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Well guys and girls, it seems that the latest must have electronic device is here at last – the iPhone 4, and people have reportedly camped out since 4am to pick up one of the treasured devices.
There is even one sad story of a guy travelling over from Dubai, then camp out since silly o’clock in the morning to be the first guy outside of Apple to get hold of “his precious”, only to be told it was given to a guy who pre-ordered it over the web – ouch!
Quick lesson there folks, pre ordering beats camping every time!
However, despite the excitement of the huge fan base, quite a few have had not so good times with the latest resurrection of this phone. Issues from yellow spots appearing (we now know this is from the glue still drying!!), to signal randomly disappearing when people pick up their phone.
This is my favourite error; it seems that if you put pressure on the phone in a certain way, it causes the antenna to short circuit – so you have to learn to hold your phone a certain way now! Shame that this certain way is the natural way to hold the phone, and also the way shown in all the iPhone adverts!

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TV’s are becoming better and better all the time, it is just brilliant for us couch potatoes these days! However, as manufactures try to win us over with all the different specs of there machines, from contrast ratio to sharpness (which all help make the picture quality look better and more involved), these specs have always varied from manufacturer to manufacturer.
So, a low contrast on a Sony may be different to a low contrast on a Toshiba TV, which has gotta make some people just ignore the specs all together.
Sharp, however, has decided to come up with a whole new approach to lure people into buying their all dancing TV’s. What is it you ask? Well it’s the “Power of 4”, or at least of added yellow.
Yep not really what anyone was expecting, but there has always been three colours when setting your TV, or even your pc monitor, up.
So after all these years, why have Sharp brought this in now? Does it actually make any difference?
I’ve not had a chance to fully enjoy the experience yet, but I do like their advertisement style.

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TV’s are becoming better and better all the time, it is just brilliant for us couch potatoes these days! However, as manufactures try to win us over with all the different specs of there machines, from contrast ratio to sharpness (which all help make the picture quality look better and more involved), these specs have always varied from manufacturer to manufacturer.
So, a low contrast on a Sony may be different to a low contrast on a Toshiba TV, which has gotta make some people just ignore the specs all together.
Sharp, however, has decided to come up with a whole new approach to lure people into buying their all dancing TV’s. What is it you ask? Well it’s the “Power of 4”, or at least of added yellow.
Yep not really what anyone was expecting, but there has always been three colours when setting your TV, or even your pc monitor, up.
So after all these years, why have Sharp brought this in now? Does it actually make any difference?
I’ve not had a chance to fully enjoy the experience yet, but I do like their advertisement style.

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It seems that the whole world, whether it is interested or not, is being caught up in the 3D revolution.
First, it was just 3D cinemas, where we all put on silly glasses and had a treat off the parents. Now with top Hollywood films coming out in 3D, we still need glasses but we get nice-ish looking ones.
Second, the 3D viewing experience is coming into our living rooms with more and more TV’s being released with 3D displays. Even mobile phones are getting in on the action, with them having had the screens updated to allow the choice of boring old and past it 2D (can you tell I’m a 3D fan?!) displays, or the exciting new 3D displays (without the need of glasses).
These phones are a great way to show off with, although one can look a bit silly when one tries to pick up the 3D image, rather than touching it to make an action happen!
3D has now spread from the computer console (that we lovingly place beside our TV’s and devote too much time too), to being on the handheld console we carry around. That’s right, Nintendo has announce the 3DS, so all those mini games can now really stand out – no need for glasses, just pure brilliance.

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It seems that the “fun” between Google and Google.cn is getting “funner”! Google are getting increasingly annoyed at China censoring its website; and the situation just seems to be getting bigger and bigger.

First, it started out with little quips about Google delaying, and then stopping, the import of some of its much loved Android phones to China (have to wonder how many parts of their phones are actually made in China… despite the phones not allowed to be sold there!), and now it seems that the internet giant Google has taken another step in this escalating war – by joining forces with the US to bring in some international trade rules to make censorship of the internet illegal.

This is good news (as I think knowledge should be available to all, and so will make no difference to most of the world), however, I bet China wished it had left Google alone now!

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The old traditional method of learning to read is to take a book and learn the individual words before being able to form a sentence. Many children like to learn through interactive methods and simply holding, and reading from a book is not enough to aid with this. Instead some schools, have utilised digital tools and methods to help children to learn to read. So far these new methods have proven to have a positive effect with many children enhancing their literacy acquisition faster than other children who have used the traditional methods. Learning methods are all about the individual child and which technique they prefer, but surely having the the digital methods available could help those children who otherwise might have fallen behind.

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As classroom sizes become bigger and pupils fight for places in good schools, could distance learning be the solution. Online distance learning is not a new concept but the idea of a whole online distance school is. The technology is there but whether children will benefit from the experience is another. Online schools would mean children could study at home while gaining access to some of the best instructors. Some early research even suggests that distance education can have the same level of academic achievement as traditional methods. If this later proves to be the case then potentially a lot of money could be saved by moving away from traditional teaching methods in teh future.

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Facebook just keeps on expanding and today most children have their own account and spend a lot of their time on it. It’s true that it’s a big influence on young people lives, but studies have suggested that Facebook has a much bigger influence on girls than boys. This is because 40% of girls aged from 8 to 15 said that Facebook was one of the most important things in their lives.

Although Facebook is very popular, the amount of time spent on this social networking site could be hindering not only a child’s family life but also their education as they spend less time on home work and more time networking with friends. Only time will tell if it a true hindrance as Facebook is set to be around for a long time to come.

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Technology in schools can help the staff just as much as it can help the children with their learning. One of the ways in which it is doing this is through an automatic attendance system. Once the attendance of the pupils has been entered into the system it is set up so that it will automatically send an automated phone message to the parent or guardian of any child that is not in school without a reason. Some systems are also set up so that they will send out a text message. This makes the school office‘s life much easier and also makes it much harder for pupils to play truant, which can only be a good thing.

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The government has spent a lot over the past few years on improving technology in schools as they feel it will help children to learn much better than the traditional chalk and blackboard. It seems now that the government were right in their efforts as a study in technology and academic achievement has proven that there is a strong link between the two.

Technology such as whiteboards encourages more interactive learning rather than just reading from a text book and for many students this appears to be a beneficial approach.

Now that these studies support the governments thinking, technology is only set to grow in the classroom, but as plans grow for some schools to be new learning academy’s it seems that some schools will be better off than others and will be able to afford the new technology on offer. So does this mean that those students living in lower privileged areas will suffer?

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