Comments (0) Scala & Kolacny Brothers – Use Somebody
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Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs (1955 – 2011).
The Eagles – The Last Resort
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Don’t Be Evil was the motto that Google founded itself upon. Yet with it’s new “Email Intervention” initiative, Google is resorting to inciting mob mentality in the masses in order to expand their market. After all, what better way to gain more customers that to ravenously turn them on each other. What’s worse, is that this does nothing to build Google’s reputation or market share. The simple fact is that Gmail is a fantastic product in and of itself (I very much love it and share it myself), and should not have to be mandated down from the gods. It’s a terrible thing when a good idea is forced down the throats of the masses for whom it may or may not be helpful.
This situation, while not perfectly so, seems slightly analogous to the current LAUSD initiative called Public School Choice. While the idea is certainly solid, it gets forced down from on high, with only moderate reflections about the nitty-gritty details. What should be a process that inspires collaboration, out-of-the-box thinking, and innovative design, has become a process of mudslinging, intimidation, and politicking, so that, like Google’s Email Intervention, the folks on the ground simply turn on each other, rather than dialoguing, rather than collaborating, and rather than working together toward a common solution, whether it’s email or student achievement.
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They’ve done it. A robot teacher.
At least the version above is not as frightening as this one:
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Marina & the Diamonds – I Am Not a Robot
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Tuesdays represent “professional development” here at Cochran Middle School, which means our students are dismissed early and teachers have meetings from 1:45pm until the end of the day at 3pm. For years, this has often meant sitting through whole group meetings that have involved presenters reading PowerPoint slides:
Thankfully, here in the math department, I’ve got a number of colleagues who know how to use PowerPoint correctly, including a colleague who gave a 30 minute professional development today to the math department on homework policies that encourage completion. He did it right. No reading bullets. Lots of visuals. Only relevant text. Simple, yet meaningful data (and yes, the above screenshot was from his presentation).
Bam! Successful presentation.
Readers, what’s been the best PowerPoint presentation you’ve ever seen? What’s the worst?
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So I’ve mostly moved to the Cloud after migrating from the wonderful Microsoft Outlook to web-based Gmail.
Yet as many users have been finding out recently, cloud computing has its drawbacks. This weekend over 150,000 Gmail user lost all the data from their accounts, and although their accounts have now been completely restored, the experience has taught the rest of us to be sufficiently prepared for the reality that backing up our Gmail accounts is equally as important as backing up our hard drives (which I’ve definitely reaped the benefits from).
Solution for me? Download the free Thunderbird Client, and perform weekly backups to it via POP. (Step-by-step directions here). Sweet. Don’t be evil.
Plus, another excuse to play a great Rolling Stones song.
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The Rolling Stones – Get Off My Cloud
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No surprise, Watson won (or maybe Andy Richter did). And despite the fact of the big computer’s dominance, I’m still in awe over how dominating all these little computers in our pockets are. The latest smartphone app that has me headed toward existential breakdown is one that I downloaded last night, called Sleep Like An Droid. I’ve found most other apps out there do a great job at entertaining/informing/organizing, but the fact that one does it’s best work while I’m literally unconscious is a bit unnerving.
Sleep Like An Droid (pun intended…thanks again, you geeky developers) is an app that you start right when you go to bed, you set your phone on your mattress, and as you sleep, it monitors for restless movements that you make during the night, giving you a nice graphic representation of your night’s sleep the following morning. Not only this, but setting the alarm will trigger it to go off during a “light sleep” cycle that it senses you are in an easily wake-able state. Thus waking you up at an ideal time to have you feeling refreshed.
The results so far? After one night’s use, I did in fact feel a bit refreshed, although I’m not so sure it’s from the original wake time, or the fact that I hit the snooze button four times today.
Yesterday I stepped into the 21st century and ditched my ancient Palm Centro dumbphone in favor of HTC’s brand new Evo Shift 4G, not so much for the particular hardware that the phone offers, but for the operating system it sports, Google’s Android.
To celebrate, I’m showcasing several different versions of the Radiohead classic “Paranoid Android” in honor of the new technology. My goals here are two-fold: first, to showcase some great musicians my readers have not perhaps heard of yet, and second, to convince you to throw out your iPhone and buy one with Android.
Fleetwood Mac – Second Hand News
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Google already owns most of my soul, and most likely, some of yours. Yet, one more of the ways in which Skynet Google makes itself, yet again, incredible useful is its underhyped, little-known, yet ultra-powerful “Google Alerts” application. With a few quick clicks, one can be instantly notified anytime an article, blog entry, or even comment regarding virtually any topic is published on the web.
For example, just this evening, I learned that a USC grad student has just published a brief article on our professional development at Cochran Middle School. I’ve also learned that the HTC EVO Shift 4G has likely gained FCC approval, making it one step closer to coming to market. And I’ve also learned that my alma mater was just ranked highly in a new college-rankings magazine article.
All very simply done with Google Alerts set up for “Cochran Middle School”, “HTC EVO 4G”, and “Wheaton College”. I could even see the potential usefulness of teachers who want to stay on the cutting edge of conversations that are happening nation-wide, for instance “value-added”, or “public school choice”, or “fraction activities”.
Go nuts.
E.L.O. – Telephone Line
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For as “techy” as some people claim that I am, the truth is that I am one of the “Late Adopters” of new technologies, as can be evidenced that I did not even own a cell-phone until 2004, or even my own laptop until 2006.
I’m finally about to step into the modern world in approximately two months when my Verizon contract expires and I am “free” to adopt one of many permutations of Smartphones, Operating Systems, and potentially new carriers.
Let’s keep the recommendations simple. In the comments section, please post which OS I should get (Android, iOS, webOS, or Windows 7) and why.
Rock stars. Thanks.
The Eagles – Wasted Time
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Congratulations. We’ve now been wasting time together for the last three years. It was on this very day, August 9th, 2007 that I published my first post on this blog. If I’ve taken an average of 20 minutes to write each post, I’ve wasted nearly an entire week of living during the last 3 years. If you’ve taken an average of 30 seconds to read each post, you’ve thankfully only wasted 3 hours of your life.
In the fourth year of this blog, I hope to do more of the same, although perhaps with a few new tweaks. I know a few years ago I had the not-so-brilliant idea of trying to start off each post by writing a bit about a random song on my iTunes playing. One potential idea is to select a blog at random from the ones that I read and start the creative juices flowing by referencing that blog. Who knows. You may find a new way to waste your time then!
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