Dick Sblog

Here’s an issue of importance: As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved. This is the view according to Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.
Among her many [...]

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Back from Borneo after a very successful expedition, I was faced with a virtual mountain of email. Tucked away in my inbox was a message from my old friend Robin Hanbury-Tenison. Robin led the 1977-78 Royal Geographical Society Expedition to the Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. Although I wasn’t [...]

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A couple of interesting things appeared in my inbox over the Christmas break. One of them was an email about Rypple, a new webservice that has been set up to provide a mechamism for individuals to receive feedback. I’ve registered for the beta and will be using it to get audience feedback on a couple [...]

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The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has a consultation on Science and Society The consultation closes soon, so make your views known by following this link. It’s a chance to plug the opportunities provided by enquiry based, collaborative processes.
The have a facebook group too – look for UK Science and Society Consultation – join [...]

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Sometimes I’m just amazed at the ideas people have. Today I went to two events that had innovation at their hearts. At one, I met Matthew Thurling who has, single handedly and with almost no support, set up science.tv If you are interested in science, as I am, this is a great site – a [...]

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Today I came across a new acronym – ITS, the Internet of Things and Services.  The concept of the “Internet of Things and Services” is based on the possibility of seamless integration of physical objects and services via automatic identification of things, discovery of Things & Services, communication, service selection and composition, resolution and invocation [...]

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I’m grateful for Lisa Harris of Southampton University for drawing my attention to a short video on YouTube. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University, it summarises some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, [...]

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Inspired by my old friend Dr Alan Rae, I’ve finally got around to creating my first squidoo lens. This lens, not surprisingly, is on the topic of networked collaboration – referencing a couple of recent bits of research and beginning to shape an approach to introducing networked collaboration into the hermetically sealed world of [...]

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10 years ago, BETT was really interesting and there was a great sense of innovation in practice. For me, at least, the scale of the event was such that I could be guaranteed to meet friends from the UK and Europe and share their latest ideas. Then the developers took over and the balance shited [...]

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After advocating the possible benefits of the OLPC device (which isn’t available in the UK yet) to cut costs of IT replacement in schools in my article on Seb Schmoller’s mailing, I’ve had my attention drawn to the RM Asus – a well reviewed linux machine with open office for c£220. One benefit is a [...]

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