Heck yes.
The year I began my A-levels coincided with the schools introduction of a new "practical physics" syllabus. That alone led to many more people choosing to study the subject.
So we embarked on something of an adventure involving high velocity projectiles, lasers, electronics, some minor explosions and fire. We were presented problems to solve and/or relatively open-ended projects. We made things, learned the physics, encountered real-world problems, learned more physics, solved the problems and then worked out what our results meant and why. It was a learning experience for the teachers too that 1st year - there was definite surprise when our brief to build the best elasticity driven marble launcher possible led to the results achieved.
The end result was that not only did we learn a lot, but we enjoyed it. Plus the uptake of physics rose *dramatically*. A far cry from seeing previous 4-strong A-level class constantly working from a gargantuan tome. Funnily enough the teachers said they liked things better the new way too.
OSX comes with very little out of the box. New Macs usually come with iLife and some with iWork (or at least a trial) pre-installed - ie third party software. Mine even came with a 30 day trial of Office 2004. A stock installation of OSX doesn't include Quicktime or the like either.
When you buy a mac, it comes with iLife and Quicktime. Both are made by Apple. Both are pretty fundamental to macs providing quite a lot of functionality out of the box.
Even if you delete Quicktime.app, the quicktime framework is still there, it's needed by many things.
Although Scratch doesn't seem to make this clear, Scratch IS Squeak (well, an even easier to use wrapper anyway), and it's listed as a Squeak project http://www.squeak.org/Projects/
Try for yourself... download Scratch, drag the included image onto your Squeak VM and it'll open fine (although, at least on the Mac version I can't find a way to quit properly).
Mix-and-match course textbooks are available through some publishers already (e.g. http://www.pearsoncustom.com/). A few of my CS lecturers put some together... the end result was a mix of the relevant parts of various books woven together, examples specific to the course, plus some practice exam material as an appendix.
Exactly. The article basically says that many students are no longer taking A-level maths, so the first year of university maths in some science courses is only assuming rusty GCSE knowledge.
The English question is something you'd see in a GCSE paper. The Chinese question is based on things you wouldn't touch until A-level.
I've been volunteering in a primary school for a while now and I'm finding it really scary just how much is being covered through the kids staring at an interactive whiteboard. Sure they're useful things, but their use shouldn't be replacing real-world learning at every turn.
Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
The thing is... we're making the relatively high concentrations of low-level ozone, it's not a natural occurrence. It's produced as a by-product of pollutants interacting with oxygen and sunlight provides the energy.
What is it with the US and social security numbers? How different are they from, say, a UK NI number?
The only times I've ever needed my NI number have been: a) When I got a job b) When I registered to not have tax on my bank account interest. c) When applying for a US visa
AFAIK my university doesn't know my NI number. To identify us we get a 7-digit number, which is pretty much only useful in exams, where it's printed for us, and a six-letter (half's our initials) code/email address used to identify us on a day-to-day basis by lecturers etc..
Slashdot Mirror
Heck yes.
The year I began my A-levels coincided with the schools introduction of a new "practical physics" syllabus. That alone led to many more people choosing to study the subject.
So we embarked on something of an adventure involving high velocity projectiles, lasers, electronics, some minor explosions and fire. We were presented problems to solve and/or relatively open-ended projects. We made things, learned the physics, encountered real-world problems, learned more physics, solved the problems and then worked out what our results meant and why. It was a learning experience for the teachers too that 1st year - there was definite surprise when our brief to build the best elasticity driven marble launcher possible led to the results achieved.
The end result was that not only did we learn a lot, but we enjoyed it. Plus the uptake of physics rose *dramatically*. A far cry from seeing previous 4-strong A-level class constantly working from a gargantuan tome. Funnily enough the teachers said they liked things better the new way too.
Apparently there's some sort of big round building in Cheltenham, too.
You mean GCHQ's doughnut?
When you buy a mac, it comes with iLife and Quicktime. Both are made by Apple. Both are pretty fundamental to macs providing quite a lot of functionality out of the box.
Even if you delete Quicktime.app, the quicktime framework is still there, it's needed by many things.
Although Scratch doesn't seem to make this clear, Scratch IS Squeak (well, an even easier to use wrapper anyway), and it's listed as a Squeak project http://www.squeak.org/Projects/
Try for yourself... download Scratch, drag the included image onto your Squeak VM and it'll open fine (although, at least on the Mac version I can't find a way to quit properly).
Mix-and-match course textbooks are available through some publishers already (e.g. http://www.pearsoncustom.com/). A few of my CS lecturers put some together... the end result was a mix of the relevant parts of various books woven together, examples specific to the course, plus some practice exam material as an appendix.
Exactly. The article basically says that many students are no longer taking A-level maths, so the first year of university maths in some science courses is only assuming rusty GCSE knowledge.
The English question is something you'd see in a GCSE paper. The Chinese question is based on things you wouldn't touch until A-level.
I've been volunteering in a primary school for a while now and I'm finding it really scary just how much is being covered through the kids staring at an interactive whiteboard. Sure they're useful things, but their use shouldn't be replacing real-world learning at every turn.
Ozon is good for environment and should be praised [partially true - stratospheric ozone absorbs solar ultraviolet radiation, but high concentrations of ozone irritate human respiratory system]
The thing is... we're making the relatively high concentrations of low-level ozone, it's not a natural occurrence. It's produced as a by-product of pollutants interacting with oxygen and sunlight provides the energy.
What is it with the US and social security numbers? How different are they from, say, a UK NI number?
The only times I've ever needed my NI number have been:
a) When I got a job
b) When I registered to not have tax on my bank account interest.
c) When applying for a US visa
AFAIK my university doesn't know my NI number.
To identify us we get a 7-digit number, which is pretty much only useful in exams, where it's printed for us, and a six-letter (half's our initials) code/email address used to identify us on a day-to-day basis by lecturers etc..