CWA New Media: Our Blog

Here’s a story from one of our favourite sites.

“…If you thought that lifelike female robot Korea was working on was creepy, get a load of this. Hiroshi Ishiguro, a senior researcher at ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Japan, has created a robot that looks exactly like himself.

Created using casts of his body, his robot doppelganger sits and fidgets, looks around and taps his toe just like his creator. Ishiguro actually created this robot to, no joke, fill in for him in the classroom at Osaka University, where he’s a professor. By sending his voice through the robot from his home an hour away while wearing lip-sensors so the robot can replicated what he say, Ishiguro can redefine telecommuting…”

Source: SciFi Tech

We love new interfaces and the growing range of ways that audiences can access the web. Here’s a new one that caught our eye. Its website explains that “…Swarm shows you what websites people are visiting, right now. Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm….”

Try it out!

Source: Swarm

We are often reminded of the rewards of working in the learnng space. For example, our Hot Shots programme regularly gives us a chance to meet young people who have a passion to present their stories and perspectives using the medium of video. Through this CWA New Media training programme, we draw on our prime-time television background to share our knowledge about the skills and processes used by professional programme-makers to communicate an idea to an audience.

Enjoy the diverse range of work that Hot Shots crews as they tell their stories.

The remarkable One Laptop per Child initiative is beginning to become very real with the first working prototype of the $100 Laptop unveiled at the Country Task Force Meeting, 23 May 2006. (See Flickr for more images.) Thi OLPC Wiki provides the following information.

About

It’s an education project, not a laptop project—Nicholas Negroponte

This is the wiki for the One Laptop per Child association. The mission of this non-profit association is to develop a low-cost laptop—the “$100 Laptop”—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. Our goal is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves.

Why do children in developing nations need laptops? Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to learn learning through independent interaction and exploration. <more>

Source: One Laptop Per Child website

As I tour the web, I am delighted to discover a growing range of online collections which share niche or quirky information. Here’s one – a site where you can find out about the lighthouses of New Zealand. As the site uses tables, there is no specific URL to take you to this collection. Instead, go to the site and click on “collections”.
Source: New Zealand National Maritime Museum

I recently attended a fascinating New Zealand Computer Society presentation about the earthquake monitoring system which is managed by the CRI, GNS (Institute of Geographical and Nuclear Sciences). It’s an incredibly efficient and responsive network, supported by a range of mostly open source technologies. The GeoNet site is the place to go for up-to-date information about any shakes in the NZ region.

Source: GeoNet website