The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn’t included in this version of Windows. However, you can download a program that will allow you to view Help created in the Windows Help format.

Useful? Clear?

1. iBooks 2 == text books for the iPad
2. iBooks Author == (free) Mac OS application for creating iBooks text books
3. iTunes U == new app and opening up of iTunes to schools (aka US K-12 / UK Primary & Secondary)

Coverage:

• Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apples-education-announcement-what-you-need-to-know/
• The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/19/apple-unveils-ibooks-2-textbooks-ipad
• Ars Technica:
• http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/01/educators-hope-apples-textbook-foray-will-begin-a-learning-revolution.ars
• http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/01/punched-up-lectures-hands-on-with-the-new-itunes-u-app-for-ios.ars
• Apple video of the announcement event (QuickTime): http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1201oihbafvpihboijhpihbasdouhbasv/event/index.html

Playing with processing.js today (with a sick little F for company) I came up with this.  When I started it was based on a fuzzy memory of a distant NPR radio show. By the time I was finished I’d realised I’d stumbled into something of a classic.

Imagine a circle that is just contained within a square, actually, don’t imagine, here’s one drawn with the processing arc function:

How does this help find a value for π? Since the area of the circle is:

Circle Area = πr²

and the area of the rectangle enclosing the circle is:

Rectangle Area = 2r x 2r = 4r²

We know that π can be calculated by:

π = 4 (Circle Area / Square Area)

i.e. if we can calculate (or guess!) the area of the circle we can calculate π.

The normal way to calculate the area of a circle is to use the formula πr² but since π is also what we want to know, we’ll need something different. Notice that we don’t actually need to know the areas, we just need the ratio of the area of the circle to the area of the square. That means that the something different we’re looking for is to find that ratio.

After some thought I decided to throw darts at the square in some random fashion (blindfolded will do) and to then count the number of darts that hit the circle. Knowing how many I’d thrown in total would give the ratio. Unfortunately, I found that throwing darts at a computer screen is a bad idea. They don’t ‘stick’ unless you throw them really hard. When you throw them really hard the picture disappears with a loud bang. Instead, I used processing.js to throw virtual darts:

// throw a virtual dart at position x,y and leave a point

x = random(1,width);
y = random(1,height);

point(x,y);

I could then test whether each ‘dart’ hit the circle or not:

     
        // test if dart hit inside the circle
        // by calculating distance from origin…
        a = (x – centreX);
        asquared = a*a;
        b = (y – centreY);
        bsquared = b*b;
        c = Math.sqrt(asquared + bsquared);
       
        // …and comparing with radius
        if(c < radius)
        {
            // hit inside, set color to gray and increment counter
            stroke(128,128,128);
            inside = inside + 1;
        }
        else
        {
            // hit outside, set color to red and increment counter
            stroke(255,0,0);
            outside = outside +1;
        }

and then calculate an estimate for π

        // update the estimate of pi
        // ratio of area of a circle over area of a square is pi/4
        // therefore, calc our approximation of pi as…
        piestimate = 4*( inside/(inside+outside));

Placing the code in a loop to throw many darts refines the estimate on each iteration. Here’s what you get with 100,000 iterations:

Resulting in an estimate for π of 3.1492.

This approach is known as the Monte Carlo method. For reasons that should be obvious if you gamble.

I’d love to try this with real darts some day…

More in http://cs.njit.edu/~alexg/courses/cs101/OLD/S2011/handouts/mp2cs101s11.pdf

Sagepay is one of the world’s largest payment providers so your detail are always secure.

How does being large equate to being secure?

Before it grew to be so big was it insecure?

Some observations:

• The show floor was busy (and I’m told busier still on Thursday). I’m assuming that means people could make the time to go and management had the money for cover staff. Therefore there’s still money around, and that’s a good sign for the industry.
• Google had the busiest booth. Lots of people looking at Google Apps for Edu.
• Microsoft Office 365 for education isn’t ready, and apparently won’t do many of the things I’d like to do when it is. The staff I talked to on the booth were pushing Kodu but weren’t aware of XNA . If I didn’t already have a WP7 I could have got a great demo… but not of the dev tools.
• RM appeared to have the biggest staff-in-suits-to-customer ratio, followed by capita. If that’s an indicator of their overheads generally, then RM are still in trouble.
• People on the stands in the SEN zone were by far the most knowledgeable on their products & services.
• Favourite quote: “It is your data but we’d rather you didn’t do that” [nameless]
• The conference sessions were variable in quality and poorly attended (compared with foot-traffic on the show floor). I got a lot from them, but much of that was because this is a new space for me.

One of the conference panellists made the insightful observation that, for many schools, more technology is not the answer. Rather, it’s developing the skills and capability across the organisation to  use the technology they have effectively, whether that’s for administration or for improving learning. Given that, the difference between low attendance at conference sessions with high attendance to the show was startling. With the government-signalled move to a more rigorous approach to ICT with increased aspects of computer science and programming, it’ll be even more important for people to focus on what you can do with the technology and not where they can get more. Maybe that’s an opportunity for BETT to look at some vendor-neutral sharing of best-practice and training next year? maybe by embracing and extending some of the TeachMeet activities that occurred around BETT? 

An unexpected highlight was sitting in on Tim Oates’ session describing the approach being taken by the National Curriculum expert panel. There’s obviously a lot of deep thinking going on, much of which is captured in the December report, but this session helped me understand the rationale behind some of the things that get more widely reported.

OCR were pushing their new OCR Cambridge Nationals qualification and the OCR Cambridge National in ICT in particular. I didn’t get to the OCR booth, but did get to hear from Mark Dawe, Chief Executive of OCR, about how OCR think about their role in assessment. Having read the draft specification for the new qualifications however, and particularly the introduction to programming in unit R008, I’m very disappointed. These two fragments from the unit introduction say much:

[…] by developing knowledge and understanding of how operators are used within computer applications. 

Computer programs are an essential element of modern living. Without suitable programs most modern devices or systems would not function. For example, they are used in games, phone applications, domestic appliances, life-support systems, CAD/CAM, transport, security systems.

It’s true that there’s flexibility in the OCR assessments for some great teaching, but specification like that do little to help encourage or support those looking to stretch things.

The most thought provoking session was John Sibbald and Sian Bristow from Manchester Communication Academy on using flexible learning spaces. I think  there’s things we could learn on how we use our break out spaces and 100 minutes learning episodes from their experience, hopefully we’ll get an opportunity to find out.

That sums up the most useful aspect of BETT, making connections and building out a network in this new world I’ve entered.

Reading The Island of the Colour-blind (to discover a little more about achromatopsia and the world my niece inhabits) I was struck by this section (from p.85 in the 1996 hardback edition I was reading):

Greg and many others have worked incessantly to train good doctors in under-doctored Micronesia. But their hands are constantly full with critical conditions demanding immediate attention.

[…]

This is the stuff of medicine, the acute medicine which must be the first priority on the islands. There is little time or energy left over for something like the maskun, a congenital, non-progressive condition which one can live with. There is no time for an existential medicine which enquires into what it might mean to be blind, colour-blind or deaf, how those affected might react and adapt, how they might be helped – technologically, psychologically, culturally – to lead fuller lives.

This description resonated with my feelings on the workshop conversations. Could it be that those in the classroom are involved in “acute education”, with little time or energy to move from reactive to being proactive with new strategies and models?

After six months back in the education-world I fear the answer to that may be yes. However, if that is the problem, then the good news is there’s an easy fix: eliminating much of the process inefficiency I’ve also seen. If done properly, adopting some of the approaches to administration and process overhead so widely used in the business world would do much to free people and resources to focus on improvements to learning and education more generally.

Improving process efficiency is not as sexy as new pedagogy models or fancy technology in the classroom, and not the first thing that jumped to mind when I looked at my past experience and its applicability in the classroom. But it might be a big part of the answer we’re all looking for.

• no private schools (or public in UK English) in Finland
• no standardised tests
• real winners don’t compete
• accountability is what’s left when responsibility has been subtracted

Looking forward to the forthcoming Finish Lessons to find out more…

But intrigued by this minimalist web server:

PORT = 9914
SERVER = ‘127.0.0.1′
 
import SimpleHTTPServer
import BaseHTTPServer
import SocketServer

Handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

class Server(SocketServer.ThreadingMixIn, BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer):
    pass

httpd = Server((SERVER, PORT), Handler)
print "Web Server listening on http://%s:%s/ (stop with ctrl+c)…" % (SERVER, PORT)

try:
    httpd.serve_forever()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print "Going down…"

included in the processing.js examples I took another look.

Here’s a quick script to calculate a hash of The Guardian’s home page (as a simple crude way to see if it changed):

import urllib
import hashlib

pageURL = "http://www.guardian.co.uk"
f = urllib.urlopen(pageURL)
pageContent = f.read()
f.close()

m = hashlib.md5()
m.update(pageContent)
value = m.hexdigest()
print value

The best bit? Curley braces:

pagesDict = {pageURL:  value}

Going to dig some more and experiment with a view to using in the classroom alongside some C# and JavaScript we’re already using.

Recommended reading: the Python edition of How to think like a Computer Scientist. Oh, and Spike had a poem about it. Something about being curled around a tree and eaten.

You can’t measure everything that should be valued.

You shouldn’t value everything that can be measured.

I thought it was Einstein’s, but Google & Bing couldn’t find it so maybe it  wasn’t (or maybe it was until the Neutrino changed the past).

The BBC has a story. So too does the Telegraph. Details are up on the DfE website and the Minister’s (corrected) statement is on the Parliament site (as a PDF). Labour have commented. We’ll wait and see…