I am all for tech in education, as you all know. And I am for enhanced learning. So the tablet Pc’s sound great, and I would be the first to use them. But first, I want to hear it from someone other than the rep from the manufacturer. That’s Jim Vanides from HP in his blog.

Care to send me a classroomful  for beta testing? Thanks!

There’s a lot more to Dan Brown’s novel and Hollywood’s take on Angels and Demons. Tom Hanks character shares the same name (not accidentally) with Ambigrammer and type artist John Langdon. Drexel University’s professor in the College of Media Arts and Design is a self taught artist and logo designer, and happened to pique Dan Brown’s interest with his first publication on Ambigrams (Wordplay) in 1980.

I have Wordplay, and was fascinated with the creation of them. Here is an example from Mr. Langdon’s website:

Anna and Barry

Although I am not a fan of Dan Brown’s books nor the movies, I enjoy the visual treats of these Ambigrams. Here is another I found awhile back:

Princessbride

John Langdon’s Website is here

A must see for anyone who has been dragged through the compulsory school system and still has a bad taste in their mouths.

The Virtual Journalism Conference at Washington State University this week of April 10, 2009 may have glimpsed the future of global journalism in a brief documentary about an avatar-to-avatar news conference. The news conference, which took place in February in the virtual platform Second Life, gave eight Egyptian political bloggers a chance to directly question James K. Glassman, the public-diplomacy czar under former American President George W. Bush.

Interesting article by Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library, wherein she is worried about whether we’re saving enough—not enough money, but enough of the digital evidence of our times. In an essay in Sunday’s Observer, she  worries that whole chunks of national memory are being lost and that “historians and citizens of the future will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century.”

Are we loosing ourselves?

She sees two examples:

“At the exact moment Barack Obama was inaugurated, all traces of President Bush vanished from the White House website, replaced by images of and speeches by his successor. Attached to the website had been a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration – they may never know them now. When the website changed, the link was broken and the booklet became unavailable.

The 2000 Sydney Olympics was the first truly online games with more 150 websites, but these sites disappeared overnight at the end of the games and the only record is held by the National Library of Australia.”

So, what do you think? Are we being too hasty in removing material? Should we leave all web content up for posterity? Like old magazines in libraries, when do Web Sites cease to be relevant, and is the nature of the beast to always change/upgrade?

Paul Debevec, a research associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, has helped develop a holographic videoconferencing system. We all remember the special effects in the Star Wars  films. He demonstrated the science-fiction inspired system at the Army Science Conference in early December 2008.

The neat thing is, it uses uses off-the-shelf video projectors and a fast-spinning mirror to create the illusion of a 3-D image. View videos here.  

Some discussion about the merits of learning already surrounds virtual learning tools such as on-line instruction and video-conferencing, but are we willing to accept it more now that the instructor is closer to a 3 dimensional shape than a flat 2D moving image?

In this article from The Guardian UK Josh Silver, a professor of physics at Oxford University, finally took his dream 20 years to fruition as he created a remarkably simple pair of eye glasses. His goal is to provide 100 million pairs to the poorest people a year, reaching 1 billion in need. The mechanics are very simple, and easy to use.

“Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.”

Tthe Obamas and the Bidens have collected decades of experience at colleges and universities. Mr. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 until 2004, when he took office in the U.S. Senate. His wife, Michelle, has worked in the administration at the same university and is on leave from her job as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

The Bidens also have spent considerable time in post secondary education. For the past 17 years, Mr. Biden has taught as an adjunct professor at the Widener University School of Law. His wife, Jill, is an English instructor at Delaware Technical and Community College’s Stanton-Wilmington campus.

Will we see innovation in education come from the USA because of this? Not any more than usual. But look for a government that is run like a grad school: where there will be plenty of involved discussions. Then again, in Obama’s speeches in the run up to the election, he said he would like to see more innovation and creativity, and that’s not just for the energy sector, either.

Further to my previous article on controlling computers and special software (“Releasing the music in your head), comes another innovative way to help the disabled realize creativity with computers: by using one’s tongue.

Maysam Ghovanloo demonstrates the use of the Tongue Drive System

“The tireless tongue already controls taste and speech, helps kiss and swallow and fights germs. Now scientists hope to add one more ability to the mouthy muscle, and turn it into a computer control pad.”

Georgia Tech’s assistant professor Maysam Ghovanloo leads the team’s researchers in this Tongue Drive System. (via Yahoo news)

There has been some active talk about a “Virtual Girlfriend” create by Drew Burrows, a NYU student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show at Tisch School of the Arts. So you come home everyday to an empty bed. How lonely can it be? Lonely enough for Drew to create a Virtual Girlfriend 2-D virtual person, then project the image onto his bed using an infrared-sensitive light projection, to cuddle with. (The projection keeps her clothes on at all times).

See the rough video footage from drew.

It is interactive: it responds to human movements using an infrared sensor connected to a light projection: “Lie on your back, she snuggles up right next to you in a log position. Curl up in the fetal position, she spoons…Give her kiss on the check and she rolls over and buries her face in the pillow.

Although there are many projects out there dealing with empty beds, this is the first of its kind to be fully interactive in a human sense. Some of the controversy surrounds the fact that it is a virtual “girlfriend”, but as the video shows, there is also a woman in bed with the projection.

Drew’s website is here: 

http://drewburrows.com/

Another similar project, although earlier (1992): 

http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~sermon/dream/