I don’t watch TED talks as much as I’d like to.  But I clicked on the one below given at TEDxBeaconStreet by Tyler DeWitt.  Tyler is a high school science teacher and a PhD student in Microbiology at MIT.  Tyler makes some great points about relaxing the formality of communicating science content in the classroom.  One of the main questions is this:  Is it ok to communicate something that isn’t 100% accurate (listen for his story about the “actually” guy) if the listeners are more likely to remember some of the content?  I would say yes.  Check out Tyler’s talk!.

Do you ever use the QuickLook feature on your Mac?  This is the feature that gives you a preview of a file when the file is highlighted in Finder and you press the space bar.  For some time, I’ve wished that it would perform syntax highlighting on source code files.  After you spend enough time looking at syntax highlighted code, it is simply no fun to look at black text on a white background.

After noodling around the Intertubes, I found a QuickLook plugin for syntax highlighting.  QLColorCode is, well, pretty amazing.  You can grab it from here.  A bonus is that it themes are available.  You can check out some of the themes here.

New QuickLook with syntax highlighting;

QuickLook with the QLColorCode Plugin

I just came across a great article on servant leadership and the need for business schools to teach these concepts as part of their curricula. See this link.

I just read this article that renewed a sense of urgency in me.  Bottom line: we need more students to major in computer science.  So many devices (and even just ordinary “things”) have microprocessors in them, and each one needs software written for it.  As we probably all know, software isn’t just big programs with massive amounts of brand recognition such as Windows, OS X, or even Linux.  Software is everywhere.

There are some indications that we are on a uptick of computer science majors.  See this article for some more information.  But we need more.  How do we get kiddos excited about pursuing a major such as computer science?  My opinion is that we need more support for amazing teachers.  Often, students fondest memories are very closely associated with the person that delivered the material, information, ideas, etc.  There is very often a connection between the deliverer of info and the info itself that makes an impact on people.  Students can see passion in their teachers (or they can see the lack of passion).  The spark has to be lit before college; we can’t do it all here.

This great article from the WSJ indicates that there is a serious lack of developer talent in the mobile space.  Perhaps my experience is not typical, but most people I know seem to be stuck like glue to their mobile device (whether or not it is every actually used as a cell phone, if it even ever has that capability).

Mobile application design and development isn’t going away anytime soon.  Is this the new “garage developer” idea?  How many schools have begun teaching mobile development?  I don’t have any numbers, but I would be willing to bet that it isn’t as many as should be teaching this material.  But this brings up an interesting thought:  Can college ever teach you everything you need to know?  Clearly the answer is NO!  So, where’s the balance?  When do we begin to expect that students will take it upon themselves to start learning something like this?  I know some that have and that experience of personal education (for lack of a better phrase) coupled with the new skills have tended to pay of quite nicely.

Apparently, some engineers and scientists at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering have created a memory chip for a brain. They have already made it work in rats and are moving on to monkeys.  Think of the possibilities here…

Some more info:

• http://gizmodo.com/5813821/scientists-create-first-memory-expansion-for-brain
• http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/cortical-neural-prosthesis-for.html

It’s an amazing world we live in!

I’m only 31 years old, but I’ve seen more bad presentations than I care to remember. I just stumbled across this fantastic presentation guide. My intuition tells me this may become required reading for some of my future classes before they present.

http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~pueschel/teaching/guides/guide-presentations.pdf