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“When ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us.. There isn’t an economic Internet and a social Internet and a political Internet. There’s just the Internet.”  /The TV channels are littered with food and cookery programmes. Despite the fact that obesity is reaching crisis proportions in the western world. Food ingredients are featured whose environmental footprints are unsustainable. On the flip side, climate change has resulted in flooding and droughts on a global scale. The poor and vunerable both in the west and  developing countries are the first to be compromised. The Euro crisis, the fuel crisis and the world water shortage are all impacting on the cost and availability of staple food items. The abandonment of a low paying agricultural life style in favour of a congested city life has led to a change in eating habits, further demands on urban resources and an exponential growth in urban populations worldwide. The sight of children and adults begging and scavenging for food in bins and at city dumps are testomtomy to a society failing to cope with a food shortage . As recent history has shown, market forces respond to currency depreciation, crop failures, flooding and droughts.  They don’t care about regional catastrophes. The overnight increase in market price reflects the products high supply and demand status and the ability of the better-off sector to pay the asking price. Look at Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland. Plans are afoot to pipe water from the River Shannon all the way across the country to the city as the reservoirs cannot cope with the increased demand. Vegetables are been imported while market gardeners are forced out of business. The sugar industry was closed down and now we pay through the nose for impoted sugar. The World Trade Organisation and the European Union have a lot to answer for.
It is Back 2 School time again and this is our 7th year taking part in eTwinning . Unfortunately we have the shadow of a Whole School Evaluation (WSE) hanging over us.This may militate against teachers interested in taking part. eTwinning is designed to enhance the learning process. The resultant projects are not intended to add to the already overloaded school curriculum. The projects with which I have been involved served as a motivational force for both the teacher and students alike. The teachers decide on the project between themselves. The project can be as short as a week or as long as a year. The partnership can be between two schools or twenty. Hopefully my school will be involved in eTwinning this coming school year. I spent a few hours last night roaming through the eTwinning website. There are nearly 137,000 registered eTwinners and nearly 1900 projects up and running. Everything seems to ready to roll for 2011 – 2012. Take a look at the Welcome Back to School, eTwinners article for an overview of what is to come. As you can see you do not have jump into project mode straight away. The site is full of suggestions and links to successful projects. Give it a try.
Check out www.etwinning.ie for the latest news or follow Leargas on Twitter
I received a tweet this morning informing me that the IBM PC was 30 years old today. How time has flown. I didn’t actually see one after the launch for another year or so in the window of QTH Computers in Dun Laoghaire. I was too busy with my one year old son at the time. I acquired my interest in and  learned whatever I knew about computers from my wife who worked on the IBM 360 mainframes in HOB Dublin Airport 1n the 1970s.. Yes those were the days of punch cards, punched tape, reel to reel and the super fast one foot wide by 8 inches tall hard disks. The installations was manned by schedulers, operators, programmers, analysts and were serviced by the man in the blue suit. The Irish Amateur Computer Club was a buzz with the news of thenew  personal computer. Bob Hammond (club president) wasn’t impressed he said it was over priced for what it could do at the time. We were busy building the 8K (yes 8K) UK101 home computer. It was a bare bones affair with a badly fitting optional plastic cover, no sound card and wires going everywhere but we thought it was great. Take a look at these preserved specimens on Flickr. I later built the Ohio Superboard 11 in 1982. I bought it secondhand in the the Comp Shop beside the Pro Cathederal on Dublin’s Marlborough Sreet. I spotted the basement shop on my way back from the Department of Education one autumn afternoon. It was a glorified calculator and similar to the UK101 it had to loaded using a cassette tape recorder. In November 1983 I purchased a Dragon 32 secondhand through the small ads in the Evening Press.. It had 16 colours and it beeped in several tones. My wife and I spent hours typing in a game fron the Dragon 32 magazine only to find that it did not work. It wasn’t a great start for we had to wait a month for the typo to be corrected. There was no internet back then. Later on, however, we did re-input it (not re-type it in) and a professional programmer friend spotted the : instead of the ; – we were delighted. A week later on the 22nd I was brought to my first meeting of the Computer Educational Society of Ireland (CESI) in  Belvedere College.  There I was introduce to the BBC Model B. About 20 teachers, all male except one, milled around the machine which was plugged into a large colour television.  I think it was on a Tuesday or a Thursday night because I remember the priest telling us they had school in the morning and it was then 10.30 and nobody wanted to go home until they had their go. I remember paying my 20p for the night and was later handed a cup of tea and an getstetnered application form and politely asked for ÂŁ2 if I had it! In the meantime my first experience of the IBM PC was “The Luggable” – their first attempt at portability. You ended up lobsidded after carting it around. I used it to moved the ARTI (ILSA) database from my BBC Master 128 running ViewStore to dBase and then eventually onto Lotus Notes.
I did not buy a PC until 1990. It was an Intel badged 386 clone made and assembled in Leixlip. I am in Douglas at the moment trying out my son’s new internet connection from Magnet. I don’t seem to able to download an image I am looking at – I will do back in Dublin.
I conducted a little survey among the 6th class pupils regarding their latest phone purchases. They had just made their Confirmation and were flushed with cash. 19 of them purchased smart phones but due to the pricing structure and age limitations of the iPhone 15 of them bought Android models. The “Pay As You Go” offerings started at €99. The touch screen texting took a lot of getting used to but overall the phones seem to be a great hit. The last thing they wanted to hear about was Education Apps so I backed off. Here is a link for 25 popular Android Education Apps http://www.onlinedegrees.org/top-25-android-apps-for-education/ I will set up a new categoryfor Smart Phone Apps later on and  use this link to kick it off.
Happy Easter Everyone Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all who sent me eCards and emails.
 I know it is a small thing but many of the eCards contained four leaved clovers. The four leaved clover has nothing to do with Saint Patrick. He used a shamrock with one leaf but with three distinct parts to try to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish. . I had an interesting Skype call yesterday. The teacher from Finland wanted to know if “wavy crating foam” was the same as studio tiling foam. I don’t know is the short answer. But …. you could perform a controlled test out in the open air – in your back garden or in a bin in the yard after school. Some varieties of packing foam have the same proporties as polystyrene the combusting fumes from which are LETHAL. Place a small piece in a metal bin and set it on fire. Be careful! It may burst into flames and liquify. Once it is alight check for the speed of burn, particle laden smoke and odour. Common sense will tell you that if it burns fast with thick black smoke while releasing a heavy chemical smell that you should avoid using it. In the 70s we used to cover the walls with the large 3 dozen paper pulp egg trays which were disgarded by the shopkeepers. They were stitched to double lined heavy curtains. The homemade solution worked perfectly!
Real studio foam is of the high density variety and is definitely fire retardant. The tiles are very expensive and come in various sizes and colours. Needless to say they are available on the internet in various configurations, e.g. Sound Absorption, Bass Traps and Home Recording Kit form. The tiles are big and bulky by nature and incur volume more than weight costs. Furthermore, they are easily damaged in transport and travel badly if you intend to bring them from place to place. Finally, if you intend to dedicate a room as a studio whether it is in school or at home you do not have to cover the entire room in acoustic tiles. Strategically placed clusters should do the trick. A Bass Trap placed up in each corner is often sufficient for amateur / podcast recording.
I bought mine secondhand but they originated from Universal Solutions in the UK. Thankfully the ones I purchased had not been glued to the wall. However, since then I have learned that  X Music will order them in for customers. I bought my Allen & Heath ZED 12 FX mixer from X Music. They were very helpful and many of mixers are set up downstairs. The store has everything for the musician and home recording enthusiast –  it is really worth a visit.
I tried to send a Christmas Tweet to the new LĂ©argas Twitter this evening but I kept on getting the “Flying Whale” Twitter is over capacity.Please wait a moment and try again. For more information, check out Twitter Status so here goes a greeting that they wont see until 2011.
Happy Christmas  to all the eTwinning National Support Service Kay, Kathleen, Lorraine and Jeanette. |
 
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