“Clickers” or “Virtual Clickers”? 8 January, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, education, ICT in Education, technology, windows.Tags: clicker, education, student response
4 comments
For a few years now, Personal Response Systems (PRS) and Student Response Systems (SRS) have been making major inroads into classrooms and lecture halls, particularly in Universities and Colleges. These “clicker” systems literally put engagement, motivation, participation and instant feedback into the palm of each student’s hand.
Australia’s Digital Education Revolution? 1 June, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, children, education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts.Tags: Australia, Digital Education Revolution, ICT in Education
17 comments
NOT LONG after Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party was whisked into power in Australia after 12 years of conservative government, there were immediate and obvious differences that appeared. Rudd took no traditional “honeymoon” period, instead preferring to get straight to work on delivering his pre-election promises. One of these being the $1.2 billion “Digital Education Revolution“.
Games With A Purpose 17 May, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, education, games, Internet, Life.Tags: games, gwap, human computation, intelligence
8 comments
Humans compute very differently to computers. Knowledge, Intelligence and Wisdom are not terms often attributed to computers. The closest descriptors in the computer world are Data, Processors and Recursion. They’re just not the same.
Still Interested in a Class Blog? 22 April, 2008
Posted by jeopardygame in blogging, Brad & Phil, children, education, ICT in Education, Internet, Web 2.0.Tags: blogs, classroom, education, students
12 comments
If you’re still listening, I’ll assume you’re still interested in creating a class blog at your school. In part one, we concentrated on WHY teachers and schools should be blogging. In part two, we looked at WHAT had to be done to ensure student privacy and security. Now, in this third instalment of the class blogging series, we’ll look more closely at the HOW TO get started process.
Getting Started with Class Blogs 21 April, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in blogging, Brad & Phil, children, education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, technology, Web 2.0.Tags: blogs, classroom, education, schools, students, Web 2.0
7 comments
In the article “Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging“, I discussed the reasons and benefits of blogging in the classroom, but for the blogging-novice, there are student privacy, security and policy concerns that must be considered. Assuming you took notice of the content of that first article, this one will take you through the first steps of creating a class blog and is part of a series that will clarify and develop this process for teachers and schools starting out.
Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging 12 April, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in blogging, Brad & Phil, children, education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts.Tags: blogs, education, Life, students, teachers, Web 2.0
19 comments
MANY of our students leave school in the afternoon and go straight on-line as soon as they get home. They immediately start chatting with their friends on MSN, often holding down multiple conversations at the same time, seamlessly changing subjects and maintaining discussion threads as they swap from one chat window to the next. Their typing speed continually improves and in just one on-line session, they might type more text than they handwrite during their lessons at school in a whole day.
Brad & Phil’s Information R/evolution 25 November, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, education, film review, Half-Life 2, Humor, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, technology, Web 2.0.10 comments
In early 2007, I discovered an amazingly-constructed video on YouTube by Dr Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. The title of his video is “The Machine is Us/ing Us” and in under 5 minutes he managed to grab my attention like nothing else in recent times. If you’ve never seen this video, you really must- but you also must concentrate on it for full effect.
Microsoft Vista Overtakes Apple OSX in Only Eight Months 2 October, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in apple, Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, mac vs windows, vista, windows.Tags: apple, microsoft, osx, vista, windows
91 comments
Microsoft Vista was released publicly and globally on January 30, 2007 and it’s taken only eight months for this troubled operating system to overtake Apple’s computer flagships, the iMac and OSX. In fact, as the graph below indicates, percentage-wise, Apple has either been stagnant or declining over the past five months while in the same timeframe, Vista has shown steady if not strong linear growth throughout each survey.
Unique and Complex Passwords for Everything 19 August, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Internet, Life, passwords, security, technology.14 comments
When we were children, our “world” was a very small place. Everything that I knew was within a five-kilometer radius of my home. From time to time, I would catch a bus or a train that would take me out of my world, and into another. My little circular world was joined by a line to another small, temporary circular world when I went on holidays. While I realised that planet Earth was enormous, my world never got close to any of it. Then along came the Internet.
The Private Lives of Google Street View 3 June, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Earth, funny photos, Google Earth, Internet, Life, Political Correctness, Street View.32 comments
I believe Google wants to be ubiquitous. It’s the world’s favorite search engine, cataloging every nook and cranny of the Internet and boasts more than 380 million unique visitors every month. Google’s AdSense and AdWords are “widely recognized as the Web’s most efficient advertising vehicles”. It now owns the world’s most popular video-sharing site, YouTube as well as the already popular Google Video and it’s revolutionized understanding of the planet’s geography through the release of Google Maps and Google Earth. Fortunately for us, Google’s mantra is “Don’t be Evil”.
Creation Museum Madness… 28 April, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, creationism, Earth, God, heaven, hell, Life.245 comments
May 28, 2007: The intelligence of Man takes a giant leap backward, into the Middle Ages, with the opening of the “Creation Museum” in Petersburg, Kentucky where it seems not only is the Bible 100% correct, but so were The Flintstones. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable.
The Best Fool is an April Fool! 28 March, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in April Fools, Brad & Phil, jokes, Life, My Thoughts, pranks.17 comments
I was looking at a calendar the other day and realised April 1st is coming up again. I’m not usually the kind that plays pranks on others, but it reminded me of one day many years ago when I did exactly that on my family. Don’t worry, it’s nothing as lame (athough effective) as wrapping every item of a workmate’s office space with tinfoil as shown beautifully in this image, my prank took preparation and cunning. If you’d like to know more, read on…
Swing with Me… Please? 23 March, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, debnam, elections, iemma, Life, My Thoughts, NSW, Politics, voting.7 comments
Most democratic nations hold open elections regularly – usually every three or four years. Most democratic nations also only have two major parties vying to form government. As democratic nations mature, the two major parties tend to move from a traditional left-wing/right-wing battle to an almost converged state where on many platforms there is little to distinguish the parties.
OLPC: The Revolution Begins? 17 February, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, children, education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, OLPC, Politics.23 comments
In February 2007, the first of almost 2,500 “$150 Laptops” will be rolled out to school children in the poorest areas of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Rwanda and Cambodia. The ambitious “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project was first devised in January 2005 with the concept of producing an affordable laptop computer specifically for the poorest and most-remote children in the world. Just two years and several prototypes later, the impressive lime-green and white “Children’s Machine” dubbed the XO is almost ready for mass-production.
How Saddam Killed the Death Penalty… 5 January, 2007
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, Death penalty, education, Life, My Thoughts, Political Correctness, Politics, Saddam.19 comments
As Saddam was hanged and his images were flashed around the globe, the reverberations of opposition to the Death Penalty quickly followed. It is so ironic that it has taken the death of such a murderous tyrant to raise the howls of complaint over capital punishment. These were not protests to save Saddam. These were protests to make sure Saddam was the last “legal execution” carried out by modern Man.
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