Major Fun I salute you

Some days synergy makes you think that we are more 'connected' than we realise. I sent my a parcel of Terry Pratchett books to Bernie De Koven in San Diego last week, having promised him them for months.

Bernie is one of those people, that thanks to the Internet, I have come to know and call a friend even though we have never meet. In his BRILLIANT blog, he espouses all things 'fun'. He has been a source of great inspiration to me in his alter ego guise as 'Major Fun' and I'm going to write more about him in a future post,

I have been a 'correspondent' for him in the past, tracking down stories of general fun and merriment, but today imagine my surprise when he tells me in an email this very morning that not only has he received my package of books (for which he is very grateful), but that he has also linked to my 'Badly Laced Shoes' post within his own blog. I am deeply flattered to see his description of me therein with such kind words.

All I can do is quote to fictional monoliths; as Lizzie McGuire might say 'Well, like WOW!'. and like Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore, Major Fun has made my 'bosom swell with pride'.

Prague here I come

It's a long time since I was as excited about a course I'm attending, but this one is just a wee bit special. I am a proud member of Mirandanet an organisation for fellow ICT professionals in education.

It is the 10th anniversary of this august group and in honour of this we are having a conference and workshop session in the beautiful city of Prague. This is a city I have longed to visit and I still can't quite believe that this time tomorrow I'll be there.

The conference is entitled "Towards personalised learning: implementing the philosophy - A CPD event examining the role of ICT in building partnership projects" and I look forward to sharing thoughts and opinions with the other delegates.

One aspect of the conference is to forge links between UK schools and those from the Czech Republic and we will be visiting some Czech schools as part of the conference. Here's the itinerary.

I would like to thank Oracle for providing me with a stipend to allow me to attend this conference. Whilst there I shall be their 'ambassador' and will be waxing lyrical about the way that their brilliant Think.com personalised learning space is perfectly suited to our project aims. Thanks to Christopher Binns and Caroline Hook at Oracle for granting me the stipend, thanks to Christina Preston for promoting my case for attending and thanks to the indomitable Dr John Cuthell for organising me over the past few weeks.

I hope to bring a host of ideas back to my school for ways in which our students can collaborate with Czech students.

Look out for further posts about this exciting event.

You are feeling sleepy

Sleepy, original image uploaded to Flickr by Trinity.

One of my favourite comedy films was much maligned at the cinema. It is called 'The Big Bus' and you have doubtless never heard of it. Its type of humour predates Airplane, and there must be something wrong with me 'cos I like the former much more than the latter. It's been my son's feelgood move ever since he took ill after eating an over-cooked pizza I made him - this film made him forget his queasiness.

Anyhow, amongst many great gags, is that surrounding the co-driver of the nuclear powered bus. We find out that this man's nickname is 'Shoulders' - not on account of his broad frame, but rather because he is narcoleptic and keeps driving on the hard shoulder! The scenes of him fainting at the wheel need to be seen to be appreciated but are the cause of great mirth in this household.

Anyway - why am I mentioning this film? Well, when I saw this story which followed hot on the heels of Vista's launch, a vision of that narcoleptic bus driver sprang immediately to mind! The very idea that the fact that speech recogniton software is built-in and automatically set up, into the Operating System spells a recipe for mischief and mayhem.

It seems there is a worry that audio received through the microphone saying such words as 'delete' and 'shutdown' might cause any Vista-enabled PC's to do just that! This is just what Jack Bauer's enemies have been looking for, or Gene Hackman and his cronies in The Firm - where just saying 'delete all files' would have the desired reaction rather than having to physically click a mouse. Now it doesn't take a genius to realise that this could be exploited in a big way by malicious people - say the sending of a virus with an attachment in the form of an audio file, or an instruction on a website that might be played out of the speakers and then picked up by the microphone - a most interesting case of a feedback loop.

Now lets transport the scenario to a classroom and the potential for disaster would be everywhere - it's just unimaginable what could happen when Tommy tells his hated classmate Bob's computer to delete all his files merely by whispering into the microphone when Bob has gone to the toilet. I can see a scenario where I am telling a class how to do something and upon saying, 'and of course if you want to DELETE your files.....' cue tears and distress as work disappears before their eyes.

Although it seems there really is little to worry about this happening in reality, according to Microsoft, I still find it an interesting concept.

Now, speaking of methods of inputting instructions, here is something I prefer infinitely more than voice recognition software. It is called Dasher and it really is the most incredible (and incredibly useful) program I have come across in a long time. This really is a groundbreaking piece of software that makes you re-think all of your preconceived ideas about the methodology of entering text using a computer.

I had the honour of using this package a year or so ago after Ian Usher showed me it. I still believe it has the potential to transform the use of computers by all users, but particularly those with severe disability. For one thing, there is no need for software to come to terms with the vagaries of our accent, pronunciation and speech impediments. Also, imagine how this program could have assisted with this dreadful case.

I liked Dan Geer's scenario of an aiport concourse with people making use of the free Wifi - when suddenly a voice comes over the PA 'Paging Mr Reese Sett. Paging Mr Reese Sett'. I chuckle to myself again as I think of Shoulders fainting at the wheel of The Big Bus again.

More Anti-Yahoo Civil Disobedience

This is a screenshot taken from the http://wii.yahoo.com and is related to the Flickr / Yahoo saga documented in my previous post. "Yahoo Sucks" appears in 3 of their photos from the Flickr feed.