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When I lived in Japan in the late 1980s, we would morbidly discuss worst-case earthquake scenarios. The “Big One” – a massive earthquake that will hit Tokyo – is long overdue. On average, massive earthquakes have hit the region every 70 years or so. The last one was in 1923, when most of the loss [...]

How come when you pay a bill via Internet banking, the message is: Please note that the organisation may take 2 to 3 working days for the payment processing. Oh yeah, that’s right – the bank can make $$ on your money while they are waiting for it to “clear”. Another banking scam…

Maple have released an interesting add-on which is supposed to provide “interactive math over the Web”. MapleNet works by creating a document using Maple 10 and then embedding it within an HTML page and publishing it on a MapleNet server. This gives java applets that the user can interact with by changing parameters. The resulting [...]

There is an interesting laptop programme in Michigan. It shows “dramatic” improvement in test scores after students started to use laptop computers daily. Hmmm… when will educators ever realise that education is a multi-variable situation? No one event leads to a “certain” outcome. Maybe the laptops stimulated the teachers to do things differently? Maybe the [...]

There’s a blog offering by University of South Florida which allows students and staff to blog. Students can also set up podcasting and import pictures from Flickr. There are no rules, regulations or disclaimers anywhere in sight. Why are some people in education so neurotic about blogging? [Update, Aug 2009: Seems that this service is [...]

The US education scene is hopping because of the No Child Left Behind act. They are worried that their teachers may not be up to speed for preparing students for the standardised tests. One initiative to help mathematics instructors is Seeing Math. Seeing Math includes some Java-based mathematics manipulatives – they are quite cool. (Normally [...]

The interesting debate about No Child Left Behind continues. Stacy Debroff, in an article on MSNBC Today[no longer available], laments that… Instead of raising children who love to learn and solve problems creatively, we are raising a generation of terrific test takers. Hmmm – it sounds a lot like the affliction that traditional Asian schools [...]

Microsoft’s Student 2006 is supposed to help students “get started” with all sorts of homework situations.

This must be the world’s longest URL.

NewsU is an interesting site. It provides free e-learning modules, aimed at journalists. Of course, I chose “Math for Journalists” to see what it was about. (Registration is simple and quick). Unfortunately, it is rather confusing to navigate (some links didn’t work as expected and it wasn’t always clear what the learner was supposed to [...]