the National Writing Project last year, we hit on the idea that getting teachers to see themselves as makers was a great way to encourage making in schools. Thus, the goal of this workshop was to provide a gentle introduction to making for about 50 teachers. There were about eight stations with a variety of projects. Without too much in the way of preliminaries, the teachers sat down and started making. They talked to each other while working (or playing, as I might prefer to call it) and they helped each other. The projects were not simple but they were fun. The teachers were making drawbots and brushbots, flickering mood lights, stop-frame animation, bottlecap jewelry, and bracelets that functioned as snap-circuits."
Once "making" is finished...
"They participated in a writing exercise, documenting the process that they followed to make something. This exercise in technical writing is also a good way to reflect on your own learning process and think about how others might benefit from what you had learned. As I said to them, Tim O'Reilly and I were technical writers and this is what we did that helped us start a publishing company. We wrote about what we learned to do ourselves."
#
"Octothorphe" sounds like a good robot name...
"The term octothorpe was coined by engineers at Bell Laboratories in the early 1960s, who wanted a name for one of two non-number function symbols on the first touch-tone keypads (the other was the *, which they called a sextile). It didn't catch on, and the # key became famous as an ineffectual way of interacting with the robots who work at your bank."
(Via Coudal)
Don’t be surprised…
"Don’t be surprised when kids do extraordinary things. Be surprised when adults are surprised. I expect that children can use computers in deeper more thoughtful ways than school traditionally asks of them. Cute may be a subset of ‘good,’ but is a poor substitute."
Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers | Video on TED.com
"What is math?
1. Posing the right questions.
2. Real world ---> math formulation
3. Computation
4. Math formulation ---> real world verification"
Dual Screens
We utilize dual monitors at home with an old Dell screen hooked up to our iMac. I highly recommend it! Below is a short list of good uses of dual monitors. Visit the link to see some “bad” examples…
Dueling thoughts on dual monitors | practicallyefficient.com
“Good uses of dual screens
These are all instances where you’re using one screen to “lift” the other.
Keep your task list on one screen while you do work on the other. I find it powerfully productive to have a mind map on one screen while I work on the other. It’s especially helpful if I’m doing highly technical work with lots of steps, and I want to record a mixture of completed tasks, future tasks, and thoughts.
Put a remote server display on one; your local desktop on the other. This lets you easily drag and drop files or use one screen as a reference screen while you work on the other.
Make spreadsheets wider, or put two related spreadsheets side by side.
Read PDF on one; write or work on the other."
Digital Bullies
As Bullies Go Digital, Parents Play Catch-Up | NYTimes
“It is difficult enough to support one’s child through a siege of schoolyard bullying. But the lawlessness of the Internet, its potential for casual, breathtaking cruelty, and its capacity to cloak a bully’s identity all present slippery new challenges to this transitional generation of analog parents”
“I PICK”
Edu. acronym of the day…
“Be Kind, Do Your Best, and Become a Voracious Reader” | Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Data Protection and Storage
This may be overkill... or maybe not?
Recently I've had some of my family members, as well as friends, lose important files because their only copy somehow managed to become corrupted, misplaced, deleted, or lost. I have recently started to believe that important files need to have 3 copies. Here is where I first learned the “3 copy” concept…
Back Up Overview | dpreview.org
The 3-2-1 Rule
The simplest way to remember how to back up your images safely is to use the 3-2-1 rule.
We recommend keeping 3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups) We recommend having the files on 2 different media types (such as hard drive and optical media), to protect against different types of hazards.* 1 copy should be stored offsite (or at least offline).
*While 3-2-1 storage is the ideal arrangement, it’s not always possible, particularly for images in the early stages of the lifecycle. A second media type, for instance, is impractical for many people in the ingestion or working file stage. In these cases, many people make do with hard-drive-only copies of their data. Best practices, however, still require 3 copies and some physical separation between the copies.
Personally I keep one local copy, a copy backed-up to an external disc (or 2) that I sync using SuperDuper! or Time Machine, and a copy away from my house via a combination of MobileMe, Dropbox, and SmugMug (for family videos and family/client photos).