Building reuse almost always yields fewer environmental impacts than new construction when comparing buildings of similar size and functionality
[The same holds true for almost everything it feels like. So when you can reuse, and when you can’t share.]
Students’ math scores jumped 20% with iPad textbooks, publisher says:
A yearlong pilot program with digital textbooks on Apple’s iPad found that students’ algebra scores increased by 20 percent when compared to a curriculum with traditional books.
[snip -Ed]
In its test run, the “HMH Fuse” application helped more than 78 percent of students score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the spring 2011 California Standards Test. That was significantly higher than the 59 percent of peers who used traditional textbooks.
“By engineering a comprehensive platform that combines the best learning material with technology that embraces students’ strengths and addresses their weaknesses, we’ve gone far beyond the capabilities of an e-book to turn a one-way math lesson into an engaging, interactive, supportive learning experience,” said Bethlam Forsa, executive vice president of Global Content and Product Development at HMH. “With HMH Fuse, teachers can assess student progress in real time and tailor instruction as needed.”
[It being new probably has something with the score rise. OTOH, there was a test done years ago with Mathematica that showed improved scores as well. What if these sorts of tools really do a better job, or allow teachers to do a better job?]
Can we buy your search engine?:
Can we operate our own search engine? Can the developers who lead us there get unreasonably rich even if they don’t control our future? These are all questions that I believe we can address. I think we can all win. And I think that until we do this, and do it right, we’ll be stuck in the same infinite loop we’ve circling as long as I’ve been in tech.
[More to consider.]
Source: Scripting News
I don’t know if it’s a good idea, or if it will prove usable. But I’m in full favor of the spirit.
[Brent’s right on. innovation is hard. You often have a try a lot of things before you get to “there”.]
Source: inessential.com
Farhad Manjoo:
Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).
[The numbers were crazy good.]
Source: Daring Fireball
My mom says that all her friends who have iPads had to go to the Apple store to get them set up. I’m not surprised. I can’t imagine how it could be otherwise.
[Sadly, I think this is a question of market. My parents are constantly frustrated by not knowing how to do things on their iPad. But I wonder whether Apple cares. Well, no, I don’t wonder, I don’t think they care. I think they’ve written them off. But the real failure here (even if I’m right about Apple ignoring the grandparent demographic) is that it also applies to people who do not share the same experiences that leads to these things feeling easy. Apple shouldn’t need to help so many get going with their iPads. No?]
Source: Scripting News
Twitter and Facebook are rich and getting richer. Either of them could easily buy a struggling but independent news organization. Then where would you be if you were dependent on them to distribute news? It would be like the Times depending on Murdoch to print their daily paper. Instead the Times invested in their own printing plant, presumably so they could have better control of the product, both from a creative and tactical standpoint. If Murdoch owned the presses and the trucks, who do you think would deliver the most timely news? They have to think about Twitter that way. At some point they will come to see themselves as a media company, if they don’t already.
[It’s such a mess right now, that I’m completely certain that the system will change for the better.]
Source: Scripting News
For a long time now I’ve been interested in “eventing” systems. This system needs to tell another (or many) what’s going on (“Hey, I’m done processing that data”). It’s a a way of decoupling the systems so that one system isn’t “waiting” for another system.
Now think about twitter in its best case (from this perspective). A bunch of people listen to me. I send a message. And those folks can act on the message or not.
What if that sort of eventing were built into everything? What if we agreed about expected actions triggered by an event? (You event “go” and I event “where” every time I care to.)
Other folks are working on and thinking about this. I don’t always agree with the model because I think the basic interaction is far simpler. If I need a delivery service I don’t send out a bid, because it probably doesn’t matter enough to save a few cents on a single transaction. Most likely, simplicity (excellent delivery record, easy to drop off, and then reasonable cost are more likely, until I’m shipping many items.) But that’s a nit. And a lot of this can happens today, all that’s not the way the systems are thought about. And that changes everything.
I don’t think Apple plans to restrict anything but its own .ibooks format. But that doesn’t matter because, as Mike Ash puts it, “Unless we’re friends, your intentions don’t matter to me at all, only your actions.” Apple isn’t anyone’s friend but Apple’s, and its actions so far are to reserve a broad swath of rights pertaining to everything iBooks Author is capable of “generating” (whatever that means).
Even if we’re right and Apple doesn’t care about PDFs or plain text files, that’s still the Apple of today. The Apple of 20 years from now might turn out to be a completely different company, and this EULA has no expiration date. That’s a dangerous situation for authors and publishers who care about long-term distribution rights. It would be best for Apple to clarify the terms now — and, I hope, loosen them — rather than prolong the uncertainty.
[Lawyers.]
Source: venomous porridge
turnings :: daniel berlinger 