A door closes as one opens

I talked about the Promethean Activboards in the past and how much I like the way they engage children in the classroom.  Well it seems Promethean isn't alone in the journey to alter the classroom.  Well June brings the end to most public school terms and this is when schools start to figure out budgets and the purchases of new equipment.  This is where the world of ICT plays a huge part.  Not only is there a great space for improvement when it comes to education technology, but everyone involved can actually feel good about what they are doing.  SMART Technologies is the producer of interactive whiteboards much like the ones brought to schools by Promethean.  Since competition breeds innovation I'm happy to report on this brand and their efforts.

Here is there classroom remote Senteo, that allows students to respond and vote from their seats and see the results.

Here is the SMARTboard in action

The Future is here...which is bad news for the mouse

Touch UI is coming to the common man...in PC form.  Or at least that's what Window's is planning for 2009 for the operating system Windows 7.  This article focuses on the business aspects of the advances in touch interface and mentions some pretty nifty ideas.  MS Paint with touch is kind of an old idea that has already taken form on interactive whiteboards but still a fun notion.  Imagine, someday we may have an office completely devoid of mice and mouse pads.

You know what this means right?  We aren't very far from holograms in the workplace.

Iron Man or Why I hate Robert Downey Jr.

I'm an old school nerd.  I read comics, played video games and listened to music produced by people much angrier than any human has the right to be.  As a nerd I was eagerly awaiting the Iron Man movie.  To sum it up, I wasn't nearly as blown away as everyone else was by this movie.  Roberty Downey does a good job at playing himself...which I hear requires a tremendous effort by any actor...especially when thats all you do.   The action was pretty cool...except for a couple of phantom tank shells...which I hear tend to explode, except when fired at Iron Man.  The plot worked well enough.  Maybe I was just expecting too much from this one.  Maybe it's the fact that I never really got into Iron Man comics.  Maybe it's because I ran out of popcorn 10 minutes into the movie (never split popcorn between more than 3 people).  This movie was a B effort but with the hype of an A movie.  Well at least Samuel Jackson is going to play Nick Fury...which makes sense I hear.