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5th September 2010 - Change of host for Digital D&T NW

Ning has started charging for sites and, worse in some ways, removed some of the features we use on the Digital &T NW site (particularly Events) to a high price bracket. I've tried a few alternatives in discussion with the other group administrators and we've decided that Grouply provides at least as good a range of features - so I've migrated the site.

As the new term starts I hope the new site will prove to be as active as the old one.

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5th September 2010 - It's all gone quiet....

It will only take you a second to spot that there has been no activity on this site since the Summer of 2008; that's when I got a job as Head of Service at Bolton Science & Technology Centre (BSTC) - a job that has, until recently, kept me from the delights of blogging.

During this time I have continued to run, with David Taylor, a Digital D&T Support Centre (the new form of the old ECT hubs) from BSTC and recently we have also been working very closely with Paul Spencer and the Support Centre at Edge Hill University.

To support this work we have jointly set up the Digital D&T NW network; this is now where you will find news of courses we are running, forums to discuss aspects of Digital D&T in schools and to seek support, and so forth. It is also here that, when I can, I will blog. Please do come and join the network and get involved.

I'm not going to kill this site - employment in a Local Authority doesn't seem all that secure in the current financial climate - whoever ends up as PM.... - so I may need it again one day 8-)

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30th July 2008 - A couple of updates on John

Firstly, Cheryl, John's wife, has asked me to add a response from her and her family to all the tributes that people have sent me; I've added this to the start of the page of tributes to John.

Secondly, quite a few people have asked me about the possibility of making donations in remembrance of John. Cheryl has suggested that, as John was an active supporter of Oxfam, including doing work in schools for them, that a donation to Oxfam would be appropriate. You can do this any way you wish (for example through a local shop) but there are various ways to donate via the Oxfam website, including 'in memory'.

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21st June 2008 - John's Funeral and remembrance service

There will be a remembrance service for John on 11th July at 1200. This will take place in Trinity Methodist Church, Trinity Rd, Sale, Cheshire, M33 3ED. This will be led by a minister who has been a close friend of John and Cheryl's since they were students.

John's funeral in Canada was last Thursday and he was cremated yesterday; Cheryl will be bringing his ashes back to England and will, in due course, scatter them in the Lake District.

A number people have asked me about charitable donations; John did a lot of work for Oxfam, including work in schools, and Cheryl feels he would want any donations to go to Oxfam; she is going to find out about a memorial fund for John and details will be announced at the memorial service and I'll post them here.

John also has a Facebook site....

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14th June 2008 - Tributes to John

I have received many moving emails from those who knew John since I posted and mailed colleagues in the D&T community yesterday about his death. I've collated these here, partly so that I can let Cheryl know what John meant to so many people without burdening her with a pile of emails and partly as a form of a tribute to him. Please let me know if you would prefer your comments not to be recorded in this way - or wish to add to or amend them.

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13th June 2008 - John Martin

Earlier this morning John Martin's wife, Cheryl, phoned me from Canada, where she and John were holidaying with family, with the very sad news that John died yesterday (Thursday 12-6-8).

Many who knew John will remember he had a heart attack some years ago and a few will know that in the last 12 months heart problems had returned. Yesterday he was out walking (where he best liked to be) with his family in one of Canada's national parks where he had another heart attack, dying almost immediately. Cheryl tells me that he was at the time talking about the likelihood of his heart not lasting many more years.

This is not the moment for a full tribute; suffice it to say that John had wide interests in D&T education and was passionate about all pupils having high quality experiences. He was extraordinarily clear-thinking and combined this with great technical and pedagogical prowess to develop many ground-breaking developments, particularly in relation to the teaching of electronics and control.

When I first started teaching in the mid 1980s I attended a number of John's courses at Salford University and these greatly influenced both my teaching and my thinking about teaching. In recent years it has been both a privilege and a pleasure to work with John on a range of both national and local (Manchester) projects. I and many, many others both in England and around the world will miss him.

Last Summer John and I spent an enjoyable month together teaching at Buffalo State Univeristy in New York and, when free, walking in the state parks. The picture above shows John in Letchworth State Park looking over the Genesee River gorge - known as the 'Grand Canyon of the East'.

No firm decisions have been made yet about funeral and other services, but Cheryl thinks it likely that John will be cremated in Canada and she will return to Manchester with his ashes in due course. When arrangements have been made Cheryl will let me know and I will post the details here.

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15th April 2008 - George and Hawking...

This is a new experience - I'm now having books recommended to me by my (just) 9-year old niece (Hi Lucy!). Reminds me of being introduced to the great Primo Levi when I was teaching by having a copy of his "The Periodic table" thrust into my hand by 13 year-old Anton....

"George's Secret Key to the Universe" by Lucy Hawking and her elevated father Stephen is a great book in the tradition of Russel Stannard's "Uncle Albert" books but with, in my view, a lighter touch and a better paced story. If there is a weakness it is in a few side bars that expand some of the physics elements in the story - I felt they sometimes could have done with the hand of a good physics teacher.

So, highly recommended; Lucy read it in three days and it took me a little less....

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10th April 2008 - Being Human

'Being Human' is a new report from Microsoft Research whose central question is: What will human-computer Interaction (HCI) be like in the year 2020? It is available as a PDF but, for now at least, you can email and ask for a printed copy.

My copy arrived this morning and, based on my initial skimming, it is a beautifully produced and very readable account, based firmly on current research and likely trends. It ends with some clear and humanistic recommendations and a useful list of further reading. When I've read it properly I'll provide a fuller account...however for now here are some initial thoughts for the year 2020 and beyond:

• We're in the Mobility Era now, but we'll be in the Ubiquity Era in 2020 and beyond, with thousands of computers per user.
• Silicon and biological material will be knitted in new ways, enabling new forms of direct inputs and outputs implantable in our bodies.
• We will increasingly be able to use mobile devices to interact with objects in the real world, acting more as if they are extensions of our own hands, by pointing and gesturing with them.
• Robots will become autonomous machines that learn.
• We will create a more customized, personalized digital world for ourselves.
• The vision of one computer for every child world-wide will be more of a reality.
• There will be very few people left on the planet who do not have access to a mobile phone.

Teachers working in the general field of D&T - and specifically in electronics, systems, robotics an engineering - should view this as must read and it would be a valuable addition to school libraries.

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19th March 2008 - One Laptop per Child Design Award

Nice to see Designer Yves Behar win the Brit Insurance Design of the Year award for the One Laptop Per Child project. The Ceremony was at ceremony at the Design Museum in London last night. The Dezeen blog has a list of all of the Category winners. Further information from the Design Museum:

The first in an annual exploration of the most innovative, interesting and forward looking new work in design of all kinds. Selected from around the world, Brit Insurance Designs of the Year presents 100 projects nominated by a group of internationally respected design experts, curators, critics, practitioners and enthusiasts. These projects fall within seven categories: architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport. The exhibition gives an overview of the most significant achievements in design and architecture in the last year, whether they are projects by a practice, a team or an individual.

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18th March 2008 - Another Robotics Roundup

The EU funded Symbrian project has as its focus to:

investigate and develop novel principles of adaptation and evolution for symbiotic multi-robot organisms based on bio-inspired approaches and modern computing paradigms

An early result is the 'sugar-cube' robot; which are designed to intelligently combine to create a single robot for a particular task. As Scientific Blogging notes:

We may be able to use the collaborative power of many robots in situations where human intervention isn't possible. For instance, a Symbrion swarm could be released into a collapsed building following an earthquake, and form themselves into teams to lift rubble or search for survivors.

Engagdet has a slightly different take on the technology:

Sugar cube-sized swarm bots could build Transformers, bring destruction upon us all

Meanwhile New Scientist brings news of robotic tentacles which are strikingly lifelike in this video. As is so often the case these tentacles come courtesy of DARPA, which does seem to have the resources to create interesting robots including LittleDog and BigDog - which is really more of a pack mule (shown on right). They've even stuck wireless network hubs onto caterpillar tracks so that they can be flung onto high out-of-the-way spots to set up battlefield communication networks; the 'LANdroids' will use their tracks to move around until they get an optimal signal.

And the International space Station has had delivery of a four metre robot designed to help with extrnal servicing jobs.

If you like your robots humanoid, you'll probably enjoy this video of Tomotaka Takahashi's little robots. The sound quality is dire, but the robots are rather human-like in the way they move.

Finally, returning close to where we started with sugar lumps robots, this snake robot, named Aiko, has a 1.5-metre-long body made from segments of PVC tube with motorised joints. This video shows Aiko in action.

Sticking with snakes, the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University has also been working with modular snake robots.

 

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6th March 2008 - Open source hardware

The Emerging Technology Conference, ETech, is just coming to an end in San Diego and (among many other fascinating topics) it featured an interesting presentation [PDF link] on open source hardware by Phillip Torrone (Maker Media) and Limor Fried (Adafruit Industries (the latter being the source of a growing range of open source hardware). As the presentation notes say:

Open source hardware is a term slowly working its way into many new projects and efforts, but what is it? There are a few definitions, some of which come from "open source software," which is usually considered software's "source code under a license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form." So how does this translate to hardware? This session will focus on electronic hardware, the layers they can be divided into, different document types, licensing concerns, and a show-and-tell of hardware.

The show-and-tell of hardware is particularly interesting (featuring many items seen in this blog) - I think there is a model to be adapted for pupils' work here.

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6th March 2008 - A deluge of robot news

First up, instructions on building a PICAXE robot (shown). This claims:

This is cool because:

• The electronics used are "real parts" (not little homemade things that wont really work unless you spend hours of tweaking, and not a kit that you just assemble and that's it).
• It is EASY to do the basics, you have a robot within one hour!
• You can evolve from here, even with the same parts (if you can bare to take your robot apart).
• It is cheap.
• This is serious, but fun. This is the coolest Robot-beginners-project in any way, end of story! :)

Then details of stairBOT - a stair climbing robot (right).

stairBOT is a small robot for indoor environments. On even floor it drives like many other small robots with a differential-drive. In addition it can change its length with linear guides mechanism with a spindle-drive. By this mechanism it can - together with its omniwheels (with brakes) and a support - reliably climb up and down regular sized stairs. It was one of the objectives for the design to use as few actuators and sensors as possible.

Both of the above brought to me by the MAKE blog, which also brought me these rules for roboticists. To give you a flavour:

5. A roboticist is as much an artist as a scientist. Find someone who's done anything truly cutting-edge in science and technology, and chances are, he or she has a bit of an artist's/poet's soul. Independent engineer and self-proclaimed "high-tech nomad" Steven Roberts is often quoted as saying, "Art without engineering is dreaming. Engineering without art is calculating."

Meanwhile, the University of Plymouth plans to teach a baby robot to talk (using a 1m-high humanoid baby robot called iCub - shown above) and in Japan robots are entering daily life... STEM anyone....?

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6th March 2008 - Robot warfare

A timely warning from the University of Sheffield's Professor Noel Sharkey (Department of Computer Science) is reported by New Scientist, Science Daily and World Science. In the words of Science Daily:

Professor Sharkey, who is famously known for his roles as chief judge on the TV series Robot Wars and as onscreen expert for the BBC's TechnoGames, said: "The trouble is that we can't really put the genie back in the bottle. Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act?"

"With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn't require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons."

Professor Sharkey is reluctant to explain how such robots could be made but he points out that a small GPS guided drone with autopilot could be made for around £250.

The robotics expert is also concerned with a number of ethical issues that arise from the use of autonomous weapons. He added: "Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability. What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War.

A useful reminder of the need to keep values thinking to the forefront when engaged in design and possibly an interesting context for exploring such concepts with pupils?

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5th March 2008 - Another new phone concept - this time from Nokia

If you happen to be near The Museum of Modern Art in New York, pop in and see the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition. One exhibit, developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, is Morph, a nanotechnology-based phone concept. The Telecoms.com report on this notes:

The concept demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform the gadget into radically different shapes. Nanotechnology would enable the ultimate functionality delivering flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.

If you can't make it to MoMA, this video gives a good flavour:

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5th March 2008 - Moritz Waldemeyer's Joyrider

From the Dezeen blog, this rather gorgeous bit of electronics that creates smiley faces on your bicycle wheels - and keeps them the right way up however fast you go. This is the creation of Moritz Waldemeyer who is gaining a reputation for design that is innovative and fresh and makes use of a great deal of electronics. In the case of Joyrider:

The design evokes new rave couture, with its iconic smiley face and the strobe effect, bringing kitsch glamour to the cycling experience. The minimalist components are attached to the spokes of the wheel, emitting a fixed image of a smiley face using LED lights. This effect is achieved through inbuilt microchips that are able to calculate the speed of the wheel in such a way that the smiley face remains stationary while the wheel spins.

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5th March 2008 - Magnetic levitation and haptic feedback

Two perspectives on a new joystick that uses magnetic levitation to provide six-axis control and high quality haptic feedback from New Scientist and the Engineer online.

A bowl with electromagnets concealed below its base contains a levitating bar that is grasped by a user and can be moved in any direction. The magnets exert forces on the bar to simulate the resistance of a weight, or a surface's resistance or friction. LEDs on the bar's underside feed back its position to light sensors in the bowl. 

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5th March 2008 - SteamPunk Magazine, Issue Four

OK. This is on the weirder edge of my usual interests..... but there is something rather engaging about the steampunk movement. And if you've not come across steampunk yet - well, perhaps you should and now is a good time as edition 4 of SteamPunk Magazine is now available for free download (donations welcomed...). To give you a flavour:

Welcome back, fellow time-travelers, artists, vagrants, engineers, pirates, bookworms, performers, and other such folk! For that is who we are-we are all wearers of multiple hats (see Molly Friedrich's article on how to create your own! ;). Issue Four of SteamPunk Magazine is a tribute to the multiplicity of our culture. Steampunk is fantasy made real, filtered through the brass sieve of nostalgia.

I can't help thinking there's bound to be a few kids in every school who might find their designing and making inspired by steampunk...

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5th March 2008 - Life cycle analysis of solar cells

This is good news from SciAM for photovoltaics (PV):

A new analysis finds that even accounting for all the energy and waste involved, PV power would cut air pollution-including the greenhouse gases that cause climate change-by nearly 90 percent if it replaced fossil fuels. Even taking into account the low efficiency of thin-film solar cells or the energy needed to purify silicon for the other types of PV, all proved to entail significantly fewer emissions in their entire life cycle than the fossil fuels needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. In fact, most of their dirty side derived from the indirect emissions of the coal-burning power plants or other fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for PV manufacturing facilities.

Update 5th March 2008

There is further detail on this study from the Brookhaven National Laboratory at Science News.

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26th February 2008 - Plants that twitter

From the Make blog: Botanicalls is a system that alows your plants to give you a call when they need watering. (Plants can also receive calls - but that's another story...). Now they've brought the system to web 2.0 with Botanicalls Twitter - allowing your plant to Twitter its needs to you. It's a bit techie for schools - but an interesting glimpse into what lies ahead with the internet of things [this links to a Bruce Sterling podcast] and a possibly useful bit of context if you happen to have your year 8 pupils designing a moisture sensor...

Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What's up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates that reach you anywhere in the world. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.

Quite what you do when your plant twitters to say it's expiring but you are out of town, is not clear.

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26th February 2008 - Wireless power?

Another of Technology Review's 10 emerging technologies for 2008 is wireless power. There's a clear explanation here of how one approach to this might work; interesting but rather worrying, when we should be concerned about sustainability, and therefore efficiency, that the researchers predict no better than 70% efficiency.

The researchers built two resonant copper coils and hung them from the ceiling, about two meters apart. When they plugged one coil into the wall, alternating current flowed through it, creating a magnetic field. The second coil, tuned to the same frequency and hooked to a light bulb, resonated with the magnetic field, generating an electric current that lit up the bulb--even with a thin wall between the coils.

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25th February 2008 - Social graphs

Only loosely relate to my usual interests; though I'm increasingly of the view that 'STEM' isn't wide enough; if we want pupils engaging with modern technology then we need to include computer science (and I don't mean ICT, or not as currently constituted...).

However I thought these graphs of various social networks are both interesting and rather lovely. The one shown is of the blogosphere:

The core of the blogosphere, made up of several thousand popular blogs that are heavily connected to one another, divides into two regions when seen up close. The region on the left, at the center of which are two areas showing a lot of pink, contains political blogs; the region on the right, divided from the first by the triangular indentation at the bottom, contains blogs focused on gadgets and technology.

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25th February 2008 - New materials; light, strong and stretchy

Another Technology Reiew article bring news of a composite of aluminium oxide and the biocompatible polymer chitosan that is extraordinarily light and strong as well as being stretchy.

A film of the composite is already as strong as aluminum foil, but if stretched, it can expand by up to 25 percent of its size; aluminum foil would break at 2 percent.

An added advantage of the hybrid material is that it's light, says Harvard materials scientist Andre Studart, who was involved in the work. The material is half to a quarter as heavy as steel of the same strength, Studart says, and it would make a good substitute for fiberglass, which is commonly used in car parts. Because the material's strength comes from the platelets diffused through it, Studart says, "it will be strong in two directions and not only in one direction, as in the case of fiber-reinforced material."

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18th March 2008 - Graphene & Transistors

There's an accessible description of Graphene and its potential for taking over from silicon as the basis for semiconductor transistors in this Technology Review overview and interview with Walter de Heer, from Georgia Tech. There's also a link to a video de Heer talking about the subject.

This is a part of the TR10 report on10 Emerging Technologies 2008.

Addendum 26th February 2008: This SciAM article nicely complements the above and adds useful information.

Addendum 18th March 2008: Technology Review has an update on the technology.

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12th April 2008 - Nature vs Robot

Via the New Scientist Technology blog: Engadget reports that the WowWee Dragonfly (a flying robotic toy) is being grabbed out of the air by hawks. As New Scientist points out:

There are bats, birds and other insects out there that will find it a cinch to catch robot butterflys, mechanical birds or even cyborg moths. It will be a long time until our artificial flyers will be anywhere near a match for Nature's airborne hunter-killers.

It never does to under-estimate the impact of nature on technology...

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24th February 2008 - Ninety Light

Thanks to the Dezeen blog for the alert to this rather cool and highly sustainable new lamp from Norwegian lighting company Luxo. The company says:

Ninety is the world's most energy efficient, ergonomic task light. Using only 6W of LEDs, Ninety offers a bright, warm light with superb colour rendering. It is dimmable and designed to last for 25 year in a regular office environment. You will never have to change a lamp again.

So; you can have elegant, ergonomically delightful products that, if not quite sustainable (that depends rather on where the power comes from), could help reduce your footprint on the Earth.

There's a nice challenge for pupils embarking on lighting projects...

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24th February 2008 - Free Yenka content

There are over 100 free to use electronics resources at the Yenka website. These include various calculators (like Frequency and period), explanations of how particular devices work, how to use instruments and the workings of a range of basic circuit types. These will be useful for starters (they will work well with a projector and whiteboard) or to support pupils' own investigations. Obviously they are a taster for the Yenka and Absorb ranges. Talking of which, the Yenka PICs products is still being given away for free....

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5th March 2008 - This what a mobile phone should be...

If this isn't the future of mobile phones, it'll be because of marketing decisions made on the basis of narrow profit rather than the needs of consumers - let alone elegance of design. The Modu is a minimal (minimalist even) phone that is the heart of a modular system of 'jackets' that enhance its capabilities. If you had a modu, you might never need another phone - but you might want a myriad of jackets for different situations. This is a nice teaser video that gives some idea of the concept:

 

 

There's a good description of the concept in this Technology Review article:

... the idea of one phone for all occasions doesn't mesh with people's lifestyle. Sometimes you want to walk around with the smallest possible phone, other times you want a good messaging device with a large keyboard, or a media player with a large screen. "Instead of buying a completely new phone, the jacket enables you to switch."

Beyond cell-phone jackets, Modu Mobile will offer other consumer-electronics devices in which the phone module can be inserted, improving the basic functions of the device. For instance, a camera with the Modu could wirelessly send pictures to other phones, and a car entertainment system designed for the Modu could let a user access his MP3s while enabling hands-free calling.

But you need to go to the Modu site itself to see the range of jackets proposed. This seems a rather cooler idea than the iPhone to me...

Update 5th March 2008:

This article on Google's Android OS for mobile phones suggests a usefully flexible software sysem to go with the Modu hardware:

Android's developers envision a world where today's integrated wireless systems are reduced to a set of relationships between parts that are more or less interchangeable. Consumers will be free to load their phones with applications of their own choosing--free applications, applications available for sale, and custom applications developed by enterprises for their employees. These applications will be able to communicate with third-party services offered over the Internet--using any available communications pipe, be it the cellular network, a nearby Wi-Fi connection, or even a Bluetooth connection from another phone.

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24th February 2008 - Neuro-headset update

Following my post on Emotiv's neuro-headset on 22nd February, The Guardian has this article on a wider range of devices that use 'brainwaves' to control games and other things on a computer.

There just has to be interesting applications for this in D&T; control of devices, security systems...??

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23rd February 2008 - Make Magazine in London

Apparently, if you live in London, Foyles on Charing Cross Road is the place to buy Make Magazine (if you are careless enough not to have your own subscription, presumably).

Foyles have backed Make from Day One - they'd spotted it on the O'Reilly website and were ready with an order the first time I approached them about Volume One. Somehow this was communicated to their customers and they sold out within the week. Since then, they have been the biggest stockist of Make in the UK, and get very excited whenever a new volume comes in, and their customers have stuck by them even when they could order Make on subscription. 

So - no more excuses; get down to Charing Cross Rd and buy your copy....

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23rd February 2008 - Wizkid: a computer or a robot?

The Make Magazine blog alerted me to this - they call it a computer but the Wizkid site itself calls it a robot. It looks to me somewhere between the two. For example it claimes:

Wizkid introduces a novel interface system entitled "Halo". Interacting with the machine, the user sees himself in a kind of augmented mirror. Around him, several widgets and other interface elements appear. He can just select them by waving his hand. This "interactive halo" follows the user everywhere so that Wizkid's tools are always "at-hand".

In the living room, Wizkid can act as a central interface to media players. Just show a CD to Wizkid and it will play it. If you organize a party, Wizkid will take pictures autonomously of your guests and create a visual summary of the event that can be sent to your guest afterwards.

The video shows people on their first 'meeting' with Wizkid:

 

Wizkid expresses 'emotions' through both movement and the use of 'eyebrows':

 

The device appears to be based on (inspired by?) Frederic Kaplan's ideas on curiosity-driven development. Through this I've also stumbled on the Urbi (Universal Real-time Behavior Interface) robotics programming language. ALthough there is a version of this for Lego NXT - it sadly seems a bit high level for school work (pre-16 at least).

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23rd February 2008 - StrobeTronic Noise-Lab

This is a bit different (thanks again the Make magazine blog): Rare Beasts' ("Where Art Meets Music Meets life") StrobeTronic Noise-Lab is a PICAXE 08M-based noise maker (which sounds much more interesting than that implies).

The unit consists of three modules, 2 transmit and 1 receive. The transmit modules have 3 controls each, Sweep speed, sweep range and mode(sine wave, saw tooth and pulse). Each Tx module has a LED output attached to a flexible lead. The Receive module has two light sensors, one controls the frequency and the other volume. You start by setting the controls on the top of the (transmit) units, this sets up a sweep on the LEDs, by moving the LEDs around the light sensors a basic noise loop is set up.

Probably easier to see/hear than describe:

 

Thingamagoops from Bleep Labs are similar in concept.

This looks alike an interesting idea to explore for GCSE pupils?

The Bleep Labs site providies a very clear explanation of the principle of synthesizing strange noises.

Although this lacks any circuit diagrams, I think there is enough information here to form the basis for directed pupil research.

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22nd February 2008 - Pedometer take-apart

Back to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for this disassembly of a pedometer. this gives a very clear description of the mechanical and electronic elements and how they work, allied to reflections on the way the electronic and product elements have been designed together.

Creating a disassembly story like this would be a very good exercise for GCSE pupils.

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23rd February 2008 - The Turing Alarm Clock

This is an interesting and reasonably accessible PIC based project. The idea is a good starting point for developing in different directions and the author has placed the designs in the public domain. The YouTube video shows the clock in action and gives a brief overview of the electronics inside.

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22nd February 2008 - Brain control headset for gamers

This sounds like science fiction coming true: this BBC report says Emotiv have created a 'neuro-headset' which interprets the interaction of neurons in the brain to allow gamers to interact with the virtual world using their thoughts and emotions alone.

"It picks up electrical activity from the brain and sends wireless signals to a computer," said Tan Le, president of US/Australian firm Emotiv. "This is the first headset that doesn't require a large net of electrodes, or a technician to calibrate or operate it and doesn't require gel on the scalp," she said. "It also doesn't cost tens of thousands of dollars."

The report on this from Technology Review notes that

The headset will be sold with a game developed by Emotiv, but it can also be made to work with existing PC games.

Does this mean it could be made to do really useful things - like control a robot, or drive software like Pro/DESKTOP?

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22nd February 2008 - Why not marry a robot?

OK, this may not be a discussion to start with your y10s, but it it's not a joke - at least not to David Levy who has recently published the book Love and Sex with Robots. This article in Scientific American expands on his ideas and includes an interview with Levy. Here's a flavour:

If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm?
It's not that people will fall in love with an algorithm, but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people. When I was 10, I was in Madame Tussauds waxworks in London with my aunt. I wanted to find someone to get to some part of the exhibition and I saw someone, and it didn't dawn on me for a few seconds that that person was a waxwork. It had a profound effect on me-that not everything is as it seems, and that simulations can be very convincing. And that was just a simple waxwork.

Hmmmmm.

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22nd February 2008 - Engineering Biology

Drew Endy, Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, has some striking things to say about engineering biology in this Edge article. This gives a flavour:

The big question, to come back to it, is, how do we make biology easy to engineer, and then the parallel question that comes along with that is, what are the consequences of success? If you look around the room that we're in, everything in the room is a synthetic or engineered artifact, right? From this stuff, to the wood itself, the materials here, even the air that we're breathing, has been engineered for temperature and humidity, so that it is easier for us to deal with. The only thing that hasn't been engineered are the living things, ourselves. Again, what's the consequence of doing that at scale? Biotechnology is 30 years old; , it's a young adult. Most of the work is still to come, but how do we actually do it? Let's not talk about it, let's actually go do it, and then let's deal with the consequences in terms of how this is going to change ourselves, how the biosecurity framework needs to recognize that it's not going to be nation-state driven work necessarily, how an ownership sharing and innovation framework needs to be developed that moves beyond patent-based intellectual property and recognizes that the information defining the genetic material's going to be more important than the stuff itself and so you might transition away from patents to copyright and so on and so forth. So to zoom out, how to make biology easy to engineer? I don't want to talk about it, I want to do it. And, how do we do this in a way that leads to constructive culture around the technologies that's overwhelmingly positive in terms of the consequences of its being rolled out?

It would be a big mistake to think that in STEM-related work Physics is the only significant science....

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21st February 2008 - STEM Advisory Forum

If you are interested in tracking STEM development in the UK you need to join the STEM Advisory Forum. The Forum has recently opened a new discussion based around three key questions:

• Should we be thinking about far more ambitious targets for exposure to mathematics post-16? What sort of mathematics should pupils study for the various STE subjects? Should there be A levels (or other post 16 qualifications) in "Mathematics for Scientists", "Mathematics for Engineers" etc. as well as "Mathematics for Mathematicians"?
• Do we have a responsibility for ensuring a consistent set of messages about the range of mathematical qualifications are given to pupils and their parents? If so, how do we achieve this?
• It is all very well having "Action Programmes" to manage the great number of individual STEM initiatives being offered by industry, foundations, societies and government, but how can we make sure that schools and colleges benefit from them ? Tougher yet should we encourage a slimming down in the total number or will that discourage new developments?

There is also a number of papers derived from recent meetings now available for download. Note you need to (freely) register before you can access all documents and join the discussions.

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26th February 2008 - Smart Rubber

Interesting article from New Scientist on 'smart' rubber to put in the 'Smart and Modern Materials' part of your curriculum. And a nice video of the material in action:

As with so many 'smart' materials, I struggle to see what is actually 'smart' about this - but there is no doubt that it is an interesting new material.

Addendum 26th February 2008: This Scientific American article adds a little information; I particularly like the reference to 'self-healing rubber duckies'. Good to see modern technology has real social utility...

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21st February 2008 - Chumby

Fancy an open source, linux based, squeezable bean-bag like computer? Then you ned a Chumby. Specs:

• 3.5" LCD color touchscreen
• Two external USB 2.0 full-speed ports
• 350 MHz ARM processor
• 64 MB SDRAM
• 64 MB NAND flash ROM
• Stereo 2W speakers
• Headphone output
• Squeeze sensor
• Accelerometer (motion sensor)
• Leather casing
• Wi-fi connectivity
• Access to the free Chumby Network
• Over-the-air software updates

Amongst other things, the Chumby appears to be able to access internet radio, act as your alarm clock, be your digital photo frame, be your mp3 player, act as your email client. Shame they can't, yet, ship outside the US...Educational applications anyone?

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21st February 2008 - Alternative etchant for PCBs

This was news to me: apparently you can replace ferric chloride with

Copper Chloride in Aqueous Hydrochloric Acid. It's inexpensive, made from common chemicals, lasts a very long time, and has a lovely green hue. (at least for a little while) When the solution begins to lose its potency, it can be revitalized by mixing with air.

Full details in this instructable.

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21st February 2008 - Robot news from the NewYork Toy Fair

Courtesy of Make Magazine, some interesting items from the New York Toy Fair. First up from Meccano, Spykee, a mobile, self-recharging, Skype compatible robot that allows you to spy on your home from anywhere in the world using the Internet and Skype's free video service. It also appears to play mp3s and be controllable via bluetooth from your iPhone or iPod....

And then there is BIOLOID; An educational robot kit for building various robots such as an autonomous exploration robot, a quadruped puppy robot, a hexapod spider robot, a dinosaur robot, a bipedal humanoid robot etc. Not cheap, but it looks interesting....

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21st February 2008 - Medieval Tech Support

This is pure silliness - but it did make me laugh.... (the fact that it's in Danish just makes it better...)

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21st February 2008 - The London Congestion Charge, Innovation & Sustainability

The editorial from the Engineer online this week is another thought-provoker. Especially in the light of Porsche's challenge to the rise in London's congestion-charge. The article makes the point that:

Taking vehicles off the road will make a difference, maybe only a small one, but a difference nevertheless. And crucially, with numerous other cities across the UK and Europe thinking seriously about replicating London's congestion charge, this small effect could soon be amplified. Further into the future, given the global shift of populations towards cities, a worldwide deployment of congestion charging schemes is not beyond the realms of possibility. Then try arguing that congestion charging has no effect on emissions.

I think you could spend an interesting 10 minutes discssing the pros and cons of Porsche's court challenge with GCSE D&T pupils. It has a lot of richness as a topic: sustainability, climate change, the rights of car users, the responsibilities of car users and manufacturers, the role of legislation, the drivers for innovation.. Why don't Porsche just concentrate their energies on creating luxury vehiles that are sustainable - does anyone drivng in London (or any other UK city for that matter) really need a 4.8 litre engine?

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21st February 2008 - Reality Mining; Maths and Technology

Back to Technology Review's 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008: this article on Data Mining is rather interesting. Partly because it is another good example of how understanding mathematics is critical to engaging with modern technologies - and partly because of the ways it suggests that the personal data created second-by-second through the use of our existing technologies could be (mis)used. The applications being described here are benign, but you don't have to be an eveil genius to think of more malignant applications. (See this article on how phishing works if you want to be really scared of your mobile phone and cash machines...) Also on the importance of Mathematics in developing technology applications, this profile of Jennifer Chayes the phase transistions phyicist, turned theoretical mathmatician, turned managing director of the Microsoft Research New England lab is interesting.

Recently, I was at a Bill Gates review where Bill heard about what research is being done. We've been looking at multicasting, and trying to find the most efficient way to broadcast something over the Web to a certain number of people. Someone mentioned some work that my group has done recently to come up with a very fast multicast algorithm, based on this phase-transition work. Ten years ago, I had been telling Bill about it and said it was great that he was hiring people whose work wouldn't pay off for 100 years. And here it is 10 years later, and the work is really paying off in these superfast algorithms.

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22nd February 2008 - The iPod of digital books?

Technoloy Review is living up to its name with this review of Amazon's Kindle. I have to say that, despite being an insatiable reader, I'm not tempted yet even though it could clearly lighten my load both physically and financialy. I'm not quite sure why though... Perhaps I'm just in Stage Three of Douglas Adam's stages of attitudes to new technology:

1. everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

Actually the polymathic Alan Kay came up with the pithy version of this about 15 years earleir:

"Technology is anything that was invented after you were born."

Or as Danny Hillis had it:

"Technology is everything that doesn't work yet."

Kevin Kelly has nice commentary on all of this.

Still, this is a nice, reasonably accessible, product case study for pupils interested in electronic products.

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21st February 2008 - Prostheses light

I thought these lights from Tomer Sapir were rather cool.... [follow the link Works> Prostheses - it's all written in Flash...]. And if you want erudite there's a full review at Dexigner:

In the current work, Tomer uses autumn leaves, which have been gathered from the ground before drying out and crumbling. These leaves are in a state of suspended life after the cessation of all essential functions, in a grey area between life and death. The light, which functions both as a physical material and a metaphysical entity, exposes the veins and the pigments of the leaves and thus appears to kindle life in them and to restore the leaves' "natural" function by attaching them to the constructions. Yet the light also has the complete opposite effect. Under this light nothing "natural" remains and the effect of this resuscitation clarifies that this is an artificial resuscitation. The moment of quickening announces its demise.

So here we have Design and Technology with rich creativity articulated poetically; what a model for those who seem to think all creativity lies in the Arts....

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21st February 2008 - Thomas Jefferson; a President who made things

Here's an interesting story from the pages of Make magazine: They've celebrated President's Day with coverage of Thomas Jefferson who was, it seems, a maker. I particularly liked the story of this plow:

Plow "Moldboard of least resistance" - using math, Jefferson designed a better plow to lift and turn over sod more effectively - this new plow had a huge impact and instead of patenting the invention, Jefferson gave it away it - to be "solely used for the good of the people and not for the advancement of the inventor, Jefferson encouraged public use of this easily duplicated invention".

It has everything: STEM, sustainability and a refreshing approach to designing for the common good. If he was alive today he'd be a supporter of the Creative Commons... and open source - like Fab@Home.

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20th February 2008 - The 10 Emerging Technologies of 2008

Technology Review presents its list of the 10 technologies that they think are most likely to change the way we live. They are

• Modeling Surprise
• Probabilistic Chips
• NanoRadio
• Wireless Power
• Atomic Magnetometers
• Offline Web Applications
• Graphene Transistors
• Connectomics
• Reality Mining
• Cellulolytic Enzymes

There is a full report on each technology available as either a web page or a PDF.

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20th February 2008 - After Moore's Law

PCWorld brings news that even if Moore's 'Law' ceases to operate in the next 10 to 20 years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking to fund research that could lead to a replacement for current silicon technology. The NSF has requested US$20 million from the U.S. government to start the "Science and Engineering Beyond Moore's Law" effort, which would fund academic research on technologies, including carbon nanotubes, quantum computing and massively multicore computers, that could improve and replace current transistor technology. And where does all this fit into our view of the secondary school curriculum? Do pupils leave school knowing what Moore's Law is and what it means? If not, does it matter?

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21st February 2008 - What makes cognition different in humans?

More from the AAAS meeting: Marc Hauser has suggested four key differences between human and animal cognition. These are the ability:

• to combine and recombine different types of information and knowledge in order to gain new understanding;
• to apply the same "rule" or solution to one problem to a different and new situation;
• to create and easily understand symbolic representations of computation and sensory input;
• to detach modes of thought from raw sensory and perceptual input.

"For human beings, these key cognitive abilities may have opened up other avenues of evolution that other animals have not exploited, and this evolution of the brain is the foundation upon which cultural evolution has been built,"

Does this mean that if we can make computers 'think' in these ways we'll have programmed the equivalent of human intelligence?

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21st February 2008 - LED close-ups

This could be an interesting short discussion with pupils; what does the inside of an LED look like? Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories have been having a look - see the full Flikr set - and explaining what can be seen.

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21st February 2008 - Negroponte on obese electronics

Winding up the AAAS conference, Nick Negroponte, of One Laptop Per Child fame, made a case for modern electronics being 'obese' and not taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by Moores Law:

"Most laptops are like SUVs. You're using most of the energy to move the car, not the person."

As the Wired report on his speech notes:

Negroponte explained that the basic idea of the OLPC computer was to use Moore's Law to cut the price of the machine, instead of continually adding new features the way that electronics manufacturers in developed countries do.

This could be an interesting starting point for some some work on electronic product design with pupils - and one that links well to sustainability: use advanced eletronics (like a microcontroller) to design something both cheap and poweful, but with no wasteful bells and whistles.

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21st February 2008 - Interesting goings-on at the AAAS

Ray Kurzweil is at it again: he's been an NAE panelist reporting to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston on what they consider to be the greatest technological research challenges facing society in the coming century. They are:

• Make solar energy affordable
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Reverse engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Advance personalised learning
• Explore natural frontiers

Kurzweil has taken the opportunity to tell the BBC that:

Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029 and that humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent.

The Guardian also has a good report on this. For more on Kurzwils' views try this podcast of an interview with him at the AAAS. He is very persuasive...

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21st February 2008 - What is culture and where is creativity?

A nice opinion article from the engineer noting the intellectuial problems with the recent anouncement from Government that that all schoolchildren in England are to get five hours a week of access to 'quality culture'. The problem is that 'culture', along with 'creaivity', seem to be seen in Government as the exclusive preserve of the Arts.

While the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is determinedly shoe-horning its agenda into schools - and quite right too, that's what it's there for - we can't help noticing here that generation after generation of schoolkids still have no idea what engineering is about and what engineers do, even after seven years of secondary education. Isn't it about time that somebody tackled this? While science education has been shaken up more often than the champagne at a Grand Prix, there still seems to be no effort to show children how creativity and science can combine to affect the real world. How can it be right that most 16-year-olds think that an engineer is someone who fixes the washing machine? How can we expect students half-way through their (pure science) A-levels to apply for engineering courses, to supply that next generation of engineers which we're all told is still vital to the UK's future competitiveness, if nobody's told them what engineering is?

This has prompts the following, at least loosely related, thoughts:

• Since Design & Technology (which is where you do find 'pre-engineering' work in the school curriculum) became an option at GCSE there has been a slow but steady drop in the numbers of pupils studying the subject at GCSE level.
• The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) initiatives being promoted by the Government is far too weighted in their focus towards Science and Maths.
• While we do have funding to support the development of electronics in schools (a curriculum area that has very similar problems to physics), it is tiny compared to the sums going into Science education.
• Where Engineering exists in schools (as opposed to D&T), such as in the new Diploma, it is promoted as a 'vocational' subject - and not in the sense that medicine or law are vocational subjects, but much more in the sense of 'not academic' or 'fixing things'; whatever people are saying about parity of esteem.
• At the same time we have a growing body of work showing how creativity can be nurtured within D&T - including the technical areas such as electronics and other control technologies - and how D&T can work within the STEM community to provide powerful practical contexts for the development of scientific and mathematical contexts.
• Looking beyond engineering, what about the place of Design broadly as a cultural activity?

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22nd February 2008 - Renewed and Refreshed

Thanks to Gary Herman of Keywords Associates Ltd here in sunny (today at least) Chorlton, not only has the php that drives the Fab@School blog been fixed so it does what it should, I can use the same WordPress tools to manage this (Torben's) blog and the news on this page - so keeping everything up to date should be a much quicker affair. No more excuses.....

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News Items
( search | news archive )

John Martin
Posted on: 13th June 2008
I am sorry to say that I've just heard that John died yesterday (Thursday 12-6-8). John had a history of heart problems and yesterday he was out walking (where he best liked to be) with his family in one of Canada's national parks and he had a heart attack, dying almost immediately. I will place further news in the main blog as I get it.

Robotics in the curriculum
Posted on: 10th April 2008
A workshop, 'Embedding Robotics in the Curriculum' was held at The Open University in Milton Keynes on 1st April; David Barlex and I gave the opening talk [PPT 3.2Mb]. David has posted a summary of the Workshop and there is also a full programme and webcast of the Workshop and a wiki to support the developing outcomes.

Enhancing Creativity in Design and Technology with New Technology
Posted on: 22nd February 2008
The report of the work that John Martin and I did with three NW schools, funded by CARA, is now available on the Creative Partnerships website [PDF 2.6Mb].

Absolute beginners electronics for ITE
Posted on: 21st February 2008
David Barlex and I will be running an absolute beginners electronics course for those working in Initial Teacher Education. This course is for lecturers with little or no previous experience or knowledge of electronics, who will be enabled to introduce into their teaching some designing and making activities incorporating electronics in other materials areas. The course is a fully funded four day course running at Bolton Technical Innovation Centre. Accommodation and travel costs will be paid. The dates are as follows: Day 1: 7 April, Days 2/3: 25/26 June, Day 4: 10 November. There is a limited number of places available. Further information and application forms from Emma Watson at the Desgn & TechnologY Association. Applications to be returned to the D&TA by 7 March 2008.

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