Horizon Report 2010

The New Media Consortium’s 2010 Horizon Report features six technologies with a timeline for likely entrance into the mainstream for “teaching, learning or creative inquiry.” Each technology is accompanied by an overview, relevance for teaching, learning and creative expression, and links to the technologies in use.

In the next 12 months:

Mobile Computing and Open Content

In the next 2-3 years:

Electronic Books and Simple Augmented Reality

Friday Film Day

Came across these two great films from the Internet Archive: Why Study Science (1955) and The Librarian (1947) Both are lovely.

Copenhagen and books scientists read

I have been watching the 2002 film Copenhagen, based on the 1998 play by Michael Frayn. Because, I am also currently reading the very indepth book, The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo, I find my mind putting these two things together. The book is amazing. It is a bit hard reading at times, but really is so rich. From the very beginning of Paul Dirac’s life, there are records of what he read, and when. We know that after being inspired by a series of lectures, that he “found a copy of Eddington’s book Space, Time and Gravitation, and he taught himself the special and general theories.” Likewise, after thinking he had come across a Poisson bracket, he waited till the next day to get into the library, and read A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies by Edmund Whittaker.
It is, of course, fascinating, to see where our ideas come from–who has inspired whom. Even more so, for these champions of physics.
There is often an argument about which is better–the movie or the book? In this instance, I would highly recommend watching Copenhagen to get the atmosphere of the times, and read The Strangest Man to delve deeply into the mind of a scientist.