centreforelearning

As the dramatic growth of the mobile web changes the way people consume content, it’s becoming increasingly important for publishers to provide a good mobile experience. With this in mind, we just added automatic mobile rendering in Google Sites for iOS 3.0+ and Android 2.2+ devices, and a mobile version of the Google Sites lists. By going to General settings under More actions > Manage site and clicking on Automatically adjust site for mobile phones, your Google site will be automatically adjusted whenever it’s viewed from an iOS or Android 2.2+ device

In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.

On November 4, a solution was discovered—in a videogame. That’s the day Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360, a $150 add-on that allows players to direct the action in a game simply by moving their bodies. Most of the world focused on the controller-free interface, but roboticists saw something else entirely: an affordable, lightweight camera that could capture 3-D images in real time.

When DIYers combine those cheap, powerful tools with the collaborative potential of the Internet, they can come up with the kinds of innovations that once sprang only from big-budget R&D labs. In 2009, a PhD student named Daniel Reetz turned two Canon PowerShot A590s into an improvised high-speed book scanner. He detailed the project on a website, DIYbookscanner.org, where readers have since posted hundreds of tweaks, suggestions, upgrades, and entirely new designs. The open source MPGuino project, which uses an Arduino microcontroller to track gas consumption as you drive, has inspired a small community of fans who help refine and customize the gizmo.

The signs leverage what’s called a feedback loop, a profoundly effective tool for changing behavior. The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction. It’s the operating principle behind a home thermostat, which fires the furnace to maintain a specific temperature, or the consumption display in a Toyota Prius, which tends to turn drivers into so-called hypermilers trying to wring every last mile from the gas tank. But the simplicity of feedback loops is deceptive. They are in fact powerful tools that can help people change bad behavior patterns, even those that seem intractable. Just as important, they can be used to encourage good habits, turning progress itself into a reward. In other words, feedback loops change human behavior. And thanks to an explosion of new technology, the opportunity to put them into action in nearly every part of our lives is quickly becoming a reality.

Ever wanted to make presentations a more interactive, Web 2.0 experience? The PowerPoint Twitter Tools prototypes are now available. Created using SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius (but requiring only PowerPoint for Windows and Adobe Flash to run), the twitter tools allow presenters to see and react to tweets in real-time, embedded directly within their presentations, either as a ticker or refreshable comment page.

So can computers actually help improve our concentration and contemplation, instead of leading us into distraction? The problem, as Pang puts it, is that "Technologies that were supposed to help us think better, work more efficiently, and connect more meaningfully with others now interrupt us, divide our attention, and stretch us thin."

In the paper he outlines give principles of contemplative computing; Build awareness through DIY and self-experimentation Recognize that we are cyborgs, and humans Create rewarding challenges Support mind-wandering Treat flow as a means, not an end

Pang suggests that we don't have to choose between information technology and contemplation, and suggests contemplative computing as a new way forward. He describes contemplative computing as something you do, not a product. But the principles of contemplative computing could be extending to application design. "The problem is that today's information technologies are often poorly-designed and thoughtlessly used: they're like unreliable prosthetics that we have to depend on, but can't quite control or trust," Pang says.

In an interview with Yahoo! Singapore, 34-year-old Physics teacher Daryl Ang claimed that the Angry Birds game, if used in the right way, has legitimate educational value. "There are several laws Physics students can learn from the Angry Birds game, and they include mass, velocity, projectile motion, gravity, and Newton's laws," the technologically-savvy educator said.