Our next generation of coders

In all organisations today, there is a need to have a coder at the office, someone who is tech savvy. Today there are more and more jobs which are needed to be filled with the right personnel who have the required skills to fill such roles; however, the reality is there is a decreasing number of people with these skills.

The problem starts young; there seems to be not enough youngsters wanting to start a career in computer programming. What has to be established for our younger generations is just what is involved in computer coding.

Vikas Gupta, former head of consumer payments at Google believes that the key is starting them early. Research suggests that children could start coding as young as five (according to an MIT study that Mr Gupta came across). He did realise that to enable children as young as five to begin computer programming  there would have to be a certain product that would allow children to do so; as they will not be able to grasp something as advanced as an entire computer. So he set about to design a product that would allow children to use; have fun with and learn about computer programming. The result was two robots named Bo and Yana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSRekzTPVE0

Bo and Yana allow children to learn about programming without even realising it. Yanna is the smaller of the two robots and can be programmed to make sound, where as Bo can be programmed to move around. The robots are controlled wirelessly via a tablet or a smartphone with an added appropriate app, however the app is only available for iOS at present; however, depending on its success will probably extend its availability later on. As an example of what the robots are able to do, Gupta had mentioned that: "the robots can be programmed to play hide-and-seek".

The plan is start selling the robots in the summer of 2014. Gupta is keen to have them within schools as he hopes to provide children with a basis for computer programming.

Whether or not it will prove to be a success only time will tell. The important aspect to notice here is that a situation had been noticed (something in which can cause a problem in the future) what Gupta has done is looked into something that resolve the issue. That is most definitely a step in the right direction; who knows our next Steve Jobs could be 5-year-old who was given Bo and Yanna to start their life in computer programming.

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Bored?

Oh the internet, a haven for fun; where would we be without the 'world wide web'?

So it's 21:00, your in bed and on your laptop but not tied yet, so you are just randomly searching on Google; constantly checking Facebook, while listening to music on YouTube. Surely there is more to do on the web? well there is.

Here is a list of websites that have proven to be quite interesting and entertaining

1- http://www.bored.com/fun/ just type in fun and you will get this in your Google search; a endless website of fun appears.

2-http://www.youtube.com/user/SearchStories Unfortunately Google does not allow you to create your own any more; however, there  are still plenty of these on YouTube just search for "Google Search Stories". They are interesting to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbprAKGAg8U

3- http://jabberwacky.com/ A site of conversation; check it out.

4-http://www.omg-facts.com/?nrm If you love learning you should take a look at this site. You would be guaranteed to learn a few things once you visit.

5- http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/ More than likely you should have heard of street view, but if you haven't, where have you been and seriously, what are you waiting for?

6-http://www.flipmytext.com/ have a look at your writing flipped in reverse.

7-http://www.papertoilet.com/ pointless and time consuming, but it will have your attention for at least a minute.

8-http://www.humanclock.com time watching just became interesting

9-http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html deform a face; artistic and fun.



10- http://www.mcsearcher.com/ This is fantastic, create your own Google homepage.

11-http://www.cbfsms.com/ no credit, need to contact someone? no problem, free text messages here

12- http://www.randomwebsite.com/ The original Stumble upon; want to be sent to a random website? well check this out.

13- http://zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf This is fantastic, very creative; however beware, it is time consuming.

14- http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google_gravity/ The Google homepage, with added Physics.

15- http://www.omegle.com/ Fancy chatting with a random stranger? includes webcam.

16- http://www.earthcam.com/ This website is Amazing, watch live cameras from around the world, from big tourist attractions.

17- http://www.zefrank.com/dtoy_vs_byokal/index.html Make your own patterns, artistic and fun.

18-http://www.bareknuckles.org/bananafaces/index.html there really are some crazy websites out there.

19- http://www.zimm-co.com/PressTheSpaceBar/pressthespacebar2000.html How fast can you press the space bar?

20- http://www.instantsfun.es/ sounds, sounds and more sounds.

21- http://amanita-design.net/plachy_trpaslik/ Online games are not always interesting; however, this website has added intellect with one such game.

22-http://www.supercook.com/ Do not know what to eat? Want inspiration of what to cook? well as always the internet is here to help.

23- http://photofunia.com/ Want to add your face on a building? or even on a new body? take a look here; its very simple but effective.

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Technology for younger generations and the teacher

We are in a modern era where technology seems to be advancing quickly; some see a bright, new future in education because of technology, Digitaltechlife.com (2013) stated “the younger you are right now, the more likely you feel comfortable with technology and look forward to future changes it brings”.

What would this mean for teachers and parents of today?

Do teachers and parents alike look at technology differently to how children look at it?

These are questions that some of us are asking, with the new generations that are born into this age of touch screens, internet and social networking.

The Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference in 2010 expressed this concern and

hastily came to the conclusion: “While today's teachers use the internet for information, today's children use the internet for gathering”. However if teachers and pupils learn to use new and emerging technology together and correctly it can be a useful tool.

With teaching younger generations, the teacher is needed to motivate and encourage pupils learning; which, when used correctly learning can be enhanced via the technology available today.

Spencer, J. (2012) had mentioned in his book "Can you teach without technology" ‘At this stage, technology isn't truly transformative. It's simply a faster way to do much of what we would already be doing.’ Which is very true; before pupils had to look through books (spending  a considerate amount of time searching for a answer to their questions) however now with a simple Google search the answer to their questions can be found within seconds. The same question is answered, however technology gives easier access. This is the digital age, it is today that we are living in, why not embrace the technology available.

If schools are to prepare pupils for their lives to come, there is no use hiding technology away from our pupils; it is important to get pupils to use technology. What we should be teaching the younger generations is how to use the technology of today appropriately.

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Top 5 most viewed websites

I have put together a list of the top ten most viewed websites of all time. I have used a couple of references from different websites to try and bring together this information: such as 'most popularwebsites' and Wikipedia.

 Facebook.com

At number one we have the social networking site Facebook. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg, it was initially made for Harvard students; but as Facebook's popularity grew it extended its reach to high schools and then anyone over the age of 13. At this moment in time Facebook is the most visited site on the web, the site had a reported 1.15 billion user’s active from March (Wikipedia, Facebook, 2013) the site is still growing and continues to be a social networking phenomenon.

 Google.com

Coming in at second place (only just) is the mighty surf engine giant Google. However Google is so much more than just a search engine, now with the ability to blog, share, create profiles and watch videos the mega giant is doing everything else, so its is understandable as to why it is so popular.

Youtube.com

Owned by Google and created by PayPal employees, YouTube is the largest video sharing website on the web. YouTube seems like a land of opportunity with people who have made thousands from their constant uploads of popular videos.

Videos that go viral are viewed millions if not billions of times, for example 'Charlie bit my finger' became so popular it now has 573,902,646 views. Some videos have even more, with 'PSY - Gangnam style' having over 1,789,567,178 views. Some of YouTube statistics can be found here, "YouTube has apparently more than 1 billion unique users visit each month".

Yahoo.com

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, it is known for its search engine 'Yahoo search', but over time has developed a number of different features from yahoo mail, yahoo answers, yahoo weather and even yahoo finance. Did you know that Yahoo has 11,500 employees?

Baidu.com

Is a Chinese web service provider, it was established in 2000 by Robin Li. The site offers many services such as a Chinese search engine, images and Baidu Encyclopaedia which is China's largest encyclopaedia. It is the main search engine used in China; in 2010, it is estimated that there were 4.02 billion search queries in China.

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Science and technology, what could be?

Technology and science has seemed to have made heaps and bounds of progress in the last decade. Every day something is being discovered; new technology being engineered that could possibly change our lives. What’s more interesting is the technology and science in our daily lives that we take for granted, for example the personal home computer, where would we be without it?

Before we take a look at some of the technology of the future, Let take a step back in history to just see how far we have come.

In 1971, the Kenbak-1 is considered by the Computer History Museum and the American Computer Museum to be the first ever personal home computer; it was advertised for $750 in Scientific American. The computer was designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-scale and small-scale integrated circuits; the Kenbak-1 relied on switches for input and lights for output from its 256-byte memory.

In comparison to the computers and technology we have available to us today, it didn’t really do much; however, none the less it was a turning point in history, and an amazing feat.

Now almost 44 years later we have reaped the benefits of science and innovation, to have available in the majority of our households, computers that are able to do things that Blankenbaker could of only had dreamed of back then.

The question now to think of; can you imagine where will be in another 44 years’ time?

But first of all let’s just hope we do not use advances in technology to create machines such as this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Djc8FPHs45o

What could be

I have put together a series of websites that you should take a look at; have a look at what could be possible:

Kinect-like technology turns any surface into a touchscreen

Giant solar plane could stay airborne for 5 years, replace some satellites

10 Upcoming Technology That May Change The World

Trillion-frame-per-second video

Researchers create car that can be steered by thought

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