Slashdot Mirror

My son is in a year round STEM school in NC and their school uses a system based on android called Amplify http://www.amplify.com/. It isn't just an app it is a modified android tablet that allows students to participate as a collective in the individual classroom. Students can use the table to raise their hand, ask question and participate in classwork. Teachers use it to teach their curriculum and after a lesson can deploy a quick quiz so the teacher knows who understood the lesson and who may need additional help. Teachers can see what each student is doing on their tablet at any time with the master teacher's tablet. Each individual student has their own tablet and the tablets are locked down, always on with att 4G when off campus and students take the tablets home to do their homework on them. Their main responsibility is charging the tablet every night. It has been great over the last school year watching my son enjoy his curriculum in new ways using his tablet and the best part is really how well the tablet fits into the classroom and is replacing the tradition text book. The program was supposed to be only a 1 year test of the product but the school has asked to allow the 6th grade students to continue to use their tablets in 7th grade. Kudos to Amplify I hope all schools in this country will stop wasting money on promises and use something that I personally have already watched prove itself as a fantastic learning product for my 7th grader.

For instance:
a) I was on a jury trial where the person was charged with hundreds of pounds of Cocaine, and the prosecutor said the messages were for "White Shirts"
b) Some terrorists were anticipating an attack, and they said the "wedding cake is ready"

I believe both of these count as metaphors (as opposed to similes which use "like" or "as"). Although this is not iron-clad ("John has a long moustache" was the code phrase for the invasion of D-Day by the Allies against Nazi Germany), it is an "out of context" remark that would slip through a mechanical search for key words "oil", "gold", "corn", "soy beans", "money", "coke", "grass", "weed", which could be scanned by a computer for later review by a person, which was the technology in use some 30 years ago by the NSA (National Security Agency) which ostensibly only monitors foreign traffic, but who knows under the Patriot Act of 2001, which is still not fully made public.

In other words, if the government had all the metaphors used to denote a victory in Iran for building a nuclear bomb, or testing its product, or for reaching a supply of the critical mass of uranium, plutonium, then those would be the metaphors one (or one's computer) would most likely search for.

As a comedian once said: I know that when I ask my friend for "circus tickets" for $50, I better not get tickets to the circus.

It looks like that ruling was appealed and overruled, thankfully. http://aramzs.amplify.com/2010/12/18/another-step-in-the-wow-glider-case-has-some-interesting-legal-repercussions/