Archive for December 8th, 2009

Forget keyboarding skills in the classroom. Here’s why…

December 8th, 2009
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According to KurzweilAI.net reporting on a Mayo Clinic research discovery: Brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen by merely focusing on a letter, with near 100 percent accuracy, Mayo Clinic and University of North Florida researchers have found. They used electrocorticography (ECoG), in which electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain in patients to record electrical activity produced by the firing of neurons.

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Single-atom transistor discovered bringing Qubit quantum computing closer #etc647

December 8th, 2009
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Single-atom transistor discovered

via tkk.fi

According to KurzweilAI.net: A working transistor whose active region comprises only a single phosphorus atom in silicon has been built by researchers from Helsinki University of Technology, University of New South Wales, and University of Melbourne.

The device uses sequential tunneling of single electrons between the phosphorus atom and the source and drain leads of the transistor. The tunneling can be suppressed or allowed by controlling the voltage on a nearby metal electrode with a width of a few tens of nanometers.

The researchers plan to use the spin degree of freedom of an electron of the phosphorus donor as a quantum bit (qubit). They were able to observe spin up and down states for a single phosphorus donor in a magnetic field for the first time–a crucial step towards the control of these states in realizing a qubit.

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Nao – a robot toy that sees, speaks, reacts to touch and surfs the web #etc647 future teachers?

December 8th, 2009
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Nao - he sees, can find a ball, recognizes different touches from humans and communicate v...

Aldebaran Robotics’ forthcoming Nao robot can see (via two cameras), react to touch, detect faces and shapes, avoid obstacles, surf the Web, and interact with other Naos. He can also speak (in English or French, so far) by reading out any file stored locally in his storage space or captured from a website RSS

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American History: “Growth of a Nation” animated atlas gr8 classroom technology #etc647 #etcnau

December 8th, 2009
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Google reinvents Mobile Era search deepening commitment to new modes by voice, location, & sight #etcnau #etc647

December 8th, 2009
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Check out this website I found at kurzweilai.net

Mobile learning is with us to stay. Distributed learning systems will focus on delivering instruction compatible with mobile lifestyles. Dupal offers simple plugin to convert any Drupal site to a smartphone friendly site. The network “is” the learning but only if the design is truly instructional and not merely informational.

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Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating Soldiers. Our future with Zombies not far off

December 8th, 2009
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Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating Soldiers

Click wired.com to read the detailed article. And we wonder what all the fascination is with Zombies in Hollywood?

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Congressional Mathmatics and health care illustrated at http://greenbananablog.org

December 8th, 2009
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A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it

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Congressional Mathmatics…

December 8th, 2009
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I rec’d this email today…

How many zeros in a billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the
word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it’s releases.

  1. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
  2. A billion minutes ago, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
  3. A billion hours ago was the Stone Age.
  4. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
  5. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our mind, let’s take a look at New Orleans. It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number…
what does it mean?

A. Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.

B. Or… if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787..

C. Or… if you are a family of four…
your family gets $2,066,012.

Now do the math yourself and figure out how much every man,
woman and child in the U.S. would get if we split among us,
the $800 Billion allocated for the Health-care bill*

*(which requires the formation of 118 new government agencies to manage).

How is your math? ;-)

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Free google doc spreadsheet template for research writing #etcnau Useful to synthesize your thoughts.

December 8th, 2009
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The beauty of this spreadsheet mapping tool* for writing papers is that you end up with all your major points at-a-glance and can truly synthesize your research. It also comes in handy if you have to defend your writing.

Copy and paste to your liking. Share as you like. This tool has saved me countless headaches when organizing literature reviews. Makes writing papers a breeze and revisiting them for a defense, much less stressful.

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Serious Games, Serious Games Engines, Custom eLearning and Simulations #etcnau

December 8th, 2009
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Watch closely as textbooks take on more gaming-like features to engage and motivate students to journey to the end of the course. We shouldn’t underestimate the pedagogical applications with this platform of interaction.

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