Archive for Technology

On Wednesday I received 72 e-mails, not counting junk, and only two text messages. It was a quiet day but, then again, I’m not including the telephone calls. And, come to think of it, why not include the junk e-mails? They also interrupt. There were 38. Oh and I’d better throw in the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via my iPhone.

I was—the irony!—trying to read a book called Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age by Maggie Jackson. I had become the embodiment of T. S. Eliot’s great summary of the modern predicament: “Distracted from distraction by distraction.” This is, you might think, a pretty standard, vaguely comic vignette of modern life—man harassed by self-inflicted technology. And so it is. We’re all distracted, we’re all interrupted. How foolish we are! But, listen carefully, it’s killing me and it’s killing you.

Attention is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness; it might one day tell us how we make the world in our heads. Attention comes naturally to us; attending to what matters is how we survive and define ourselves. Read more (hopefully, the whole article) of this commentary by Bryan Appleyard in The Sunday Times online.

The American Library Association (ALA) has received a $1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation to launch an innovative project to track and measure the impact of gaming on literacy skills and build a model for library gaming that can be deployed throughout the United States.

"Gaming is a magnet that attracts library users of all types and, beyond its entertainment value, has proven to be a powerful tool for literacy and learning," said ALA President Loriene Roy.

For further information about the project, read the ALA press release or visit the Verizon Foundation website.

The Kindle, Amazon's electronic reader, generated much discussion at this year's BookExpo America, which ended yesterday in New York City. According to an article by Edward Wyatt in The New York Times, discussion of whether the electronic book is approaching the tipping point both "energized and unnerved people" at the trade show.

While many publishers report that their sales of electronic books are growing exponentially, some publishing executives have voiced concerns about Amazon's still-growing power as a bookseller. For further information, read the full article.

Bookshare.org and Don Johnston have announced a partnership to provide qualified print-disabled students with a free text reader to access electronic books from the Bookshare.org library. This technology access partnership will serve an estimated 1-3% of the total K-12 student population, specifically those who receive special education services and qualify under the 1996 Chafee Amendment.

Beginning at the start of the 2008-09 school year, qualified students will have the opportunity to use Don Johnston's Read:OutLoud Bookshare.org Edition text reader (Windows Version) to access more than 36,000 books, magazines, and newspapers in the Bookshare.org library. The Read:OutLoud Bookshare.org Edition text reader offers embedded reading comprehension strategies and instructional supports that align with state educational standards. The text reader software includes audio feedback, electronic highlighting, and note-taking features that allow students to effectively capture ideas. A Macintosh version will follow in 2009.

The goal of this partnership is to help eliminate barriers for print-disabled students and provide the tools needed to ensure access to educational texts. Bookshare.org offers digital books produced from the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) and delivers them to students in the BRF Braille file format and the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) standard for Digital Talking Books. Don Johnston's Read:OutLoud Bookshare Edition text reader gives students better access to books and effective reading instruction through a direct connection to Bookshare.org's digital texts.

For further information, visit either the Bookshare.org website or the Don Johnston website.

In early 1862, President Abraham Lincoln suggested buying slaves for $400 apiece under a "gradual emancipation" plan that would bring peace at less cost that several months of war. The proposal was outlined in one of 72 letters written by Lincoln that ended up in the University of Rochester's archives and, following a recent digital scanning project, are now available to students, teachers, researchers, and others, according to a report in eSchool News.

The collection also includes more 215 letters sent to Lincoln by dozens of political and military leaders, including General Ulysses S. Grant. For further information, read the full article. You can access the collection at the Lincoln and His Circle webpage of the University of Rochester's Rare Books and Special Collections department.

"Tune In @ Your Library" is the focus theme of the second annual Teen Tech Week, which will be celebrated at thousands of public and school libraries across the United States from March 2-8. The purpose of the initiative, which is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association, is to ensure that teens are competent and ethical users of technologies, especially those that are offered through libraries.

For further information, including resources and activity ideas, visit the Teen Tech Week website.

It’s dangerous and it drives teachers to despair. But now the problem of pupils rocking on the rear legs of their chair has been solved by a former teacher in the United Kingdom who has developed an untippable one. Tom Wates has taken orders from 18 schools since launching his product three weeks ago. “I’ve had orders from Glasgow to Belfast, Cornwall to London,” he said. “It seems that it’s a problem that touches everyone.”

Wates said he was “driven mad” by his students rocking back and forth, and often falling off their chairs. “It was something I was saying as much as I was asking children to be quiet. I couldn’t do anything about them talking, but I figured that I could stop this.” Of the 7,000 pupils admitted to hospital a year as a result of chair-related accidents, 70% resulted from rocking back dangerously, according to government statistics. Read about the new chair and see a picture in The Times online.

Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal officially inaugurated the Middle East’s first electronic school on Saturday, Feb. 16. It is named after businessman Abdul Rahman Faqeeh. The governor lauded Faqeeh for establishing the state-of-the-art educational complex that comprises primary, intermediate and secondary schools with advanced facilities.

“I hope graduates of these schools will play a leading role in the Kingdom’s development and work for enhancing Saudi Arabia’s reputation,” the prince said.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Faqeeh said the main objective behind establishing the school was to develop and modernize the Kingdom’s education system and produce a new generation of Saudi students armed with knowledge, information and technology—the three essential factors for progress in the modern world. Read more about the electronic school in Arab News online.