Translation through the iPad Viewer

One of the coolest apps I’ve seen for the iPad is WordLens, which will translate whatever text it sees through the camera viewer.  I didn’t demo it in class because each translation dictionary costs $5.  I bought the English/Spanish dictionary, but since I don’t speak Spanish, I can’t tell how well it is translating.  Nevertheless, here is a picture of the front page of today’s New York Times, and also one of how WordLens translated it (in real time, directly to the screen), when I hovered the iPad over it.

Museum of the Moving Image

We visited my parents in NYC this weekend, and while we were there we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.  Too bad it's too far for a field trip, because it had a lot of of kid-friendly activities.

In one spot they had still cameras mounted overhead which were pointed down at a flat desk with a marked frame.  On the desk there were cut-outs of characters and props as well as backgrounds to use to make a stop action video. One could position the cut-outs, and then press a button to take a picture.  Once you had a sequence of photos, you could watch your video play back on a screen.

Similarly, in another room, they supplied black paper and scissors so you could make a silhouette stop action animation.  There they used cameras and laptops running iStopAnimation to make the videos.

Zoey is my brother's dog.

Another fun part of the exhibit was the Translation Party.  If you texted a sentence to the given phone number, it would be projected on a wall, then electronically translated to Japanese and projected onto the wall again. Then the Japanese was translated back to English, and then back to Japanese, with each translation projected.  The Translation Party stopped when 2 consecutive English and Japanese translations stayed the same.  Those final versions made no sense.  Maybe digital translation has a ways to go...

Too small to see?

If, by Rudyard Kipling...

I was listening to the radio on my way home from Everett (one benefit of a long commute - I listen again to the radio and know some current events!) and the "Writer's Almanac" came on, with this poem recited.  It was a favorite of mine when I was kid, and still is (though I wish the last line were different).  At any rate, at least 5 of the lines recalled things from the school day.

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

My kindle...

I have had a Kindle for about 2 years now, and I love it.  I love that I can get any book any time (and for free if it's in the library collection). I love that it's portable. I love that I can adjust the font size. I love that (with a cover with a light) I can read no matter how much light there is.

Since I have had it, I read more, and I read a wider spectrum of material, but I also read more shallowly.  I never flip back to clarify a section that didn't really make sense.  When there's a character who has been introduced before, but I can't recall the details, I never go back.  When I get bored, I don't skip ahead, or flip to reassure myself that it will get better:  I just stop reading.  For me, reading on the kindle is only ever in page order.  While I know I can search and set bookmarks and highlights, I never want to leave the reading in order to do those things.  In print books, I flip back and ahead all the time, without finding an interruption.  I have spent enough hours with my kindle so that my patterns are set. Not to say that I couldn't change them if I really wanted, but if I haven't had the drive to use the extra tools yet, I doubt that I will in the future.

So I still want to read books that I think I will love in print.  I buy print versions of the books for class so that I can flip through them.  (I tried to write my paper on "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" from an ebook, and I wanted to pull my hair out.)

Based my experience,  I would think ebooks are a great way to make sure every student always has something to read at hand which they enjoy.  But I think that they should also sometimes use print books for the richer experience of being able to easily flip forwards and backwards.  It will be interesting to see how the use of ebooks progresses as ereaders become more and more common.