Startups Kano and Cubetto sell coding toys that teach children to become computer engineers According to marathon-running mythology, Pheidippides, the ancient Greek athlete often named as history’s first endurance runner, dropped dead at the end of his run. Historians say this false dramatic detail springs more from poetry than traceable records, but the lie has likely endured because purposefully running 26.2 miles seems like a direct challenge to human limitations. The myth might be false—but it is plausible. Running an estimated 55,000 steps over the course of a few hours hours brings about risks that can prove fatal. Your urine turns tea-colored, your nipples bleed, and your toenails fall off On marathon day, all the risks that come with everyday running injuries—including shin splints, Patellofemoral pain syndrome (runner’s knee), hamstring damage, and plantar fasciitis (heel pain)—are still present. For instance, over-stressing muscles causes them to release a protein called myoglobin to your body’s mitochondria, which produces energy for your cells.
Why online privacy matters — and how to protect yours As the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, Christopher Soghoian (TED talk: How to avoid surveillance … with the phone in your pocket) spends much of his time thinking about privacy and surveillance and how individuals can protect themselves from spying. Recently, he recorded a Facebook Live conversation with his fellow TED Fellow, Will Potter (TED Talk: The secret US prisons you’ve never heard of before), a reporter and author who specializes in covering dissident politics and culture and whose first question to Christopher was: If I don’t have anything to hide, why should I be concerned about privacy or security, anyway? With that, they were off. Christopher Soghoian: I hear this all the time from people, and you know, I think many of us do have something to hide. We may not all be worried about the government, but there are things we may not want our employers or members of our families to know. Would you suggest covering up the microphone as well? Sure.
How to Effectively Introduce Coding and Computational Thinking into Your Classroom - The Learning Exchange The inclusion of coding and computational thinking (CT) skills across all levels of education is gaining momentum worldwide. Here at home, the Ministry of Education recently announced a focus on coding and CT skills in our Ontario schools. What follows are recommendations related to how large jurisdictions can adequately prepare our teachers to introduce and foster the development of coding and CT skills in our students. These recommendations draw on my experience teaching high school computer science and facilitating professional learning for both practicing and pre-service teachers. They are also based on observations from my work in research projects focused on coding and CT across grade levels. Recently, I have had the privilege to work with school board leadership teams who are experts in running effective professional development. Include students in Computational Thinking and Coding professional learning days. For more supporting evidence, see this What Works article by Dr.
ONLINE DIARY Dream On Do celebrities appear in your dreams? Is Julia (or Tom or Gwyneth) a nocturnal regular? As usual, the place to share such information is the Web. CelineDreams.com, you can post your dreams about Celine Dion alongside those of other fans. ''In a typical Celine Dion fan dream, Celine is a good girl, helping teenagers overcome their identity problems, being a good friend to a lonely woman, or an exemplary mother,'' Mr. Fan sites have long included dream sections (see the inevitable www.worldofbritney.com/h/dreams .html). ''These dreams represent frustrations in our attempts to achieve a status,'' he said. Group Draw For more than a month, a goat struggled to be born at The Smaller Picture (kevan.org/smaller.cgi), a site that asks whether the Web's ''collective consciousness'' can create a coherent image. It works like this: Select one of the black-and-white pixelized pictures in progress. The goat picture is done, replaced by a new series of images-in-progress. Earth's Best Dream On
Managing Technology: Tips from the Experts Do your technology lessons frequently turn into free-for-alls? Do you feel as though you spend too much of your time dealing with crashing programs, whining students, and missing equipment and not enough time actually teaching a lesson? Don't despair! Sometimes the little things make a big difference! Always run through a technology lesson before presenting it to the class -- and always have a back-up lesson prepared in case the technology fails. Article by Linda Starr Education World® Copyright © 2004 Education World Robots.txt meant for search engines don’t work well for web archives Robots.txt files were invented 20+ years ago to help advise “robots,” mostly search engine web crawlers, which sections of a web site should be crawled and indexed for search. Many sites use their robots.txt files to improve their SEO (search engine optimization) by excluding duplicate content like print versions of recipes, excluding search result pages, excluding large files from crawling to save on hosting costs, or “hiding” sensitive areas of the site like administrative pages. (Of course, over the years malicious actors have also used robots.txt files to identify those same sensitive areas!) Over time we have observed that the robots.txt files that are geared toward search engine crawlers do not necessarily serve our archival purposes. A few months ago we stopped referring to robots.txt files on U.S. government and military web sites for both crawling and displaying web pages (though we respond to removal requests sent to info@archive.org).
Future - How much is ‘too much time’ on social media? #LikeMinded A special series about social media and well-being This month, BBC Future is exploring social media’s impact on mental health and well-being – and seeking solutions for a happier, healthier experience on these platforms. Stay tuned for more stories, coming soon… Share your tips for a happy life on social media with the hashtag #LikeMinded on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Describing yourself as ‘a social media addict’ doesn’t usually inspire concern from other people. Social media addiction has been a much-flouted term lately; maybe it’s because it’s January and users are looking to be more active and spend less time online, or maybe that’s because social media can have a negative impact on our mental well-being. There are two established organisations which classify mental disorders – the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the American Psychiatric Association. “Do I believe that people can be so engrossed in social media that they neglect everything else in their life?”
- Geocities Archive / Geocities Mirror 3 Steps to a More Accessible Classroom "Turn on the subtitles, Ms. Olague!" I clicked on the "CC" button underneath the YouTube video, and the closed-captioning appeared at the bottom of the screen. Suddenly, all my students were looking at the screen with wide eyes, eager to watch the video. My students loved having subtitles on during short videos because it gave them more opportunities to interact with and learn from the content. Any classroom teacher will tell you the importance of differentiating instruction and materials for students' diverse needs. Evaluating Accessibility The next time you introduce a new digital learning tool, consider these three key questions to help ensure you're meeting all your students' needs. 1. Does the digital learning tool have a clear, consistent, and intuitive navigation menu and path? 2. The text should be legible and in a clear font that can be enlarged. 3. Can the learner access the information in any images, charts, or tables with a screen reader? Research and Resources
Yahoo is deleting all content ever posted to Yahoo Groups Yahoo Groups is shutting down after more than 18 years, and the Verizon-owned company is deleting all content from the site in mid-December. "Yahoo has made the decision to no longer allow users to upload content to the Yahoo Groups site," the company said in a notice to users. "Beginning October 28, you won't be able to upload any more content to the site, and as of December 14 all previously posted content on the site will be permanently removed. You'll have until that date to save anything you've uploaded." The notice links to one Yahoo webpage that provides instructions for downloading photos and files from groups that you belong to before the cutoff date, but the process sounds laborious, as it requires clicking on each photo or file you want to download. Although the Yahoo Groups site will continue to exist after December 14, "all public groups will be made private or restricted," Yahoo said. All of the following features are going away, Yahoo said:
Twig - Blog: story Teachers are constantly pushed towards new pedagogies in order to improve student performance. For most teachers, who are already overburdened and overworked, manoeuvring the jungle of new buzzwords and learning theories can be an exhausting task. Integrating technology into your teaching, however, isn’t so hard. In fact, research shows that teachers who use ICT to deliver lessons in the classroom work up to 40 hours fewer than those who don’t. Here are 10 ways in which the best teachers use tech in the classroom: 1. Educational videos can be used to complement traditional teaching in the classroom or assigned as homework to reinforce classroom lessons. 2. If you’re nervous about teaching a class or just plain tired, try flipping the classroom. 3. Science teachers know only too well the complications of conducting science experiments. 4. Teachers can use video conferencing to teach distance learning programs. 5. 6. School budget cuts giving the class trip the axe again? 7. 8. 9. 10.
TechCrunch fait désormais partie dâVerizon Media Mozilla today announced that its Enhanced Tracking Protection feature for Firefox, which launched in July (and became the default in September), has now blocked a total of more than 450 billion third-party tracking requests from the thousands of companies that try to track you as you browse the web. That’s a big number, but with today’s launch of Firefox 70, Mozilla is also giving you a personalized dashboard that tells you how often Firefox blocked third-party cookies, social media trackers, fingerprinting tools and cryptominers. Privacy protection is on by default, in the “standard” setting, so you don’t have to do anything special to protect yourself. If you want to tinker with the settings, though, and don’t mind if the occasional site breaks, you also can opt for a stricter default and custom settings. The report isn’t exactly front and center in the user experience (though Mozilla tells me it points new users to it in its onboarding workflow).
What’s the Difference Between Coding and Computational Thinking? In my last EdSurge article, “Computer Science Goes Beyond Coding,” I wrote about the difference between coding and computer science, to help us understand what we mean by phrases like “Teach kids to code” and “Computer science for all.” In that article and in many other articles, there is another term that appears often: “Computational thinking.” Well, what is Computational Thinking (CT), and how does it differ from Coding and Computer Science—especially when it comes to classroom practice and instruction? What is Computational Thinking (CT)? My short definition: CT is a strategy that uses many of the powerful ideas in computer science to solve problems. Let’s get into a simple, but longer definition. The Background on Computational Thinking Computational thinking was a term that became popular in 2006 with computer scientist Jeannette Wing’s article in Communications of the ACM, in which she called computational thinking a fundamental skill for all.