Another Contest

I entered another image contest. This one is supposed to be a boring magazine cover.



The photo on the cover was a Creative Commons image I found on Flickr. Thanks Sklathill!

Hey, any magazine that has watched paint dry has to be boring, right?

Linkin Park, deviantART contest

I entered this contest a few days ago. I miss making images.

Here is one of the entries.

This was the one I made first, but didn't like it.

Not Lonely

I really like the composition of this photograph from the Scooter in the Sticks blog. The last photo of that post, click on it to get the full image.

It goes along with the author's practice of not riding in groups or often with others. If it was just the Scooter, it would seem lonely. The same if it was just the tree, but both together somehow says, to me at least, they are not lonely, just enjoying time that does not include anyone else.

Level Up, Not Grades

This article talks about the integration of games into education.

A professor at IU has decided to not give grades, but you need to level up your avatar to pass the class.

"Games and real life are colliding in unique ways. One professor at Indiana University, Lee Sheldon, doesn't give grades. Rather, students start as a level one avatar and level up through the class based on attendance and performance, like in a role-playing game. And the students' performance in class seems to indicate that the system works."

Interesting idea.

Millions of Dollars in your pocket

Hard to imagine when I was in high school that I would have a computer smaller than some wallets I have owned. Ok, I might have imagined it, but I read alot of Sci-Fi.

Then make an application for that tiny computer that lets me access images from the most expensive and highest quality space telescopes and it just boggles the mind.

Oh, and the application is free.

Truly amazing.

Remediating the Classroom

This seems like such a no-brainer, to update the way knowledge is taught from the knowledge gained over the last...hundred to two hundred years.

I think the perfect solution would be a device with a small screen that could be 'docked' to a larger screen, keyboard and other peripherals as needed. I just don't think carrying around a keyboard and large screen, especially for younger kids.

Such use-cases could be a large touch or stylus screen for art focused lessons, digital instruments for music, the advance of digital microscopes (how cheap are they now?)

With the availability of inexpensive and task specific hardware, it would just need a coherent vision and software to make this possible.

Yes, I am an optimist.

Apple's iPad: Newton the Next Generation

The new Apple iPad is like the Apple Newton, but modern. The only feature I would want is handwriting recognition.

I was glad to see the art application they demoed, but think a dual input (such as touch and pen, like Wacom's graphics pads) would have been killer.