GoogleSky

A few days ago we were looking for a good star/sky catalog, and a few days ago Google released an amazing update to GoogleEarth. So, wow, cool, all that.

You can now use their app to view the night sky, as you'd see it, from wherever you are. Also, just like in the rest of GoogleEarth, you can zooooooommmm.

This is looking like an amazing potential venue for the LSST star data Google has promised to archive, which will be coming in... 2013? (so far away) at a rate of 30TB a night.

Some applications with similar offerings are mentioned in this article, but I'd check out Stellarium (open-source, cross-platform). I haven't fully explored it, but it has some fun overlays, and from what I can see, it all sits on your computer, which would be preferable to the GoogleEarth/Sky, should you be star-gazing in an area where the wifi is a bit spotty.

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http://earth.google.com/sky/
Google Lat Long (GoogleEarth and Maps blog)
another youtube spot
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It is alarming (and wonderful) to think about how disparate the childhoods of the coming generations are and will be from every other generation that has come before. Seriously, check out the zoom on a nebula or something. Crazy.

An OLPC Christmas / OLPC Distribution in October

Holiday Wishes Come True?

Finally some confirmation from up on high! (Mary Lou Jepsen, CTO)
She mentions a possible price-tag of $350.



From the reuters article:

As the foundation prepares for mass production of its first model, the XO, to begin in October, it is looking for ways to subsidize manufacturing of the devices so that it can get more of them into the hands of poor children, Jepsen said.

Profits from consumer sales would go for that purpose, said Jepsen.

"We're trying to get the best deal we can," she said.

She added the foundation is looking at selling the machines over the Internet and talking to companies with "a big presence on the Web," although she declined to identify any by name.

We could speculate on what laptop-conveyance they'll go with, waxing fantastical, but the reality is probably not going to be that earth-shaking; they'll find a tigerdirect-like distributor, or something.

Saying that, I'm not ruling out GoogleDelivery, direct from the hands of Al Gore as he travels cross-country at the head of a fleet of OLPC-laden GoogleVans.

boingboing
reuters

Large-Scale Laptop Production About To Begin

According to this BBC article, the production of the Children Machine is about to be ramped up to get the devices into kids hands by this coming October.

Here's Chris Blizzard going over innards and some power stuff: (courtesy BBC)

The BBC also provides a link to their 'Factfile: XO laptop' which contains a good overview of the technology that makes the Children's Machine what it is. If you scroll-down to the bottom, they have an applet demonstrating how the mesh connectivity behaves (it looks like a slightly modifed version of this one). Fun.

Although I find it a little hard to believe that we'll be able to purchase our very own OLPCs only two months after legitimate distribution starts, I am so excited for this Christmas.

Mr. Rogers talks to the US senate

I posted this video before watching it through. Since then I've gone searching for more Fred Rogers on the Internet and beyond. Today I tried to find his book, You Are Special, in my local bookstores to no avail. I'm going to try the Amherst stores soon.

His PBS website gives a taste of his book and some of his song lyrics with sheet music.

His wikipedia entry is not bad and contains this excerpt from Esquire Magazine's coverage of the 1997 Daytime Emmy's, written by Tom Junod:

Mister Rogers went onstage to accept the award — and there, in front of all the soap opera stars and talk show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are. Ten seconds of silence."[5]

And then he lifted his wrist, looked at the audience, looked at his watch, and said, 'I'll watch the time." There was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch, but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked. And so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds — and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier. And Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said softly, "May God be with you," to all his vanquished children.

The entry also covers his advocacy of the VCR:

Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it ... I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.

This testimony was quoted in a footnote of the Supreme Court's decision to allow VCRs. I'm sure he'd want more than just as few clips like this one, to be on youtube.

One Blog Per Child

If I were teacher, I would not hide from wikipedia. Many teachers do. Citing it is often forbidden. But why run away from a giant book of everything, when it's fun to read with links and tabs. Better to adapt to it.

Rather than infrequent big projects, students should have lots of mini research projects. Asked and allowed to go questing through wikipedia, following links that interest them. Learning history or science, geometry or UFOs. Their reports would be digital. Blog reports summarizing what they had read. They would be supervised by teachers or by older students as part of their education. Teaching is a valuable skill, and experience is a virtue. And the OLPC is a necessity for this sort of thing.

We need books to outline a curriculum for schools without books. And tell us how to revive the relationship between the pupil and the teacher.

Meanwhile, I think personal technologies will be tearing off in two directions. That of the iPhone, Jeff Han, touch screen magic, and that of the OLPC. $100 laptops, mean the internet is finally everywhere. Breadth and depth.

from OLPC News:

If Ever a Wiz There Was

So Mr. Wizard died... yesterday... I guess - summer days are futzing me up. I used to watch his show when I was younger. If you havn't seen the show, he'd do an often-impressive demonstration of some basic science, then explain it, while doing a pretty good job of engaging his audience - to my knowledge, this was the first show of its kind (wikipedia tells me his first version of the show started in the 50s).

As someone effectively fed and raised by television, this was a formative morning staple, and deserves a degree of credit for injecting a sense of curiosity into my squishy child-brain.


*links*
boingboing
his website
l.a. times obituary