Blog

F.

Flip Text – Mirror Writing 2.0

By In Art, Blog, Technology1 Comment
The notes on Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man image are in mirror writing.

Leonardo da Vinci is famous for having written most of his personal notes in mirror.

There are two popular theories on why he did this. Either da Vinci was left-handed, causing the ink to smudge easily if he wrote in standard writing. Or he wanted to protect his ideas from theft or hide them from the Roman Catholic Church with whom his research practices sometimes collided. However, the latter idea is highly unlikely. Even at da Vinci’s time, the text in question could be easily read “backwards” either directly or through its reflection in a mirror. The true purpose of this practice thus remains unknown.

Which tool would he use today? It would probably be fliptext. Although it is not exactly mirror writing, it transforms the text in a similar way, using symmetry and similarities of different letters. For example s, x, z and o are rotationally symmetrical, while pairs such as b/q, d/p and n/u are rotations of each other. The rest of the letters are encoded into the Unicode International Phonetic Alphabet, creating a full set of upside-down lowercase letters.

I am quite impressed each time I try it, that it’s possible to read the transformed text, even without a mirror, or even without turning your screen upside down.

You can use fliptext to write upside down on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or your Blog or even typing Emails, Presentations or Documents. It should work in all modern browsers and applications because it is Unicode.
Try it out!Fliptext.org

?u?op ?p?sdn u????s ?no? bu?u?n? ?no???? u??? ?o ‘?o???? ? ?no???? u??? ‘?x?? p???o?su??? ??? p??? o? ??q?ssod s,?? ???? ‘?? ??? ? ???? ???? p?ss??d?? ???nb ?? ?

?s?????? ?s?????o? u?op-?p?sdn ?o ??s ??n? ? bu?????? ‘??q??d?? ????uo?d ??uo???u???u? ?po??un ??? o?u? p?po?u? ??? s?????? ??? ?o ?s?? ??? ?????o ???? ?o suo????o? ??? n/u pu? d/p ‘b/q s? ??ns s???d ????? ‘??????????s ????uo????o? ??? o pu? z ‘x ‘s ??d??x? ?o? ?s?????? ?u??????p ?o s??????????s pu? ???????s bu?sn ‘??? ??????s ? u? ?x?? ??? s??o?su??? ?? ‘bu????? ?o???? ?????x? ?ou s? ?? ?bno???? ??x??d??? ?q ??q?qo?d p?no? ?? ¿??po? ?sn ?? p?no? ?oo? ?????

?u?ou?un su????? sn?? ???????d s??? ?o ?sod?nd ?n?? ??? ??o???? ? u? uo???????? s?? ?bno??? ?o ???????p ?????? “sp??????q” p??? ???s?? ?q p?no? uo??s?nb u? ?x?? ??? ‘???? s,??u?? ?p ?? u??? ???????un ???b?? s? ??p? ?????? ??? ‘?????o? ?p?p???o? s??????os s???????d ?????s?? s?? ?o?? ???? ???n?? ???o???? u??o? ??? ?o?? ???? ?p?? ?o ????? ?o?? s??p? s?? ????o?d o? p??u?? ?? ?o ?bu????? p??pu??s u? ??o?? ?? ?? ???s?? ?bpn?s o? ?u? ??? bu?sn?? ‘p?pu??-???? s?? ??u?? ?p ?????? ?s??? p?p ?? ??? uo s???o??? ???ndod o?? ??? ?????

??o???? u? s??ou ??uos??d s?? ?o ?so? u?????? bu???? ?o? sno??? s? ??u?? ?p op??uo??

W.

With new technology, literacy evolves

By In Blog, Culture, Education, Technology0 Comments

It was Louis Braille, a student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, who modified the French Army’s “night writing”  in 1821 and came up with what is known as Braille today. For the first time in history, blind people had access to a reliable method of written communication, resulting in a signifant rise in social status. Louis Braille was embraced as a liberator.

Braille code where the word “premier” (French for “first”) can be read.

Nowadays, with more and more written words digitized, MP3 players, audio books and screen-reading software are a real alternative for blind people to access and communicate in the written language, without even knowing Braille. A report by the National Federation of the Blind found that less than 10 percent of legally blind Americans learn to read and write Braille today. Back in the 1950s it was roughly half of all blind children.

There has been a big debate whether this affects cognitive development. Moving from the written to the spoken language may have more cultural consequences rather than cognitive ones. It is about losing your own way of communication, and discussing that issue may be as passionate as the debate about cochlear implants and their imoact on the use of sign language, or the decreasing of language variety in general.

But I would rather like to link the developments of Braille and new technology to the learning of reading and writing in schools today. Although for sighted people the transition from written and printed texts to digital representations has been more subtle, it is still remarkable and has important impacts, too. It will probably affect our general view of literacy. With new technology, literacy has become harder to define.

That's how text messaging looked like in 1912. (c) Underwood & Underwood
That’s how text messaging looked like in 1912. (c) Underwood & Underwood

Take penmanship for example: While handwriting was still necessary in the last century for documents, reports, etc., this is no longer the case today. The majority of formal documents are expected to be typed and most people use handwriting, if at all, only for informal notes and reminders. One could question the relevance of learning penmanship at all. A few decades ago, experts even predicted that the electronic age would create a postliterate generation as new forms of media eclipsed the written word. Marshall McLuhan, Canadian philosopher and scholar best known for his expression “global village”, claimed in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964) that Western culture would return to the “tribal and oral pattern.”

Do we really need to learn penmanship to be literate people today? The architecture of our brain is flexible. Blind people for instance consistently surpass sighted ones on tests of verbal memory, according to a 2003 study in Nature Neuroscience. Instead of teaching handwriting, it would be more appropriate to teach digital literacy, not least because even standardized tests are employing the new technologies. For example, in 2011, the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will require 8th and 11th graders to compose on computers, with 4th graders following in 2019.

Although one could argue that the question of teaching and testing is only another form of asking: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, I would argue, that even without testing future education will be much more about digital literacy rather than calligraphy. And new technology will not only affect the way we teach reading and writing, but also the way we teach art, music, mathematics, science, foreign languages and literature. I am curious about the new approaches and very happy to live in a global village.

T.

The School of Facebook

By In Blog, Culture, Education, Technology0 Comments

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” This famous misquotation of ancient Greek philosopher Socrates became popular in the 1960s, when it was used by the Mayor of Amsterdam and reported by The New York Times, on April 3, 1966.

Rafael: The School of Athens

Nowadays, parents and teachers once again are concerned about the bad manners or the social well-being of their kids.

Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 spend on average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day using some sort of electronic device, from smartphones to MP3 players to computers, The Kayser Family Foundation reported earlier this year. You can go to any campus or school, and you will probably find an immediate flipping up of phones and texting when the lesson is over. Parents are concerned about the fact that kids no longer care about language as an art and gift. And they wonder: If some of these digital natives have more than 500 “friends” on social networks like Facebook, do we have to be concerned about the future?

We do, certainly. But we should look a little bit closer first. As The Economist reported in an article entitled “Primates on Facebook” last year, even people with very many Facebook friends, mutually communicate only with some happy few. 10 to 16 people, according to a study of the Facebook Data Team, taking into account gender differences. The average user on Facebook has “only” 120 confirmed friend connections and mutually communicates with 3 to 7 people. This looks quite similar to the good old concept of friendship.

(c) Facebook Data Team: Maintained Relationships on Facebook

And even if Facebook seems to devaluate the term “friend”, and although parents might be impressed or scared of the social multitasking skills of their children, digital natives seem to be able to build up and maintain friendships in their social networks. As the Economist put it: “The neocortex is the limit.”

It was Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist from Oxford, who extrapolated from the brain sizes and social networks of apes and suggested that the size of the human brain allows stable networks of about 148. Many institutions, from neolithic villages to the maniples of the Roman army, seem to be organized around this Dunbar number. And even digital natives in their new habitat of social networks do not exceed those limits.

Until recently concerns about the use of technology have been focused on the implications for kids’ intellectual development. Now, it is taken into account how technology is affecting social relationships and friendship. This brings the worry about the social repercussions of technology from the darker side of online interactions, like cyber-bullying or texting sexually explicit messages, to the light.

In my opinion, most of the concerns of the elder generation result from something Remo Largo, swiss MD and early childhood specialist would call “misfit” between Kids’ behavior and their environment. Then education would be about rearranging learning and living to better match the children’s individual needs. That means new approaches to digital literacy to address a second digital divide. But it is also about being interested in the kids’ needs and their new virtual habitat. Better education will help them to find the balance between broadcasting and privacy, networking and friendship, multitasking and concentration, lightweight conversation and personal reflection, online networks, and real life.

This southpark episode is a very good starting point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SgkfghupFE&NR=1

D.

Digital Divide 2.0

By In Blog, Education, Technology0 Comments

The first digital divide has faded in schools but a second one is emerging, a study of the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, concludes.

Digital Divide 1.0 (c) www.toby-ng.com

The term digital divide came up in the 1990s when the internet made its way into public consciousness. It describes the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all. Digital divide in the first place was about the gap between those 7 people in our global village of 100 that have computers and the rest. The OECD study found that someone living in a rich country would probably be amongst those 7 people having access to computers. Regarding the students in particular, the picture is even brighter: in almost all OECD countries all students attend schools equipped with computers. 88% of computers at schools are connected to the Internet.

But the issue is far from closed. According to the study computer use can make a difference in educational performance if the student is duly equipped with the right set of competences, skills and attitudes. In their absence, no matter how intense the computer use is the expected benefits are going to be lost.

If policy making would be finished by putting computers and hardware into schools it would be like saying: Here is a book. Here is a paper. Here is a pen. Now you can read and write! No one would really argue, that this is the right approach to address illiteracy. Surprisingly and on the contrary, many policy makers still tend to use the paper-and-pen-approach in their decision making process on ICT use in schools. Therefore Michael Trucano of the World Bank recently assembled an insightful list of Worst practice in ICT use in education.

If you agree that you can’t fight illiteracy with a paper and a pen alone, than you would probably agree that fighting the first digital divide by putting computers in classrooms is only a precondition to fighting the real digital divide. The OECD study thus identified a “new” second form of digital divide between those who have the right competences and skills to benefit from computer use, and those who have not. For me and for many others this isn’t news, because there has always been a digital divide between my grandparents and me for instance, from the very beginning of the information age.

The OECD study may not be noteworthy in 2010 for its newness, but it could facilitate additional discussions and debates amongst policy makers and educators about digital literacy. And this is what really lies at the core of the educational challenge faced by many countries today.

(c) 1962 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

B.

Being admitted to college is not always easy for an iPad

By In Blog, Education, Technology0 Comments

A reader without connectivity problems

The iPad is facing difficulty being accepted at Princeton University and others because of network stability issues, connectivity problems and concerns about bandwidth overload. This could be quite a setback for Apple’s strategy to go after the higher education market by highlighting the iPad’s portability and availability of electronic books. Indeed, those features aren’t worth a lot if students are unable to connect to the internet to check emails or course assignments.

But acceptance is not only about connectivity issues. As for now the volume of educational content available via the iBookstore is far to small to eliminate expensive physical textbooks. This would be another argument to seriously reconsider putting an iPad on your wishlist before Christmas. According to industry analysts and professors, schools won’t fully embrace iPads until textbook publishers offer more digital resources that go beyond electronic versions of hard copy books. It could take several months, before such content will be available. “We’re not just turning a book into a PDF,” Josh Koppel of ScrollMotion said. Educational books are usually more difficult to translate into e-books because they often include mathematical formulas, graphs and other non-standard-text material. And students demand note-taking or highlighting functionality, features often unavailable on today’s e-reader-formats, such as Amazon’s Kindle or others.

Being an early adopter has its ups and downs. And sometimes it can be quite frustrating. George Washington said its wireless network’s security features don’t support the iPad. Princeton said it has proactively blocked about 20% of the devices from its network after noticing malfunctions within the school’s computer system. Cornell’s information-technology director Steve Schuster said that the school is seeing networking and connectivity issues. The colleges all say they are trying to find fixes to the problems.