Flabbergasting

I know this is probably not ideal for a blog entry but I literally have no words to describe this video other than flabbergasting!...

Brainwaves control computers

How would you like to pay? cash? card? or fingerprint?

I came across a piece of news (on the BBC website) about customers in Germany being able to pay in shops with their fingerprints. The journalist explains at the start of the film that your fingerprints will need to be registered in order that you can use them as a sort of debit card, although he doesn't explain exactly how this works. This does have obvious benefits in that you can't lose your fingerprints like you can money or cards, and fraud would be quite difficult unless spy thriller films are to be believed.

Watch the video here

I decided to find more articles about payment by fingerprint and there are apparently some branches of the Co-op around Oxford which use this technology:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/4784744.stm

I am rather sceptical as to whether this is actually real, but if not it is rather scary; science fiction becoming reality.

I do wonder about the last part of the article regarding the Oxford Co-ops:

Builders could have problems because the manual work wears down their fingerprints and surgeons face similar problems because of all the hand-washing they do.

Can you really wear you fingerprints away through excessive handwashing and manual labour? I feel this needs more investigation.

Image from BBC news website. Address above.

Tackling bullying online

With the creation of social networking and sharing websites (YouTube and Facebook for example) came a new platform for bullying. It has been widely documented that cyber-bullying is now quite prevalent in our society with mobile phones being used as the filming tools for such attacks (be they verbal or physical). The videos are then uploaded on these sites for literally the whole world to see. This is quite clearly very wrong, but with everything else adapting and changing to keep up with new developments then it should have been anticipated that bullying would too. I came across this news article about an attempt to combat cyber-bullying by YouTube:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7098978.stm

I had a look at the actual campaign on YouTube and I have to say that I found it really uninspiring, quite dull and not very useful. There is a myriad of "celebrities" talking about the Beatbullying campaign and about their views on bullying in general. Most of the clips shows very stilted people talking in monotone voices and not really making any effort to highlight the problem. It seems that they are simply reading off cuecards and the overall impression is of busy people who have taken a few minutes out of their schedules to "support" this campaign and to be honest, I don't personally believe that they believe or feel greatly about the cause. Putting "famous" (I invert it as I didn't recognise half of these people, though children probably will!) people on the front of these campaigns doesn't necessarily give them any weight, and it is definitely not a solution.

The video

Using ICT over the past 2 weeks

Apart from checking my email account, searching for online journals and creating Word documents I have not really used computers over the past two weeks. I only really use my mobile phone for making/ receiving calls or sending/receiving text messages and often forget that I have camera and web browsing facilities on there. These factors have confirmed a long held belief of mine, that I'm not someone who is very reliant nor indeed particularly enticed by technology. I do not need to have the latest, fastest, biggest (or smallest as in most cases with new technologies) piece of equipment available. I am not saying that I do not enjoy using the technology I have got but that if I did not have it, then I wouldn't feel lost or lacking.

However, there is one advantage I have noticed about the use of ICT on this course and that is uploading our ICT work onto EPS. This process feels a lot less cluttered than the mountains of physical paperwork we need to keep for other subjects. Whilst at a previous job I would frequently be told that we were now a paper-less society where every task was carried out on the computer, at the same time as being told that I needed to make a hard copy (and by that they meant on paper of course) of everything I had just done on the computer; twice the work for half the success.

I feel that if we really want to be a paper-less society then we should just bite the bullet and go for it, no more second copies to be housed in filing cabinets the length of the room.

I would need to draw the line at books though; they are designed to be made of paper and no matter how cleverly engineered e-books may be they will never be able to replicate opening a new book for the first time, the sound of pages turning and a wonderful array of bookshelves brimming with paper- and hardbacks. I will say the same for newspapers, I can only tolerate reading a very short newspaper article online, I would much rather have a real one on the table in front of me.

Image from http://www.eximiousbooks.com/cgi-bin/exb455/index.htmlsbooks.com/cgi-bin/exb455/index.html

Mobile phones in schools

We have discussed this briefly in an ICT session and also in a bit more depth on the discussion board on blackboard. I have just read an article in The Teacher (NUT magazine) about this issue and it seems to be a current theme concerning teachers. The article is made up of three emails/letters sent in by teachers detailing their thoughts about mobile phones in schools. Two of these teachers talk about the problems they have encountered with pupils having phones in schools, while the third suggests a novel way of encouraging children to keep their phones turned off in lessons:

At the end of the class (as long as pupils have resisted using their mobiles) the teacher writes something up on the board which reinforces something from the lesson. Children get mobiles out and, as quick as they can, copy out this message in text speak.

The fastest few get points for the 'text league table' display in the classroom (children love seeing their name on display in a football style league table) and winner at the end of term gets a small top-up mobile gift voucher.

This is quite a novel idea and I can see how it could work with children in a certain age range(upper KS2, lower KS3). Banning children from having their phones at school may not necessarily work but allowing them to use them in this way shows that the teacher respects their ability to be responsible which would hopefully have a positive effect on the pupils' attitude to using their phones at school.

I think teachers are going to have to come up with ideas like this as the technology children have access to develops further, and we know that the use of ICT in schools is becoming increasingly important.

(Article can be found in November issue of The Teacher, p.45)

Technology

The use of different technologies is being embraced in schools (from what I've seen). We are encouraging children to explore the computers, cameras, phones etc which surround them promoting it as a useful experience which will enhance their learning capabilities and make them open to future developments. This is fine, and something I agree with due to the way the technological world is changing and expanding, but at what cost to the natural world? I do my (little) bit for the environment (recycling, turning lights off when leaving a room etc) and I'm not one to get into lengthy discussions about our carbon footprint or berate people who still receive their bank statements in the post rather than via email. It is fair enough to use less paper when we can do things electronically, but is using all this technology really much better and less damaging? I came across this photo and it had quite a sobering effect. This is what the earth looks like at night. According to the website it is made of a composite of many photos (obviously as we all know that every country doesn't experience night at the same time) and I think it is quite powerful. The image was taken in 2000, I wonder how much of a change the last 7 years has made.

This is the website

IWBs

This being our placement week I thought I would take advantage and familiarise myself with the IWB. The majority of the activities seemed quite useful if a bit simple, and there were a few which didn't seem as though they would actually enhance learning in any way. The writing tool was what I wanted to practice with most and, as I suspected, it proved to be rather tricky as I had to make sure to position myself in such a way that I didn't cast a shadow on what I was writing, that my writing was level and legible and that I didn't blind myself with the projector bulb! Needless to say my practising was done when the children had gone home! After 45 minutes though I became quite confident in using the programmes available although I will still have to work on where I stand, perhaps if the projector was somewhere else or the board at an angle it might make a difference.

Lessons in excellence

Feel much better about excel following the last ICT session we had, it answered the questions I had and any doubts have now gone. I shall try and practice with it to make sure that I'm totally confident. Still a bit rusty with the graphs but that will come with time.