The last couple of weeks I have been mystified. My iPad doesn’t have GPS but it always knows where I am down to a couple of meters. I know that Apple has been using WiFi based geo-location already in the iPhone but I just couldn’t explain how my private hotspot and my friend’s down the street or even the one at my office could have ended up in Apple’s database.
The only explanation I could come up with was that Apple had used my iPhone’s GPS to gather geo coordinates for all WiFi hotspots I came close to. That sounded too scary and conspiratory-theory like to really contemplate.
And then I read this: >> more…
Today is the 2nd Ada-Lovelace-Day, an “international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science”. This initiative originating in the UK encourages people to write about tech women whom they admire, who impressed them and who are heroines to them. I also pledged myself to write something, because womens achievements are often overlooked, disregarded or even disrated and therefor its a duty to me to spread the word.
There are plenty of stories to tell, so it was not easy to choose which one to write about. There are for instance the girls I work with, who are inspiring, amusing and fun to work with every day. They earn my respect, but instead of glorifying my colleagues (you can meet them in this blog btw) I want to take my hat off to three of the great ladies out there, each one totally different from the other. >> more…
Recently there was a public voting for Barbies next career. I didn’t grow up with that kind of toys, but obviously there are editions showing the Barbie doll in different professional roles. Today Mattel (the Barbie producer company) announced Barbies next two careers. There were four options: environmentalist, surgeon, news anchor and computer engineer. They did two surveys, one among girls and another public voting. While the girls have choosen news anchor as the preferred profession for their dolls, the public clearly voted for computer engineer. I must admit, I also did my best. Now we should be prepared for a new generation of girls, who know they can do it. I was impressed to read in the factsheet that they actually asked IT professionals what a computer engineer might wear. Although I personally disagree with the choosen colours and the pants, I think it’s a nice thing if girls around the world ask their teachers and parents about the meaning of that numbers on her shirt.
In today’s paper I read an editorial about how we should wisely consider where we (as a society) spend our money on education. Correctly the author made the point that smaller classes are not proven to yield better results in education. (afaik there is an American study that actually proves that smaller class sizes have no correlation with better education results). The author also rightfully pointed to making teachers better as an important part to making education better. >> more…
Although at conject the participation of women in software development is quite high – compared to the average numbers in IT – we would love to have even more smart colleagues in general and female ones in particular. Fortunately there’s a program called Cybermentor, which allows women working in the field of MINT (mathematics, IT, natural science, technics) to share their professional enthusiasm with school girls via email exchange.
Underrepresentation of women in these fields is not caused by lack of talent, but by wrong stereotypes and missing appropriate role models. Aim of the program is to support and boost the interest of girls in these fields, which is quite high and unbiased in primary school, but declines in the period of adolescence. Therefore it seems to be promising to intervene in these age. >> more…
Last weekend I had the privilege of attending a 3 day conference in Bregenz on modern forms of education “Greenhouses of the future“. My two older daughters now attend school, my wife hast just started working as a teacher. The more I learn about education the more I am struck by paradox: All experts agree on how children should be taught: Each child individually according to his or her level of proficiency in a given subject. Yet what we see in schools all over the world is a far cry from that: 30 children of roughly the same age all being fed the same lesson at the same time by one teacher. >> more…
