Week Note 3
(belated) Monday was a big day: I confirmed the hiring of my first employee, and gave a seminar at Auckland University on open research. The employee is my sister (getting back into the workforce …
Entries
Week Note 2
Ok, so it’s been a while since my last week report. Sorry, habits are hard to form. Family flew back from our Colorado trip, landing Sunday morning. The great thing about “computer …
Delayed Broadcast of International Programs
It’s always seemed strange to me that local broadcasters would hold off broadcasting Dr Who, Mad Men, and other high-profile shows. Viewers chatter about it as soon as an episode airs in its …
Judge Harvey, Kim Dotcom, and The Press
Judge David Harvey has stepped down from the Kim DotCom case. At NetHui last week, he led a discussion of copyright where opinions from the floor were variously thoughtful, passionate, and novel. He …
Schools and Belief
Most of us have a case of “you don’t know what you don’t know”: we don’t know the range of what’s possible, so we continue doing things as we’ve seen them …
Education and Technology
I’ve been in the position of being a geek talking with teachers for a while, and I’ve found it best to approach the whole area of education with humility. In education, as in business, you …
Holiday Road Toll
Every long weekend we hear how many people died, as though it means something, but there’s never any analysis beyond whether it’s more or less than last year’s number. It …
2011 in Books
I’ve been conscientiously using Goodreads to review every book I read. I’ve used the Goodreads API, some Perl, and some Javascript to boil down my year’s reading. Without further …
National Standards, Charter Schools, and a Pint on the Future
tl;dr: Charter schools aren’t a panacea, they don’t appear to be compatible with the emphasis on National Standards, and this seems like the top of a slippery slope which will result in us …
Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong
It was my pleasure to address the National and State Librarians of Australasia on the eve of their strategic planning meeting in Auckland at the start of November this year. I have been involved in …