Psychotherapy via Secondlife

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2008/03/03/md_to_fight_stress_in_second_life/

Interesting...

Har, har, har

At a grocery store in Cambridge, a fellow put twenty items down at the express (5 items or less) check out. The checker looked at the fellow and said. "You are from either Harvard or MIT." The fellow said, "Why yes. How did you know.?" The check said, "Well, I knew you were either from Harvard and couldn't count or MIT and couldn't read."

Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web

This seems like an important trend/transition that will soon change the ways in which we conceive of and use our computers. Thoughts?


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/technology/25adobe.html?th&emc=th

Twitter

I just read this NY Times piece, and signed up with Twitter.com. Hopefully, I'll have better luck getting my children to engage Twitter than the author of this article did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/fashion/
14Cyber.html?th&emc=th

Anyone here tried this out yet?

"Enquiring Minds Want to Know!"

Text to Speech for the Web

Macintosh computers running OS X have text-to-speech (TTS) built in. I plan to demonstrate this in class Monday.

Mac TTS is easy to activate; follow instructions available via the "Help" menu in the Finder. I searched on "read text aloud" in Help to find how to do this.

None of the voices are "great", in my opinion, but most of them are "OK". I admit, grudgingly, that Windows seems to have better voices. :-)

Windows users may want to use the following:
Mozilla Firefox with Speak It is a stripped down, streamlined re-build of Mozilla offering tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and significantly increased security over and above Internet Explorer. Firefox is customizable and extensible, and, by adding themes and extensions, can be configured for each user. The Speak It extension provides text-to-speech support on all web pages.
www.mozilla.org/products/firefox; https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3552 Both of these are free.

(A tip of the hat to Skip Stahl, of CAST, for this information.)

New Book

New Book I like

Interesting new book from Harvard Education Press
(Located on Story Street in Cambridge, just across Brattle St.).

Transforming Schools With Technology: How Smart Use of Digital Tools Helps Achieve Six Key Educational Goals. Andrew A. Zucker, 2008. $27

Zucker has been a public school teacher, has worked for the US DOE, SRI, and currently works at the Concord Consortium.

The Six Goals are addressed individually, in six separate chapters:

1. Increasing Student Achievement
2. Making Schools More Engaging and Relevant
3. Providing a High-Quality Education for All Students
4. Attracting, Preparing, and Retaining High-Quality Teachers
5. Increasing Support for Children Outside of School
6. Requiring Accountability for Results

I’ve not finished it, and so far find it generally thoughtful, practical, sensible, and informative. It’s certainly worth looking at.

More later, Bart.