Tomorrow is Here Today!

A few days ago, I watched a sneak preview of WolframAlpha and my brain is still spinning. Now some would say that my mind is already fried, but WA will challenge even the most balanced individual.

It could well be the most significant piece of technology to appear in the last decade. If the project succeeds, it has implications for education that dwarf anything that has yet come along.

Today, regardless of what search engine you use, your query will result in a long list of web sites that may contain the information you seek. Wouldn't it be nice if you could type in a query and then have the computer figure out what you mean and provide you with an answer? Well in a sense, that's what WA does.

Stephen Wolfram the creator of Mathmatica has used his symbolic language along with something a New Kind of Science to create the world's first Computational Knowledge Engine. Based on the idea that all thing in nature can be reduced to calculations, WA actually computes answers to your query.

I won't even attempt to detail this amazing piece of technology with my woefully inadequate understanding. All I will do is ask you to watch the demonstration conducted on 4/28 at Harvard's Berkman Center. The video is an hour and three quarters long, but you'll have a good feel for WA in the first fifteen minutes. After you watch the video, here's a link to more information.

I Don't Twitter!

I've been around computers since 1979. I've built computers, web sites, and online communities, but I never got into Twitter. I wasn't sure why for a while and even felt a bit guilty about not Twittering.

Then, last year just around this time, I read Joe Kessil's blog that took a look at Twitter based on personality types and it made perfect sense.

Today, Leigh Zeits pointed me to this video that sealed the deal and had me rolling on the floor.

My Cluster Map and My Ego

Last year about this time, I added a Cluster Map to my blog. I didn't do it as ego trip, but as a demonstration in workshop I was doing, but things have changed a bit. Since adding it, I've become attached to it. I get a kick out of watching new dots pop up in exotic and out of the way places.

Yesterday I receive an email that was a blow to my ego. It seems that once a year, the Cluster Map fairy comes along and sweeps up all the dots on your Cluster Map and takes them to Cluster Map heaven.

But they are not gone forever. I can visit them through the statistics on my account page and they won't leave me with a barren landscape, because my current map will stay as it is until the next time it updates. It updates when the number of hits since the last update reaches 10% of the numbers currently on the map.

So my ego is intact for a while, and I'll say, "Hi and bye." to my clusters before they slip off on their journey with the Cluster Map fairy. RIP little Cluster buddies...

Facebooks TOS - Nothing Nefarious

So what's the big deal? Terms of service are written in legalese and we hardly ever pay attention to them until someone point out something that sounds nefarious. The changes that Facebook made were no big deal when you really understand them. Without them, they can't do what they do. Let me explain.

If I send a message to my friends, Facebook can't send it to them unless I grant them a license to do so. So I grant them nonexclusive rights to everything I put up. (Note to self... Don't write the great American novel on Facebook.)

So why do I have to grant them this right forever? Simple! If I leave Facebook and my friends stay. The message stays on their page. If they don't have rights forever, every time someone leaves, everything they ever did anywhere with anyone would have to be deleted.

What Facebook and just about everyone else does is that they write in legalese and people don't understand the language or intent. Why don't the write in plain English. Simple again. LAWYERS! Nuff said?

BTW - If think Facebooks desire to have rights anywhere in the world is extreme, read some other Terms of Service out there. They have rights anywhere in the UNIVERSE!

Gray Squirrel Chronicles - Plan C

The rope was a flop and my funnel failed. So it's time to call in the pros. Yesterday, after it looked as if my Rube Goldberg solution wasn't going to cut it, I called the Popcorn Park Zoo in Lacey Township. They are a wonderful animal shelter that services the area. It's a great place to take the kids! They even have a camel that has been successfully predicting Superbowl winners!

I've been supporting them with small donations for a number of years now. So I called them up and asked if they would be kind enough to lend me a humane trap. They told me they would put me in touch with Mark, their animal control officer. In less than an hour, Mark called and asked if he could drop it off the following day.

Can you imagine that? They are going to come to my rescue and they asked if I minded waiting a little. Heck, I would have stood on my head waiting. I can't say enough good things about the folks at Popcorn Park!

Mark arrived at high noon; very appropriate for the show down at the Wolinsky fireplace. Here's the video of what transpired.

Gray Squirrel Chronicles

The day before yesterday, I heard a sound that I had heard only once before and it didn't make me happy. I immediately recognized it as a squirrel who had managed to get through the screen on our chimney. He was now sitting just above the flue scratching in a vain effort to get out.

Next came the fun part, namely trying to get him out humanely. Plan A was a long shot, but it was the easiest to do. I climbed up on the roof and dropped a rope down the chimney in the hope that the squirrel would climb out on his own. Twenty-four hours later he had neither scaled the heights nor hung himself. It was time for Plan B.

The efforts started about 10 AM today with no success. Rather than write about an effort that I know is going to be a long adventure, I decided to film the efforts some of the efforts. Here's the unsuccessful Plan B. (Plan C coming later)

Open Source and Education

I just read an article in Datamation by Matt Hartley in which he takes the educational community to task for not being quicker to adapt Open Source software. I tried to leave the following comment to it, but kept getting a message to "Enter a properly formatted email address." I was able to find a feedback form and left the comment there, but I don't know what will come of it, so I have to vent here.

Take a few minutes to read Matt's article and then you can read my thoughts below.

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Matt, you may know Linux, but you have a lot to learn about the educational system in this nation and more specifically, the state of technology education. I've been working with educational technology and professional development since 1980. The reality is that the state of technology literacy of teachers in this country is abysmal. Technology integration and professional development is woefully underfunded and ignored.

Change in education is slow. It only took 25 years to move the overhead projector from the bowling alley to the classroom. Windows came out in 1985 and teachers still don't have a clue about it's workings, let alone how to use technology effectively with as a teaching a learning tool.

Yes, Linux is free. Yes, Linux is secure. Yes Open Office handles Windows documents. Yes, yes, yes, but until someone figures out how to come up with the money and time to bring teachers up to speed with the technology they have been using for the past 20 years, the answer will be no, no, no.

Linux might be the best OS to ever be built, but "build it and they will come", just doesn't work.