Friday, November 26, 2010

Four months with an iPad

Little bit late this one. The reason is time. Just so much happening at the moment. Still, am happy to report that this little iToy is still a favourite tool of mine.

The awesome battery life is a huge plus. The ability to type a few notes is great - though I sometimes wonder just where the predictive text comes from - some the interpretations are bizarre. I have pretty much given up my Pulse Smartpen since becoming attached to this iPad. I record all notes from seminars or meetings directly into Pages and sync either via iTunes or DropBox with my other laptops.

I haven't looked to print anything - why would you when you've got the live document with you. I'm really please Google has finally brought a basic form of editing of Google Docs via iOS or Android. I can now create new documents on my iPad and iPhone without using Docs to Go - though Docs to Go still has more functionality.

I still think Feedler is good as an RSS reader for my Google Reader account.

The biggest draw back is the 3G network ... Last weekend we used the iPad when geocaching around the Miranda coast - the network performance was pretty poor even though the indicators showed full strength 3G.

So yes, the iPad is great. I've upgraded to iOS 4.2.1 and look forwardbto seeing if the multitasking is any good.

Stay tuned!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Just what is the point of the current curriculum in schools?

Conrad Wolfram gave a talk at TED in Oxford earlier this year. it's just been posted on the TED site. And wow, does it pose some big questions. If you are a maths teacher, you will likely form an immediate view of what he is saying. I don't think there is any middle ground here. You will either agree with him or you won't.

But there are bigger questions here too than just those pertaining to maths. The way in which we very likely approach many subjects in the school curriculum, for example. And the point about exams ... I think I've made this point several times in the past.

I've shown WolframAlpha to Year 12 students about to embark on their IB extended essay research over the past 12 months. What I find truly scary is not so much that they haven't seen WolframAlpha before, but that many of them still don't even know that there are search engines other than Google. And even scarier, that Google even has an advanced search tab, and worse, you can look through Google Books or Scholar.

The whole point of using computers for powerful things ... not trivial things ... comes out in Conrad's talk. (He makes reference to an online tutorial showing how to manually solve a problem.)

So, this is I think one of the better TED talks I've seen. It asks some serious questions. It hints at a solution. I wonder if you agree? I rate this talk up there with those of Hans Rosling and Ken Robinson, both of whom I have featured on this blog in the past.

So - take 17 minutes of your valuable time and have a look.