Blu-Ray Wins: But Is It Good For Consumers? (Hint: No!)
It’s over. The battle is won.
There will be one format for high-definiton DVDs and it will be… Blu-Ray.
But, is good news for the industry good news for consumers?
The CBC’s national technology correspondent Tod Maffin thinks not.
‘Step away from generic curriculum,’ Maffin advises teachers: Calgary Herald
North America’s mass model approach to education is failing kids because it ignores their unique learning styles, education experts told some of the 10,000 teachers gathered Thursday for a two-day Calgary teachers convention.
Individualized teaching, which builds on the interests and abilities of each child, is the only way to have all kids succeed in the classroom, teachers heard at the kickoff event.
CBC national technology correspondent Tod Maffin likens today’s education system to rock tumblers. Students are tossed in for 12 years and told what to learn and how to learn with a government mandated curriculum.
Those who learn in different ways or don’t conform are labelled failures.
“By government standards, I am, statistically speaking, a failure of the system,” said Maffin, who grew frustrated by being unable to study what interested him in high school. He said he dropped out.
In his late teens, Maffin learned about the world on his own in local libraries and later graduated from university.
He launched his own multimillion-dollar tech firm — which became a casualty of the dot.com bust — and spearheaded a successful broadcasting career.
“We are scraping away the real stone, the shape and the texture (in the education system). I know we have to have universal knowledge, but we have students who are crying out knowing what they want to do, and we need to do a better job at serving them,” Maffin said.
At a breakfast session, Maffin asked teachers to step away from generic curriculum and engage students in what they are interested in.
He wants kids to regain the joy of learning by having more educational play activities as well as the time and the tools needed to explore subjects on their own.
More about Tod’s presentation | Read the full article
AppleTV Take 2: Canadian First Impressions
After a delayed launch, Apple today pushed out the new version of the Apple TV. (Hat tip to John Biehler.)
Some things I don’t like:
- The “home” screen in Canada is just not pretty. In fact, it’s bare. That’s because the home screen uses images from movies available for sale/rent. But there are no movies available in Canada through Apple. {sigh} So Apple’s opening screen is stark and boring. You’d think they’d have seen this one coming and used album cover art or something.
- The Flickr integration is nice but doesn’t work! My Flickr URL is http://flickr.com/photos/tod/ but when I give it “tod” as my username, it gives me some other dude’s photos. Not even tracking down and using my secret Flickr ID number works.
- You can now add Podcasts to a list of favourites. But there’s no way to tell when a podcast you’ve favourited has been updated. You’ve got to manually check each one.
- You can’t tell whether a podcast is feeding video or audio (or both). That would have been a nice touch.
- You can’t subscribe to a full Podcasts series. Not in AppleTV nor in iTunes. (You can download episodes one at a time, but not add the Podcast feed to iTunes.) Considering you can subscribe to TV shows and have them appear in iTunes, this omission is odd and not particularly convenient.
- Still no way to rate songs/podcasts or add them to playlists.
I do rather like the new user interface — it’s a lot faster to move around in. There’s a screen that shows your current downloads… nice touch. It definitely needed an upgrade and this one’s not bad.
Learning in a Digital World: How Technology is Changing The Way Students Learn
Of all the presentations I give, I’m most happy to be speaking to teachers, school boards, and educators about how technology is changing how young people learn and how to meet their challenging and changing learning needs. (One of the more popular keynote speeches I’m asked to present is “The Problem With Rock Tumblers: Why North America’s Education System Is In Crisis… And How To Fix It.”
For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a new presentation for a client called “Learning in a Digital World: How Technology is Changing the Way Students Learn.”
It’s been fun to talk to educators, interview scientists, and dive into research around the brain’s cognitive development at the cellular level. Here are a few sample slides:
And the official text about it:
In a world where two thirds of kids spend more time in front of a computer than a television set, are we unknowingly re-shaping the learning patterns of children?Is living in a remote control world helping or hindering education?
What key things has our networked world already taught young people behind our back, and how kids are coping with learning in the hypermedia environment we’ve handed them.
In this thought-provoking 45-minute presentation, Tod will dive into the latest neurological research around cognitive development — and, using dozens of short videos and custom images, make it simple to understand.
You’ll fly through the brain’s learning centres and discover how the Internet, computer screens, and media multitasking are changing actual brain structures at the cellular level.
But I’m taking a break for a couple of hours. Been working more than six hours on it and it’s yielded less than ten minutes of content (I spend a lot of time on the slides themselves to try to use simple imagery to explain somewhat complicated data.)
If you know of an organization that might be interested in this presentation, please send them this and/or call me at +1.604.618.2861 or send a direct email.
Giving Your Computer a Second Life
Eventually, it’ll happen. Your computer will finally breathe its last byte and you’re now stuck with an expensive paperweight. But what to do with it now? It might be harder to get rid of than you think. Landfills won’t take them — even schools don’t want your old equipment!
The CBC’s computer guru Tod Maffin has with some less well-known ways to give your computer a second life.
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