Stephen's Untold Stories

Good things happen!

http://blip.tv/file/2614336

Guaranteed to provoke some serious conversation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8

The key word is, of course, “slowly.”

Smartphones now have hundreds of applications meant to educate kids — from graphic calculators to animation programs that teach spelling and phonics.

And while most public schools don’t allow the devices because they’re considered distractions — and sometimes portable cheating tools — some school districts have started to put the technology to use.

The key, educators say, is controlling the environment in which they are used.

In St. Mary’s, Ohio, a school district of 2,300 students is continuing a pilot program where third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are assigned PDAs, or personal digital assistants, for use as a learning tool in the classroom, and at home. They use applications created by a company called Go Know! to draw pictures and create sketches, journal and write essays, said Kyle Menchhofer, the district’s technology coordinator. Other applications create flash cards for spelling and math.

Students took the phones on a museum field trip where they took photos, uploaded them to a server where the teacher could view the assignment and wrote blurbs about what they saw.

Read the rest here.

That’s what this 13-year-old did. Very funny observations for those of us who grew up with the walkman.

When I wore it walking down the street or going into shops, I got strange looks, a mixture of surprise and curiosity, that made me a little embarrassed.

As I boarded the school bus, where I live in Aberdeenshire, I was greeted with laughter. One boy said: “No-one uses them any more.” Another said: “Groovy.” Yet another one quipped: “That would be hard to lose.”

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked.

In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

Read the full review here.

I am thoroughly satisfied with my G1.

Click the image for the full-sized version.

If you know of anyone with an autistic child, please forward this to them. It may save them thousands!

Leslie Clark and her husband have been trying to communicate with their autistic 7-year-old son, JW, for years, but until last month, the closest they got was rudimentary sign language.

He’s “a little bit of a mini-genius,” Clark says, but like many autistic children, JW doesn’t speak at all.

Desperate to communicate with him, she considered buying a specialized device like the ones at his elementary school in Lincoln, Neb. But the text-to-speech machines are huge, heavy and expensive; a few go for $8,000 to $10,000.

Then a teacher told her about a new application that a researcher had developed for, of all things, the iPhone and iPod Touch. Clark drove to the local Best Buy and picked up a Touch, then downloaded the “app” from iTunes.

Total cost: about $500.

A month later, JW goes everywhere with the slick touch-screen mp3 player strapped to his arm. It lets him touch icons that voice basic comments or questions, such as, “I want Grandma’s cookies” or “I’m angry — here’s why.” He uses his “talker” to communicate with everyone — including his service dog, Roscoe, who listens to voice commands through the tiny speakers.

It’s a largely untold story of Apple’s popular audio devices.

It is not known how many specialized apps are out there, but Apple touts a handful on iTunes, among them ones that help users do American Sign Language and others like Proloquo2Go, which helps JW speak.

The app also aids children and adults with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or ALS — even stroke patients who have lost the ability to speak, says its co-developer, Penn State doctoral student Samuel Sennott.

Using the iPhone and Touch allows developers to democratize a system that has relied on devices that were too expensive or difficult to customize, Sennott says. “I love people being able to get it at Best Buy,” he says. “That’s just a dream.”

He also says that for an autistic child, the ability to whip out an iPhone and talk to friends brings “this very hard-to-quantify cool factor.”

Link to article

I’d love to see some students who are doing things like this with iPhones or iPod touches. Be sure to check out the video down below.

Jorge Colombo drew this week’s cover using Brushes, an application for the iPhone, while standing for an hour outside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Times Square.

“I got a phone in the beginning of February, and I immediately got the program so I could entertain myself,” says Colombo, who first published his drawings in The New Yorker in 1994. Colombo has been drawing since he was seven, but he discovered an advantage of digital drawing on a nighttime drive to Vermont. “Before, unless I had a flashlight or a miner’s hat, I could not draw in the dark.” (When the sun is up, it’s a bit harder, “because of the glare on the phone,” he says.) It also allows him to draw without being noticed; most pedestrians assume he’s checking his e-mail.

There’s a companion application, Brushes Viewer, that makes a video recapitulating each step of how Colombo composed the picture.  Colombo leans heavily on the Undo feature: “It looks like I draw everything with supernatural assurance and very fast—it gets rid of all the hesitations.”

Colombo’s phone drawing is very much in the tradition of a certain kind of New Yorker cover, and he doesn’t see the fact that it’s a virtual finger painting as such a big deal. “Imagine twenty years ago, writing about these people who are sending these letters on their computer.” But watching the video playback has made him aware that how he draws a picture can tell a story, and he’s hoping to build suspense as he builds up layers of color and shape.

Link to article

Thanks to my dad for alerting me to this one!

Are you a PC? Then you’d better not go to the University of Missouri’s journalism school, where 99.5 percent of the students have Macs and incoming freshmen have just been told they’ll need an iPhone or iPod Touch as well.

Why? So they can play back lectures in their free time, according to Associate Dean Brian S. Brooks.

“Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” he told the Columbia Missourian, the campus newspaper. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”

In a conversation with FOXNews.com, Brooks said that any MP3 player could actually be used.

“You could use a Zune, for example,” he said.

But he said the Apple devices, which start at $200 apiece, were made official requirements for the benefit of students on financial aid.

“If it’s required, it can be included in your financial-need estimate,” he told the Missourian. “If we had not required it, they wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Brooks said the journalism school was stressing Apple devices to standardize software — lectures are downloaded for free from a special section of the iTunes Store — and because so many students either already had or wanted an iPhone or iPod Touch.

“There are about 50 other schools across the country that are doing this,” he said.

Link to article

Now THIS is really sweet. I already installed it on my iPod touch, and it works great!

This could mean a lot for schools that have already purchased iPod touches for their students. Now they don’t have to buy a separate device.

You may not have the latest $359 Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon.com, but if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, a new application will let you access much of the same content on your Apple device.

In a bid to increase its slice of the e-book market, the Seattle-based online retailer rolled out a free program Wednesday that brings several of the Kindle’s functions to the iPod and iPhone’s smaller screen.

The program, which can be downloaded from Apple’s online application store, lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read the same electronic books that Kindle owners can buy on Amazon.com. As with the Kindle, the iPhone app lets users change the text size on the screen, and add bookmarks, notes and highlights.

The application does not connect to the Kindle store, however, so users must access the Web browser on their iPhone, iPod or computer to buy the content. Users cannot read magazines and newspapers on the Kindle application, either.

If you happen to have a Kindle and an iPhone, Amazon‘s program will handily sync the two so you can keep your place in the same book on both devices.

Read the rest here.

Anybody else out there got one?

That’s what these students are doing in Houston.

Studying on your laptop is so 2007. A group of biology students at Houston Community College’s southeast campus just turns on iPhones.

“Instead of bringing your book to class, you bring your phone,” said Lisa Jackson, one of 15 students enrolled in Anatomy and Physiology II as part of a pilot project to deliver course work on Apple’s trendy smart phones.

Lifang Tien, a biology professor, and Roger Boston, who teaches computer science and business technology, received $100,196 from a fund created by HCC Chancellor Mary Spangler to encourage innovation, then used the money to buy phones and pay the monthly bills. Students have to give the phones back at the end of the semester.

In return, Tien and Boston are studying whether delivering instruction on a phone that can connect to the Internet anytime and anywhere makes a difference in how students learn.

Tien’s students like the convenience. Tiffany DeBurr Brewer has studied in her car while her three kids raced noisily around the house.

“I can study in my spare time,” she said. “I don’t have to lug a laptop around. It makes my life easier.”

Read the rest here!

I wonder what kind of music the soldiers listen to while they’re lining up the target.

A new application has been launched for the iPod touch to help gun users line up a clean shot at their target.

The BulletFlight app, which costs £6.99 to download from the iTunes store, has been developed by Runaway App to turn the iPod touch into a ballistics computer which the company says can provide “quick solutions in the field”.

Users can mount their iPod touch to their rifle, and then use the iPod’s touch-screen to tap in details about the wind conditions, ammunition type, distance to the intended target and even the wind speed.

he application features built-in profiles for three weapons – the M110 semi-automatic precision rifle, the KAC PDW, and the 14.5in SR16 rifle – although users can add more weapons into the app.

Link to article

Barak Obama is notorious for his Blackberry use, but he’ll likely have to give it up when he takes office. The main issue is security.

But there might be another option.

Fortunately for an enthusiastic e-mailer-in-chief, some handheld devices have been officially blessed as secure enough to handle even classified documents, e-mail, and Web browsing.

One is General Dynamics’ Sectera Edge, a combination phone-PDA that’s been certified by the National Security Agency as being acceptable for Top Secret voice communications and Secret e-mail and Web sites. Through three separate interchangeable modules, it works with Wi-Fi, GSM, or CDMA networks, and is dust-proof, waterproof, and rugged enough to survive repeated 4-foot drops onto concrete. Physically, it’s a chunkier second cousin to the Palm Treo 750, though with an additional LCD display below the keyboard.

The price is $3,350 with a two-year warranty, a princely sum that’s reflected in the Pentagon-worthy price tags for accessories: a simple adapter for a lighter plug costs $100. (Never again should you complain about how much your civilian analogue costs.)

The Sectera runs a mobile version of Microsoft Windows, including versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Windows Media Player. The NSA claims that the installed versions of Internet Explorer, WordPad, and Windows Messenger are good enough for data that’s classified at a level of Secret. Presumably the federal spooks have found a way to protect IE from the numerous security flaws that continue to plague the Internet’s most popular browser.

The NSA declined to comment on Monday.

Link to article

In a way this is sad, but it makes sense from a legal standpoint.

Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.

Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.

For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign.

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

Link to article

Better get used to it, administrators. Cell phones are here to stay.

Richfield High School once had a total ban on cell phones.

But Principal Jill Johnson said she started hearing confessions from teachers that they were just as guilty of sneaking a call during the day as their students.

Now, Richfield schools allow cell phones, just not during class. Johnson said that gives students a chance to show responsibility.

Students and staff at several schools say blanket bans are unenforceable. And it’s that sentiment that has many Minnesota schools tweaking their policies.

“What seems like the easy thing to do is to just say ‘no’ to it. ‘Put it away, I don’t ever want to see those cell phones in school,’ ” Johnson said while looking at her own two cell phones at her desk. “But the reality is they’re such a fundamental … that not having them is so awkward it doesn’t make sense.”

Link to article

Of course this was inevitable. As educators we need to always be planning on how we’re going to deal with this.

For many young Americans, technology has not only become an integral part of their everyday lives in the form of constant Internet access, cell phones and iPods, but it is also changing the way they cheat on tests, plagiarize papers and then share the how-to details. And educators are struggling to keep up with the latest tools and trends and reverse blase attitudes toward cheating that have spread like a viral video on YouTube.

Students enter classrooms these days with pockets, purses and book bags laden with techno-gadgetry. Music players, cell phones, cameras and computers are beginning to merge into do-everything, always-connected devices, like BlackBerry handsets or the Apple iPhone.

Today’s college and high school students also have attitudes that regard cheating in a much less negative light: Recent studies from the Center for Academic Integrity revealed that more than 70 percent of college students admit to cheating on a test or written assignment at least once while in school.

Link to article

Now we’re getting somewhere. Not only students, but TEACHERS get one.

A Chapel Hill middle school could become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys.

It’s still not clear how the iPod Touches would be used at Culbreth Middle School. And school officials know that students may use the iPod Touches more to download the new Jonas Brothers single than to tap the riches of human knowledge. But Principal Susan Wells says that to dismiss the technology as a distraction or a gimmick ignores today’s tech-driven world.

“It’s a world we better figure out, because we can’t ask our students to come into a classroom, put those things aside and sit in a row and think we’re interesting,” she said.

“We’re just not that interesting.”

If the project wins funding, Culbreth’s teachers, administrators and students during the next year will develop courses for which iPod Touches are central to the curriculum. Other schools could follow Culbreth’s model.

Early ideas include letting students get arts credit by taking online guitar lessons in which they can watch a video of a guitar instructor on their iPod and practice at home. Physical education teachers might give take-home fitness assignments for students to track their stats — calorie intake, number of sit-ups they can do in a minute, etc. — and create a podcast demonstrating certain exercises.

Link to article

Another one you must bookmark.

If you’re thinking that all your iPod can do is play music, think again. With a little ingenuity and guidance, you can turn your iPod into just about anything, whether it’s a remote control or a notepad. Read on to find more than 75 tutorials that will walk you through projects that will transform your iPod.

Link to site

Interesting news on the handheld assessment front.

Whatever educators collectively decide about the utility of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, one simple little device that received some notice during the conference’s last day may be on its way to delivering on its hype: the humble clicker. The small, handheld wireless input tools that resemble a miniature remote control have gradually found their way into high-tech classrooms over the past several years — especially in business-oriented fields — with some instructors swearing by them and others dismissing them as yet another needless gizmo.

But what if they’re not? Recent studies at Ohio State University, for example, found that students in physics classes making regular use of clickers — in quizzes, for example — earned final exam scores that were about 10 percentage points higher than those without. The gains also seemed to minimize differences between the sexes.

At the session, 34 percent of the audience said (through their clickers, of course) that they had used the devices either as students or as instructors. Another 24 percent had used them only as instructors, while an additional 24 percent had never used clickers at all. (The rest had never seen or heard of them before.) And, in a quick clicker survey, the audience was mainly (62 percent) from four-year colleges.

Link to article

Very cool story from New Mexico.

Students at a rural New Mexico school made a unique pledge last winter: Right hands raised, they promised to take care of their Zunes.

This past semester, nearly every one of the roughly 100 students at Fort Sumner High School was outfitted with the Microsoft media player, similar to Apple’s iPod, enabling them to watch videos and listen to recorded lectures created or recommended by teachers and fellow students. Fort Sumner High was one of two schools nationwide taking part in the project.

The students were encouraged to use their devices during class hours, on bus rides home, and on school trips. Teachers got a $400 bonus for coming up with lessons to identify 20 downloadable digital lectures that supported their lessons and to develop five of their own.

“My main hope is it’s going to save us lost class time,” said English teacher Pam Richards. “We are small, and the kids are involved in so many things.”

Link to article