Al Hoang

One of my interests lately is in the intersection of technology and
education (if you haven’t noticed from some of my blog posts). Catching
this story on NEC pleading guilty to defrauding a set of poor schools
in the San Francisco area of making them buy way more technological
equipment than they needed is just awful. The concept behind the
E-Rate program that is mentioned in the article is a really great concept.
The general idea is to take a portion of taxes from the local districts and
funnel this money into poorer schools to buy computers and other technological
tools to help enable education.

However, it seems greed got in the way of the middle men and they ended
up recommended some of these poorer schools pay an order of magnitude more
money (add an extra zero) to buy equipment they had no need for. I
think this sucks, since the basic concept is a good idea however when
corruption like this involved, I can understand why people will start
voting down similar initiatives in other areas.
One solution that could help is a liason between
the vendors and the schools that can explain in plain English what would be
necessary for the school district and what isn’t. One major problem
is most techies want a high pay rate to give these suggestions. Ever
take a look at the average pay of a technology director or senior level
design weenie? I’m sure there are many who want to help but finding them
that is on acceptable terms to both the poor schools and to the technological
consultant is probably not as easy as it seems. And here’s another kicker…
you want someone competent in the field to guide you but you know nothing
on the field but you know you need it for work. How do you know you can
trust what they’re saying when whatever they say can be total B.S? I
think this is a REALLY challenging situation for poor schools and
institutions looking to beef up their IT infrastructure. Corporations
tend to be after the dollar so you can never be sure how much you’re
hearing is market-ware. Going after an individual is an exercise in russian
roulette. The easiest option is to find a friend or a friend of a friend.
The old human network of trust. In the absence of competence, your best
defense is trust.

Link to story

Okay, I’m going to try to blog some more stuff that is harder for
non-Japanese speakers to access due to the language barrier… I make
no promises but….

Introducing Mosir a Map
Viewing software built for Squeak.

Features:

• Can read Japanese GSI data
• Can read USGS GTOPO30 data
• It’s 3-D
• Runs on Squeak (Seems to be based on Version 3.2-4956)

I’ll have to admit it’s very neat. According to the author, he originally
wrote Mosir in C++ and OpenGL however the author
had an interest in Squeak so decided
to port it over to Squeak as a way to pick up the language (seems he
didn’t have a lot of knowledge in SmallTalk when he started). The
code is supposedly a mess but at least he has something to show.
If you have any GIS inklings or are a Squeaker, check it out.

Lemme go see it

Kudos to the Squeak-JP Mailing List for the link.

Now this is neat. A version of Dante’s Inferno I (The Divine Comedy) is
available from this Italian website along with a reading in the original
Italian (requires RealPlayer). Very neat.

Check it out

Thanks to Jerry Lerma’s Dante Page
for bringing this up. He also made a map of The Simpsons if you’re interested.

The New York Times has an article about the
intersection of Video Games and Education. In my opinion this is not really
a brand new frontier. However, there definitely is synergy (oh yeah
there’s that evil word!) between two disciplines however I don’t think
it is one of those cut-and-paste cases. To make GOOD educational software
that combine video game aspects requires work and research. And most
importantly, getting the software developers and the educators talking with
one another.

An educator usually knows what type of tool they would like out of
software when teaching a class and the software developer must be
willing to work with the educator to meet that goal. This is nothing
new in my opinion.

It seems in the article they discuss Muzzy Lane Software
that is developing some software called Making History that let’s people
control European Governments in history and simulate the outcome and effects of
their actions. They are also putting it at a very realistic price tag
of $25-$40. While Open Source isn’t an evil route, I know teachers
would be happy to spend money on a software tool that let’s them enable
teaching. However, just putting out the tool IS NOT enough. There
will be some teachers who are computer savvy enough to be able to pick it
up and integrate it into their classroom teaching. However, just handing
someone a car doesn’t give them any idea of how to actually drive it,
maintain and use it in their daily life. What will also be necessary
is information resources for teachers on how to integrate this into their
own classroom teaching. Good luck with that, that is is the toughest
part.

Read it yourself

Swearing (Don’t play this one too loud in the workplace)

The Simpsons (The Outsourced Version)

My Heart Will Go On

German dude demands compenstation for lack of sex (SHeesh talk about demanding A LOT from a social welfare system)

Thanks to Zongrila for collecting
these into one spot

This is very neat. I love Word Play, especially in languages.

The original poster describes it as follows:

I need to seriously memorize this one. It’s so amusing.

Thanks to Ng Phen Siong for posting this!

I have a passive interest in learning languages. Some of the trickier
languages for a native English speaker are Chinese, Japanese, Russian and
Arabic do to their different writing systems (I left out a lot). In
my search for stuff on the web, most of it has been rather uninspired
but this site I stumbled across seems to have gotten the idea really
well in how to use the web to help the beginner.
Ajeeb

I can say I’m really impressed. Teaching the alphabet with sounds and
a little bit of singing and interactivity shows what a computer can do
to help assist in the language learning process.

Lemme try!

Here is a link to some really
nice panorama shots of Seoul.

Thanks to Hunjang for the link

Aquaman summons a DVD compilation!

Seems Slashdot interviewed a bunchof
Indian techies and posted up their thoughts on India.

There has been piles of articles that I’ve read regarding outsourcing
however most of it has been from the American side. THere have been
a few articles from Indians but most of them seem to have the corporate
veneer painted on the responses which makes it really hard to take
it that seriously. The American sideded ones have been thoughtful
however many of them truly lack any understanding of Indian culture
from the inside and it tells. How can I say that? Try spending time
abroad for longer than a vacation and you’ll start seeing things beneath
the veneer that you can only see as a tourist. There is no quick an
easy way to build a deeper understanding of a foreign country from the
outside. No matter HOW many books, stats, and facts you dig up.

From my vantage point, I know very little of Indian culture and how
this IT offshoring/outsourcing plays in a larger role of things except
hearsay.

This Q&A session has been the useful for me as there are lots of daily life
questions salaries ranges, lifestyles, how much is the cost of living
and other things that you can relate to your own life (I hope).
This is really important as it puts the Indian offshoring “issue” into a
larger perspective.

One of the things to ponder deeper is the money issue that pops up in the
Q&A. It seems that most of this boom is coming from outside foreign
sources which makes this economy very fragile in case those funding
sources dry up. It seems this is understood and many thoughts on how
to deal with this come to the foreground but nothing definitive.
However, considering having NO income versus getting shaky funding from
foreign sources. The foreign sources is infinitively better and at
least allows bootstrapping an industry rather than keeping it in
permanent incubation.

Go read it yourself