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Show Notes:
“The Nintendo DS Classroom <original pressrelease in Japanese> features no new hardware, but instead consists of a package of several handhelds, a PC and newly developed educational software for the DS.” from TechRadar.com
Supposedly the DS bundle will contain no games and would use the DS WiFi and the PC to distrubute classmaterials. No word yet on if these materials will come from the teacher or Nintendo. Ofcourse this will be released in Japan first and then in other countries depending on reaction.
I’m still not sure why you would have to disable gameplay to make them educational devices. The games could really be a carrot on a stick for the right student.
Update: Does this seem like Nintendo trying to a tethered down version of the OLPC project?
* ‘Millionth English word’ declared: A US web monitoring firm has declared the millionth English word to be Web 2.0, a term for the latest generation of web products and services.
Global Language Monitor (GLM) searches the internet for newly coined terms, and once a word or phrase has been used 25,000 times, it recognises it.
GLM said Web 2.0 beat out the terms Jai ho, N00b and slumdog to take top spot. from BBC.co.uk
This is probably just an interesting bit of “non-news”, but I thought it was worth posting. It is frightening that anyone with a halfbaked idea and a press release can get on BBC news. (Thanks to Nelly Cardinale)
France’s highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.
The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.
The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy’s scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web. from the Times Online
Though I’m not sure if I would consider web access a basic human right, this story does show how our view of the Internet is changing. The internet is no longer just a place for recreation and is becoming a basic utility.
“The official release of Sugar on a Stick (SoaS) is a significant mile stone
for the Sugar project. In this release, the platform exhibits a much higher level of refinement and maturity than the previous versions, which were shipped on OLPC’s XO laptops. The user interface is
smoother, the individual components seem better integrated, and many impressive new programs that have been added.” from Ars Technica
Sugar on a stick was officailly released this week and I’m excited to try it out. I was never able to get the beta version onto a USB stick I am hoping to see if I can get this version to work. I’ve been running Sugar off the iso disk to mixed results and I’m excited to try the new version.
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Teaching for the Future 104: Linux in the Classroom part 1
TftF 110: Thomas “cmdln” Gideon (Linux in the Classroom 3)
Open Source Alternatives for the K-12 Windows User
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