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This is an interesting story about a bunch of grade 9 to 12 students who got in deep trouble for changing passwords and otherwise messing with the security of their laptops in a school laptop programme: “Kutztown 13″ (from Wired.com). There is a dilemma about giving students open access to the Web – should they [...]

I noticed some hits to my site from Internet Explorer 7, which is now in “beta 1″ release. According to the IE team leader’s blog, IE7 will try to address the more serious standards issues. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, Internet Explorer does not conform to many of the browser standards. [...]

The worst hurricane in US history has left a mess in southern US states. Very few scientists are now denying that global warming is happening – the jury is still out on exactly what is causing it. But surely we should be doing all we can to prevent it – and the world’s greatest polluter [...]

Google Earth is brilliant. I found it a totally immersive experience ‘travelling’ around the world. I checked out things like my hometown (seeing what the new owners have done to our old house) and the other places I called home in Australia. It was also good to see a satellite view of places where I [...]

This article about online testing in Oregon has holes in it that you could drive through: “Online testing helped raise scores” [Unfortunately, the article no longer exists.]. At least the article has… State officials attribute the gains in part to the use of a home-grown, web-based testing service When will people realise that: Education is [...]

The sub-title for this British book by John Davitt is: “Accelerated Learning Meets ICT” (Network Educational Press, 2005). The main themes of this book are: The physical learning environment is crucial, and IT tools, if used properly, can enhance these spaces Schools are using outdated factory/office/typing pool models for classrooms The use of IT has [...]

Finally a math handwriting recognition software! For years I have been wondering why it is that you can input Chinese characters using a digital pen and it converts it to ‘nice’ electronic characters, but you can’t do the same with math? Microsoft’s Equation Writer, which comes with the Education Pack on a Tablet PC, does [...]

Came across this software just now: MathTalk. It combines Dragon Naturally Speaking and Scientific Notebook so that you can create mathematics on SNB using your voice. It also allows a braille translation. Their demos look surprisingly like my math video efforts with SNB.

This is part of an ad for an investment company: A lot of people hate mathematics – and this kind of advertisement helps to perpetuate that hate When mathematics is taught in a much more practical, applied and hands-on manner, and when we let computers (or calculators) do more of the tedious algebra, then we [...]

I would love to see a world which is not so dependent on oil. The Toyota Prius is a very interesting possibility for the end of such nonsense. I had the pleasure of driving the Prius a few times recently. It has an electric motor (which doubles as a generator when the car is slowing [...]