Caine’s Classes

A while back google announced the winners of its competition to program applications for the G1. Several of these winners walked away with $250k and a big smile.

My personal favorite was the carpool syncing application called Piggyback. With this program, users input a picture of themselves and their car. If you want to carpool, you a linked with other drivers following a compatible driving route according to google maps. Using GPS, you know the position of the driver you are waiting on, and they are given precise directions to your phone. Mileage is tracked based on the driving distances shared between the phones, and two paypal accounts are used to ensure equitable saving of carpool funds.

I wonder if they take the weight of each passenger into account? I’m skinny and that would be a real money saver if i could find a very large carpool partner with a sub-compact.

It’s only a matter of time before these phones are appearing everywhere, and I can’t wait to see the reaction on all those smug iPhone users’ faces when the October 22 arrival date appears. Though T-mobile is the vendor, Verizon has stated late in 2007 that any approved devices could be used on their networks.

Recently, hordes of image obsessed twenty somethings embarked to what seems to be a sort of annual migration, the release of the newest Apple iPhone. Willing to pay out significant sums of cash, purchasers tout the initial capabilities of the iPhone, as well as extensions that can be added. Apple seems to be repeating its past, and not truly opening up to eager developers.

At the same time, Google works towards the release of its first cell phone. So what’s the difference?  Android! As an extremely novice programmer, I applaude Google’s approach to creating software for its new phone, the G1. Anyone can add software, and beyond that Google seems to be reaching out to curious and creative minds, by providing tutorials on how to create applications to run within the Android operating system.

Perhaps this open forum will encourage the creation of new applications to be used in schools. How about gradebooks that are updated from your phone???

Despite its best efforts, the whirring melodies of my laptop hard-drive are not putting me to sleep this evening. Normally I would close the hatch and retire, but tonight I settle for a darkened screen as I download some linux OS stuff.

After researching home automation and other depressingly geeky things, I head over to my reader and stumble upon a confession of an edublog crush. And just like that, Michelle Rhee enters my life.

Michelle Rhee: School chancellor over public schools in the DC area. What makes her so great? Rhee it offering six figure teacher salaries to any teachers who are willing to relinquish job security bestowed by tenure, and have their jobs tied to the performance on standardized tests. Ariticle

Thumbs up to you Chancellor Rhee!  As much as I hate standardized tests, I still feel confident that making students into learners prepares them to excel on these tests.

If I have to hear this anthem within the first day of teaching photosynthesis I might lose it. Thanks to fellow blogger Dan Meyer for pointing this out to all the science teachers and perhaps making chlorophyll fun (to everyone else)

Anyone know a cheap way to make a wimshurst machine?
If I could connect the wimshurst to the van de graaff sphere and the other side to myself (while standing on an insulated stool), the bubbles would travel back and forth between the sphere and me along the field lines…