Posts by Diogenes 907 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Oct 2009
Currently doing privacy dot points with my year 11 Software Design Class ....
they came up with about 30 different privacy problems with this proposal in 15 minutes. As the 2nd part of this exercise I asked them to consider what permissions the app should have (none) and the ones it would probably ask for & a possible justification. When we listed them all we had every permission, and a "good" ie "think of the children"(TM) reason for each an every one.
Back in the good old days I worked for a company that was having a major "health push". and they were passing out pedometers and having inter team competitions with "real" prizes for those that "walked" the furtherest. My team won. We strapped pedometers to our feet & tapped, several enterprising team members strapped them to pendulum clocks at home or metronomes, another guy rigged up a meccano device that looked a bit like a steam locomotive wheel with the mainrod & cylinder piston (used in certain movies for other purposes) & attached it.
When the local HR Exec who was responsible for this nonsense came through and saw what we were doing the whole thing died a quick death.
To misquote the late great Monty Python.
When we visited CA from Australia we were struck by much bigger the gulls were (about the size of a 3yo child) , and how small the pelicans. Wasn't impressed by the dirty brown colour either.
Then there were the killer squirrels that attacked SWMBO on a beach near Monterrey
I use Scratch with years 7 - 9, coupled with the excellent CS Unplugged resources - Year 9 "Apps" last week were coding sorts in scratch and comparing the performance of various sorts. Indeed I believe some unis use scratch or kodu to teach basic computer programming concepts. (after my year 12s do their trial HSC, I will use Kodu to introduce concepts of object orientedness)
Now that they have the basic idea of sequence, decisions & iteration and events, I will be moving them on to AppInventor, then next stop for the brighter kids Android Studio.
I learnt the hard way kids do not have the patience to type move, and get mightly p****d off/discouraged because the compiler is too fussy - why is aNumber not the same as anumber or Anumber
Last year on day 1 back at school I surveyed the kids in my IT classes. Roughly 1/3 each windows , android and iphone.
Believe it or not this year 50%(!) windows , and about equal numbers each of android and apple. Nobody had a 6 (many still on 4), and most 'droids (roughly 2/3) were still on jellybean or kitkat - no lollipops.
A few of the kids have tablets (mostly cheap Pendo pads being sold @ $45 - again roughly 50/50 droid and windows, although I did notice my local Coles sold the droid quicker. There are a few ipad minis and a couple of Galaxy Tab/Notes in the classes where the kids have jobs - (all still waiting for Lollipop).
The basic entitlement is quite bizarre - you get either 1 or 2 weeks per year (depending on years of service, but if you have worked for over 10 years you get less than if you had worked 7 or 8, or 9 , + notice periods vary dependingn years of service (basically 1 week for every year up to 4 years) + an extra week if you are 45 or older.
I can't remember the details but IIRC ex Telstra staff going to IBMGSA had different rules, we were given 4 weeks for every year under 5 years +2 weeks after 5 years to a max of 20 years ((including service with Telstra) that was when GSA gave me the bullet in '03 - even though I had some rather unusual skills they were looking for to do a little jobbie in Thailand, not allowed to apply for as I was on "the list").
The official word here at school is to use google docs as much as possible - they contain all the functionality 95% of us need (its only a few weardo's like me who run macros ) our network admin just finished an analysis of "ribbon hero" data (which tallies clicks on tabs, and the highest scorer by a country mile was me - most of the staff had scores below the students, and it appears I am the only person in the 80+ staff and 11000 kids to create my own styles,
As the Russians once said during WW2 "there is a certain quality to quantity"
...
Or as my great uncle, who commanded a unit of 88's said - "The Russian T34s came at us, I ran out of shells before they ran out of tanks, and that is how I was taken prisoner"
Another military size related saying that dates back to Korea "how many thousand men are in Chinese platoon ?" (source an old RSM of mine who served in Korea as a Private)
If you want a longer article may I suggest "Stonewalled" by Sharyl Attkisson (don't just dismiss her as just being a republican shill because "blog x says so" ) @432 pages enough for you? You can see google applying the same tactics to Hood as the Feds do to investigative reporters.
Given the links between the administration & google is anybody surprised ?
One huge complication is the fact that in Federal elections, for the House of Reps one must mark ALL the candidates in order (if there are 10 candidates then you need to mark 1 to 10 (or an other numbering system that indicates the preference for EACH candidate - I counted 1 vote that had letters A-F , another in roman numerals, and another where they used 10, 25, 32 etc)
Our senate paper is also a right proper <expletive deleted> 2 different voting systems (1 number only for the parties above "the line", or number 1 to infinity - thats what it seems like in NSW) with 44 named parties and 120 candidates at the last election. At over a meter long, they are not called tablecloth papers for nothing !
No problem with electronic rolls or registration - they do this in NSW already, and have done so since 2012. All students are auto enrolled from a data dump from BOSTES (who run the senior exam system) to NSW EC, changing your address on your licence automatically updates the NSW EC registration, and a death notification to the Registrar General cancels registration. In 2012 there were approximately 120,000 voters on NSW rolls (ie 1-2 federal seats worth) and not on federal rolls & about 300k either not on federal rolls or the address differs from the state roll source http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2012/11/124000-missing-voters-in-new-south-wales.html. There is a push to have the other states adopt procedures like NSW (Victoria may have?) and have feds take their feeds from the states to fix these issues.
Koalas do not naturally digest gum leaves - gut bacteria break them down & the koalas absorb the byproduct as nutrients.
Mum koala, when she is ready to wean her young, poops a special poop that is very high in the appropriate gut bacteria & the young climbs round the back and consumes same, and thus gets the bacteria & can start on those oh so yummy gum leaves (note the old urban legend about them being drunk is false , the leaves are so low in nutrients they conserve energy by sleeping 20 hours a day)
Then one is also reminded of the story that kissing came about because in pre knife days mum chewed the food to make it easier for young immature teeth & jaws to handle, and start the digestion process
Then there is also the misclassification... I break my foot playing soccer ... I go to to ER ... I am asked if I am a smoker ... If yes then the broken foot becomes statistically correlated with smoking
IN Australia smokers contribute @8Billion in excise & GST & use about 380Million in healthcare (no typos with the billion & million) attributable to smoking related (see oara 1 on how this inflated)
Totally unscientific poll, but I spent a day being bored to death at cybersafety/digital citizenship presentations for the school (@1100 students) on cybersafety. There were 6 presentations each with a slightly different viewpoint & examples, 1 for each year (secondary ie teens).
When the presenters asked who was on twitter , very very few hands went up, on facebook, about 1/3rd of each group (and tellingly of that 3rd 90% were female), instagram - close to a 3rd again (big overlap between the groups and similar MF ratio). I was surprised and thought that the number would be higher. Speaking with presenters at the end of the day they said that this was typical of what they have been seeing in schools this year - last year the facebook was @50% and in the years before that as high as 90%.
I was looking for a method other than email to alert my year 12 software design & development to things that might of interest, reminders for homework etc expecting to have to create a facebook or twitter account but 0/24 used any form of social media. I have changed to my plan to increase the number of texts I send
What is the optimum Co2 level for the earth ? Is it 2,000 p.p.m. - late Palaeocene, 500ppm - Miocene, <210 - Paleozoic or todays smidge over 400ppm ?
For that matter what is the optimum temperature for the earth ?
Much of the "global warming" that has taken place to date appears to random undocumented adjustments to raw data (Australia's BoM and its laughable ACORN dataset is a case in point - it has at least shared its data, but not methodology unlike 92% of climate "scientists") - NASA's satellite measurements show no warming for 16 years - and its not hiding in the deep ocean either.
Nearly every "the end of ...is nigh" prediction made by the "experts" since club of rome in 1972 has not come to pass (Drs Suzuki & Flannery come on down).
I will believe we have a problem when those in charge actually reduce the number and size of houses they own & the amount of energy they use (hello Al Gore and "Brangelina"), sell waterfront property (4 ex environment ministers & Prime Ministers) , stop flying (is that you Greenpeace?) and holding massive conferences about climate change in exotic locations that require thousands of delegates(hello United Nations)
Have you seen the great stinking pollution lakes created in China so you can you can have nice "clean" ,"quiet" and "fresh" solar panels or bird killers ? Have you seen pictures of the working conditions of the poor SOBs who extract the required rare earths ? Where are you going to get that nice safe lead or lithium for batteries (for when the sun don;t shine & the wind don't blow) ? How are they going be disposed of ?
The problem is you may have super deep pockets to pay for all that c**p - I don't, and I resent subsidising people that do (eg here in NSW peak power cost is @50c kwh - under a now grandfathered scheme my neighbour gets a gross solar fit is paid at 60c kwh) - by definition I am subsidising my neighbour's panels.
Hmmm, the Central Coast list looks silly in places. They have already connected up the entire Budgewoi Peninsula - there are no properties on it ! Funny they don't have Lake Munmorah or Budegwoi which are on either end of the Budgewoi Peninsula listed (many people think the town of Budgewoi is ON the Peninsula)
Whilst ElReg rightly concentrates on the Technology syllabus, PDHPE, (thats PhysEd) and CAPA(The Arts) and Geography have been sent back for more work as well. The Big 4 (MESH) also need major work done on them. This is most true at Primary level - more needs teaching than there are hours available and something has to give especially in light of the fact that under the Gonski Act (Education Reform Act 2013) - the former government gave us 4 targets (3 of which relate to retention & indigenous education) the first of which is to rank in the top 5 for reading and arithmetic for PISA.
The technology assessor compared the proposed curriculum to curricula in countries that rank ahead of us (which at least the US, UK do not do) and the review report as whole said there needs to be more emphasis on teaching the basics of the 3Rs and more depth and fewer other subjects (The Arts were singled out as a "fewer" ). Now that ALL the curricula have been written & released everybody is trying to work out how to fit it all in.
Primary schools these days tend to do work on cross-curriculum projects in which they knock of dot points for various syllabuses in a unit of work (say design a playground for the school - english vocab, maths - area & science - suitable materials ,PD - suitable equipment to target muscles and perhaps look at a historical playgrounds for history). There are exceptions which are taught discretely - such as music, foreign languages(now also compulsory) and sport. Then let's not forget visits by the various Foundations promoting cybersafety, non smoking, activity, mental heath, antibullying, road safety, police talks, anti grafitti, danger of ingrown toenails(sorry made that last one up) - it would be difficult to carve out time for another subject.
As a HS ICT teacher I was worried that a poor introduction in primary and stage 4 would be counter productive as it would kill interest in computing as a subject in later school years(stages 5 &6) and then university.
Ah yes the clod.
We have been offline at school for 2 weeks (council roadworks) made a right proper mess of my term start. Even our moodle was unavailable although physically on the premises because we couldn't get out to get the dns (some misconfiguration had it trying to resolve even if we were using the direct IP addy) - but no good to most kids a the wireless network was down (round trips to dec servers)
It would have taken 2-3 years for implementation. The "bigger" curricula took a year rattling around the various state bodies (in NSW the Board of Studies) for them to "add" whatever "value" they do, then 1 year on pilot then 1 year full implementation.
There is an ICTENSW workshop next Monday night - hopefully we will hear something from our "trade" body (they are our official "stakeholders").
PS what is a curriculm ?
I have had the the damned thing crash so many times in the last 2 weeks I immediately thought of Windows ME. Watching videos, using itunesU, and reading books(ibooks) looking at my the usage/crash data I have nearly a dozen Latest-xxxx.crash" where xxxx is the name of the app - video, safari, newstand, books, weather, maps, store and a couple of apps that have all been updated since 8.0.2 was released
And then there are the videos & music that lock up itunes while transferring (and refuse to transfer one day, and happily transfer the next) and the continual update of everything in my itunesU libarary every time I copy a video or song - despite me telling the stupid thing (itunes/ipad) not to update or synch the itunesu courses.
So no, this is not a matter of diversity, it's a matter of people being a burden on society through either ignorance or sheer laziness.
Define burden !
My staffroom (9 staff) has 7 "greyhounds". So far this year we have more sick days due to operations to replace/fix tears in shoulders (cricket), hips (jogging & football), knees (jogging, netball & basketball), and ankles (netball & basketball) and days off due to sprains, and "corks" (oops nearly forgot about the suspected fractured jaw & eye socket) than the one lady who was off for 6 weeks on maternity leave & the flu season put together. No days lost to high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma or any of the other "obesity" related conditions.
being a fan of "real" music (ie with very very few exceptions nothing after 1900 - no not a typo 1900) it makes my skin crawl to think that even a cent of my money would help support Bieber (justin) not the guys & girls who play/sing Bieber (the one who wrote masses 400 years ago)
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