Digital Beachcomber

"For most early adopters (and all Mac users), the browser is increasingly the only operating system..."

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:51:38 +0100

“For most early adopters (and all Mac users), the browser is increasingly the only operating system that matters anyway. Windows isn’t really that relevant any more just because of the increasing utility of online applications like Google Docs, which competes with Microsoft Office. Vista could be perfect and it still wouldn’t matter. The fact that it is flawed only makes the situation worse.”

- Gartner Says Vista Will Collapse. And That’s Why The Yahoo Deal Must Happen

"But little Timmy can’t do it. He never could. And yet when you talk to comic book creators,..."

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:56:44 +0000

“But little Timmy can’t do it. He never could. And yet when you talk to comic book creators, they’ll tell you that they got started by drawing copies of other peoples’ work. Musicians start by playing the music they love. Painters start by copying other painters. Filmmakers try to recreate the effects and scenes they’ve been inspired by in big-screen releases.”

- It’s time to overhaul copyright law | Technology | guardian.co.uk

"It makes me shutter to remember those precious National Geographic Magazines that I mutilated with..."

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:47:35 +0000

“It makes me shutter to remember those precious National Geographic Magazines that I mutilated with scissors in hand, so that I could bring a mere handful of pictures and maps into my classroom, only two decades ago.”

- …A Partnership Made in Photo Heaven | 2¢ Worth

"It is not the uneven quality of facts found on the internet that is to blame for uninquiring minds,..."

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:57:39 +0000

“It is not the uneven quality of facts found on the internet that is to blame for uninquiring minds, it is the way they have been taught to think - and the way their written work is marked.”

- Reference books? Give me Wikipedia | Magnus Linklater - Times Online

"I didn’t have any Scrabble sets when I started playing Scrabulous a few months ago. Since I..."

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:30:26 +0000

““I didn’t have any Scrabble sets when I started playing Scrabulous a few months ago. Since I got hooked on that I have bought two sets.””

- BBC NEWS | Technology | Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous

"The one click I am making less and less is the one that turns my TV on!"

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:40:44 +0000

“The one click I am making less and less is the one that turns my TV on!”

- The Obvious?: “One click away from danger”

"Perhaps he’s just afraid that a Nigerian schoolchild, empowered by the technology entrusted to..."

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:41:13 +0000

“Perhaps he’s just afraid that a Nigerian schoolchild, empowered by the technology entrusted to them, will take him to task for his patronising attitude, or perhaps even turn out to be a better journalist.”

- BBC NEWS | Technology | Give me rice, but give me a laptop too

"like quotations. Usually because the author manages to say in fewer or more descriptive words what..."

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 10:37:28 +0000

“like quotations. Usually because the author manages to say in fewer or more descriptive words what I’ve been thinking”

- A couple of insightful quotations… at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

"The bedroom of the average connected young person today is a much more powerful learning environment..."

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:38:51 +0000

“The bedroom of the average connected young person today is a much more powerful learning environment than most classrooms in most schools.”

- Miscellany

"You get £150 million for new buildings but you get absolutely zero to develop a change agenda. And..."

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:13:58 +0000

““You get £150 million for new buildings but you get absolutely zero to develop a change agenda. And that is my biggest fear for BSF nationally.”

- Merlin John Online Ltd

"However, most of those countries that have a better education participation rate amongst 17 and..."

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 10:29:26 +0000

“However, most of those countries that have a better education participation rate amongst 17 and 18-year-olds have achieved this without compulsion, never mind sanctions.”

- BBC NEWS | Education | Waving a big stick at teenagers

"They don’t do much, but that doesn’t stop RFID tags from being incredibly useful, in..."

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:04:44 +0100

“They don’t do much, but that doesn’t stop RFID tags from being incredibly useful, in ways that range from the mundane to the sinister. They’re like bar codes on steroids, because you can read them at a distance. They’re getting so cheap that manufacturers basically need a reason not to put them in things.”

- Tag, You’re It - TIME

"As a school administrator I see that funding and teaching of new technology almost always limits..."

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:05:16 +0100

“As a school administrator I see that funding and teaching of new technology almost always limits students to superficial use and shallow achievement, through two constraints. First, student use of technology is severely limited in time, perhaps to one class period per week. Second, students are not permitted to go beyond the (usually) superficial knowledge of their teachers — knowledge that is often acquired by teachers only recently in a few hours of training, and presented in cookbook fashion”

- Economist.com

"I still really have no idea what it means to learn something. Are we talking about changes that..."

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:36:27 +0100

“I still really have no idea what it means to learn something. Are we talking about changes that happen in the brain? Are we talking about retaining facts to be able to spew them out later? Is learning a change in attitudes towards other people? Is learning having more skills and abilities? At different points, I guess learning is probably all of these things, but I was greatly troubled by the fact that this presenter equated learning with retention.”

- Remote Access

"The good news is that my daughter’s teachers are at last beginning to use computers. The bad..."

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:12:07 +0100

“The good news is that my daughter’s teachers are at last beginning to use computers. The bad news is they are using them to make PowerPoint presentations.”

- Pointing in the Wrong Direction

"we were treated to a shooting star every minute or two and even tracked a few satellites across the..."

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:08:36 +0100

“we were treated to a shooting star every minute or two and even tracked a few satellites across the night sky. Better than TV, that’s for sure!”

- BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Meteor shower: Your comments

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education. We want another class of persons, a very..."

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:31:24 +0100

““We want one class of persons to have a liberal education. We want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” So said Woodrow Wilson in 1909 to a group of trainee teachers, when he was Principal of Princeton University. Wilson, of course, was a child of his time”

- John Connell: the blog » Blog Archive » Values and the Future of Education

"one of the best-kept secrets of Mac OS X is that it includes a number of astoundingly powerful..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:56:32 +0100

“one of the best-kept secrets of Mac OS X is that it includes a number of astoundingly powerful digital signal processing plug-ins, including a 31-band graphic equalizer, a compressor, a limiter, and high-pass and low-pass filters. If you’ve used GarageBand you may have noticed these effects, but they are also available to any AudioUnits-savvy sound application - and that includes Audio Hijack Pro. And AudioUnits are not the only flavor of plug-in that Audio Hijack Pro can handle. It has its own plug-in format, called 4FX, and comes with nearly two dozen functions, good mostly for adjusting gain and balance. Plus it recognizes LADSPA plug-ins, a format originating on Linux; many free LADSPA plug-ins are available, and a handful come with the program. Finally, Audio Hijack Pro accepts VST plug-ins, many of which are both commercial and free.”

- TidBITS: Why Go Pro (Audio Hijack Pro, That Is)

"Here’s an area I know very little about: Classic Opera. I am familiar with some of the..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:36:41 +0100

“

Here’s an area I know very little about: Classic Opera. I am familiar with some of the well-known tunes — incredibly moving, over-the-top tunes many of us have heard without knowing their sources — so that’s pretty much what I’ve assembled here. They may not be the definitive performances, or in some cases they may be, but they’re all pretty grand. In many cases these are old recordings, so the quality of the recording will vary, but the emotion is more or less consistently pedal-to-the-metal.

Visit the site and have a listen

”

- Radio DavidByrne.com

"To me, the Italians and French excelled at incorporating elements of regional music into their..."

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:35:13 +0100

“To me, the Italians and French excelled at incorporating elements of regional music into their productions. I believe I hear elements of Neapolitan song in Verdi. They were the popular music of the day and the audiences were rowdy and noisy — you could eat, drink and probably fornicate in the theaters at that time. Farmers and fishermen sang these tunes in fields and bars — and so can we.”

- Radio DavidByrne.com