Stephen’s Untold Stories

Very nice!

Hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving!

• Wi-Fi Causes Autism?
• Residential wifi proliferates
• Wireless provider criticises pollies’ fibre plans
• 3G iPhone rumours return
• AT&T Offers Samsung Phone With Napster Mobile
• Google Mulls Bid for Wireless Spectrum
• Philly Wi-Fi network hits snags, delays

Now I want to do some traveling to see these.

The mysterious “Relámpago del Catatumbo” (Catatumbo lightning) is a unique natural phenomenon in the world. Located on the mouth of the Catatumbo river at Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela), the phenomenon is a cloud-to-cloud lightning that forms a voltage arc more than five kilometre high during 140 to 160 nights a year, 10 hours a night, and as many as 280 times an hour. This almost permanent storm occurs over the marshlands where the Catatumbo River feeds into Lake Maracaibo and it is considered the greatest single generator of ozone in the planet, judging from the intensity of the cloud-to-cloud discharge and great frequency. The area sees an estimated 1,176,000 electrical discharges per year, with an intensity of up to 400,000 amperes, and visible up to 400 km away. This is the reason why the storm is also known as the Maracaibo Beacon as light has been used for navigation by ships for ages.

Here is the entire list.

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The good thing about this study is that it examines the impact of the technology over a longer period of time than most previous studies.

In Key Stage 2 maths, average and high attaining boys and girls who had been taught extensively with the interactive whiteboard made the equivalent of an extra 2.5 to 5 months’ progress over the course of two years.

In Key Stage 1 science, there was improved progress for girls of all attainment levels, and for average and high attaining boys.

In Key Stage 1 English, average and high attaining pupils benefited from increased exposure to interactive whiteboards.

Link to report

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In December of 1992 I was living in Savannah when I decided to make a trip to the Humane Society to get a kitten. The lady there told me that this calico kitten had been found wandering along Bay Street and needed a home. They had named her Stephanie, but I took her home and decided that I would shorten her name to Steffi, in honor of the great Steffi Graf.

Earlier today I had to take Steffi and have her put to sleep. I’ve had other cats, but Steffi outlasted them all. She was a great cat for almost 15 years, and I will miss her.

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I’m sure I’m one of countless others who are glad to see these results.

“Telecommuting has mostly positive consequences for employees and employers,” according to a press release from the American Psychological Association. The release summarizes the findings of a paper from Journal of Applied Psychology that performed a meta-analysis of 46 different studies of telecommuting over the years. According to the paper’s authors, the evidence shows that:

• Telecommuting has more positive than negative effects on employees
• Telecommuting has more positive than negative effects on employers
• Performance was not adversely affected by working at home
• Careers were not likely to suffer from telecommuting

You can read the entire report here.

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This is a total embarrassment.

In an episode that has embarrassed the Department of Education, thousands of flawed testing booklets forced the invalidation of United States reading scores on an international exam administered without major mishap in 56 other countries.

The contractor that printed the faulty exams for the government is reimbursing it $500,000, government officials said yesterday. But the department admitted it had not proofread the tests.

“I’m really upset about this,” said Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the department. “It’s a big embarrassment.”

The problem came on a test known as the Program for International Student Assessment that allows students’ proficiency to be compared with that of their international peers. It was administered to 5,600 American 15-year-olds last fall, as well as to students in the 30 member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and in 27 less developed countries. Scores are scheduled for release next month.

Link to article

Almost Thanksgiving!

• AirDefense Raises Retail Wireless Security Concerns
• Evolution of Mobile VoIP
• EarthLink may exit Wi-Fi
• Wireless links give businesses an option
• TV spectrum opening for wireless devices
• CBS Giving Free Wi-Fi to Manhattan

Here are some incredible photos taken this year. Here is a link to the complete gallery.

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Good and bad news here.

American students even in low-performing states like Alabama do better on math and science tests than students in most foreign countries, including Italy and Norway, according to a new study released yesterday. That’s the good news.

he bad news is that students in Singapore and several other Asian countries significantly outperform American students, even those in high-achieving states like Massachusetts, the study found.

“In this case, the bad news trumps the good because our Asian economic competitors are winning the race to prepare students in math and science,” said the study’s author, Gary W. Phillips, chief scientist at the American Institutes of Research, a nonprofit independent scientific research firm.

The study equated standardized test scores of eighth-grade students in each of the 50 states with those of their peers in 45 countries. Experts said it was the first such effort to link standardized test scores, state by state, with scores from other nations.

Link to article

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Beautiful photos from a Japanese moon probe.

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Good news from Maine!

Maine’s pioneering program to give every middle school student a laptop computer is leading to better writing, according to a new study. Despite creating a language all their own using eMail and text messages, students are still learning standard English, and their writing scores have improved on a standardized test since laptop computers were distributed, the study says.

Moreover, the students’ writing skills improved even when they were using pen and paper, not just a computer keyboard.

“If you concentrate on whether laptops are helping kids achieve 21st-century skills, this demonstrates that it’s happening in writing,” said David Silvernail, director of the Maine Education Policy Research Institute at the University of Southern Maine.

Link to article

Still enjoying the cooler fall weather down here!

• iPhone’s European debut muted
• Sprint Ends Clearwire Pact
• Software turns GPS phone into ‘emergency beacon’
• RIM Offers Cheaper Wireless Push E-Mail To SMB Market
• Google Enters the Wireless World

I’ve played in the ALTA tennis league for 10 years now, and I finally got to play on a team that won the city championship. We didn’t lose a single match in any of our four playoff wins!

ALTA has been around for 36 years and now has about 80,000 members.

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Not not sure there is much of a story here, but it’s making news in some circles.

In the latest twist to a storyline that has surfaced previously during the presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) inspector general says he will review whether federal money is being spent inappropriately on educational technology sold to schools by a company founded by Neil Bush, the president’s brother.

Based on reporting by eSchool News, there appears to be no evidence that administration officials have had any influence over school districts’ decisions to buy products from the company, Ignite! Learning.

In an interview with eSchool News, the Ignite! founder suggested the extra scrutiny given to his company is largely politically motivated.

CREW contends school districts are using federal dollars inappropriately to purchase technology from Austin, Texas-based Ignite! Learning, which Neil Bush founded and chairs. The group asserts there is no proof the company’s products are effective and claims that schools in at least three states are using the products mainly as a result of political considerations.

Link to article

I’m very glad to see this.

Google Docs has teamed up with Weekly Reader’s “Writing for Teens” magazine, a Readers Digest-owned classroom publication, to help teachers instruct on the value of peer revision. When I was a kid, peer revision meant pairing off in class and taking a red pen to my classmate’s printed document. Now it means hunching in front of a computer and logging onto Google Docs, where the application does all of the tracking of revision history for you.

Link to article

This is very cool. Here is what it showed for Georgia when I tried it.

Of that list, I do listen a lot to The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, and U2.

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Does this remind anybody of the movie Minority Report?

Beginning Dec. 1, the Nashville, Tenn., public school system will become what is believed to be the first school system in the country to implement face-recognition security cameras to spot intruders in its schools.

Students, teachers, and school staff will have their pictures taken and uploaded into the system, so the cameras will recognize their images. When an unfamiliar person enters the building, and the camera cannot match that person’s face to a photo stored in its database, an alarm will sound.

MNPS has had security cameras in its schools for the past eight years, said Steve Keel, the district’s director of school security. But the face-recognition technology came to Keel’s attention after a district employee attended a conference and saw the system from Florida-based Cross Match Technologies.

While the face-recognition system can be installed several ways, Keel said he thinks the district will follow Cross Match’s recommendation to buy the type of camera it suggests. That camera is called an image quality indicator, or IQI, and is an IP-based camera.

Link to article