The Information World Ahead

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Griffith University lecturer Kym Macfarlane believes today’s toddlers will enter a world that is incomprehensible to most of us. “Allowing children [access to] technology at an early age will allow them to be far more discerning and feel more comfortable with the technology they will need in the future,” Macfarlane says.

What technology and information changes do you forsee? How do you think schools can use these to help people get, manage and sift through information?

NZ Science Geeks Keep Companies Honest

Two Science students from Pakuranga College in Auckland, New Zealand have found that the claims of Vitamin-C content wrong! It goes to show that science is important. And chemistry, at that.

Maths and Science do have the power to change the world and improve people’s lives.

I am sure both of the girls, who say they are getting into Advertising and Law, will take their science-process knowledge with them into their future. Good on you!

Online = talking about what you are interested in!

From World in their Hands, Sydney Morning Herald Icon today:

But Dr Jan Fletcher, of the Child Study Centre at the University of Western Australia, is wary of virtual lives for children. “There is a danger that this online interaction might be limiting the amount of social interaction the child is actually having,” she warns. “I want kids to talk to each other about what they’re interested in, not about a world invented by a toy company.

Hmmm, online interaction takes many forms – and kids do talk to each other about what they are interested in. Online, offline, within and without borders.

It seems the world of “toys” and “information” joined together magically means “education”. What if information is actually, well, fun? Gone are the bookish days of reading an encyclopedia and welcome to the world of instant information.

The critical skill is information literacy.

Learning Technology Challenge. It’s not the Technology.

As highlighted by one of Australia’s leading Social Networking thinkers in Education, Mike Seyfang, technology in schools is already in schools. Mobile phones, the MSN Messenger communities, blogs, Myspace, Wikipedia: these technologies are being used by students today.

One pervasive technology that hounds parents today is the use of MSN Live Messenger. It’s the standard tool for all kids today. Without Messenger, kids are outcasts from their social networks. They use it to gossip (like the telephone of previous eras) and to collaborate on school projects. And probably bully, too. In all instances, collaboration is king. Today, the ability to collaborate in work and life scenarios is underdeveloped in K-12 (especially at the pointy end of K-12) as the focus moves to individual achievement.

Unless you are stuck on a deserted island, your life is going to be collaborative. Work, too. In a connected world, this is amplified and packetised.

What is needed is policy and technology-frameworks to unlock the power of the networks that exist. It might be Single-Sign-on (sometimes referred to SSO), firewalls and other pieces of technology that corporations already use. Microsoft (my employer) eats its own dogfood: smartcards, firewalls, network security and the like.

However, it is my contention that the first hurdle isn’t the technology: it’s enabling the passionate teachers to engage in the learning networks. Removing the blockages of knee-jerk blanket restrictions – as they do not work. Remember, the internet was designed to deal with failure and route around it. Censorship is classed as a failure, and therefore is routed around.

I’d love to hear teacher stories.

Lane Cove Tunnel Rocks, then Stops

A drive to work normally takes me 45 minutes, and is around 12Kms from home.

Today, with the opening of the Lane Cove Tunnel and onramp from Falcon Street to the middle of the Warringah Freeway (which should have been done in the first place) I can get to work within 22 minutes, and 10Kms to work. This was at 8:19am (peak time for Military Road)

Leaving Home at reset 0 on Megan's Clock

2

I was into the Lane Cove Tunnel within 10 minutes of leaving home; the bulk of the time on the trip was at the Epping Road/Delhi Road end. Even here, the flow rate was acceptable.

Military Road, Outer Lane, City-bound 5 Cars going onto Freeway Light Traffic Into the Tunnel

There are three lanes heading toward Epping Road as the Pacific Highway in-coming traffic gets its own lane until the end of the Tunnel.

3 Lanes of Traffic

Only contentions are now the 5 traffic lights on Military Road (although the far right lane flowed extremely well) and the two on Delhi Road. Also, the single lane from dual lane just over the M2 overpass is a bottleneck. So arriving at the intersection at 8:32, I was in the Microsoft car park at 8:41am

Exit to North Ryde, not M2 Please Delhi Road Single Lane Issue

From memory, the Delhi Road contention was predicted as a potentional problem; however it is no different to norming morning traffic.

PM Update: Evening run took 15 minutes for 10.2 Kms. Low traffic in tunnel, and the freeway and the exit to Falcon Street. Usually, this trip is at least 40 minutes for 12 Kms.

A Life in Packets

TCP/IP is the low level stuff that has changed the world. VoIP, Web, Web 2 and all that stuff require TCP/IP to work. When I was first introduced to this protocol in 1987 (late bloomer, here) I wasn’t that overwhealmed.

What has TCP/IP have to do with life? TCP/IP packetizes data. Instead of have a channel open (like TV, Radio) and streaming constantly – TCP/IP puts bits into discreet packages at one end, throws them out the network, and expects the other end to re-assemble to get the data.

Maybe life and work comes in packets, too? Bursts of energy and bursts of reflection

Why is there a 5 days work, 2 days weekend imposed on us by some distant hierarchy?

Another key concept is latency, or the space between the packets. Keeping the latency predictable, or as low as possible, is another life skill.

Life and work comes in packets and latency, that get munged.