Don Watkins
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Linux Whips Apple's macOS in the Race to the Automobile CarOS
I don't think much about it while I'm driving, but I sure do love that my car is equipped with a system that lets me use a few buttons and my voice to call my wife, mom, and children. That same system allows me to choose whether I listen to music streaming from the cloud, satellite radio, or the more traditional AM/FM radio. I also get weather updates and can direct my in-vehicle GPS to find the fastest route to my next destination. In-vehicle infotainment, or IVI as it's known in the industry, has become ubiquitous in today's newest automobiles...
Make Things 'Til You Make It at Colorado's "Blowing Things Up Lab"
Recently while reading a tweet from the Blowing Things Up Lab, I learned about Emily Daub, a maker and college student who designed a running shirt that helps runners be more visible to motorists—my daughter is a runner so this sounds like a great idea to me. The shirt is photosensitive which cause the light intensity of the fabric to change in ambient light. According to Emily Daub, "If you run at night, this is for you. This lights up as it gets darker outside on two independent photocells and no microcontroller!" In this interview, I ask Emily more about this fantastic invention...
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Open Education Is About Improving Lives, Not Taking Tests
While recently reading The Innovator's Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent and Lead, by George Couros, I was struck by the parallels between the author's thinking and that of Jim Whitehurst in The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance. "Sometimes it scares me to think that we have taken the most human profession, teaching, and have reduced it to simply letters and numbers," Couros says early in the book. "We place such an emphasis on these scores, because of political mandates and the way teachers and schools are evaluated today, that it seems we've forgotten why our profession exists: to change—improve—lives." In other words education has lost it's "Why?"—and that is central to its mission...
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Python-based Open Source Eye Tracking Tool
I have a deep interest in educational psychology, and so I was fascinated by what I read about PyGaze—an open source toolbox for eye tracking in Python. The website told me that it runs on Linux, but I wanted to learn more about eye tracking and the role it plays in psychological research. I also wanted to know more about the project and how it is contributing to research and its implications for open source. In this interview, the lead developer for the project, Edwin Dalmaijer, who works at the University of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology doing research and programming, provides a fascinating description of PyGaze and the significance of eye tracking in research...
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School Systems Desperate for Standards-Aligned Curricula Find Hope
Open Up Resources is a nonprofit collaborative formed by 13 U.S. states that creates high-quality, standards-aligned open educational resources (OERs) that are openly licensed under CC BY 4.0. Unlike other providers, Open Up Resources provides curriculum-scale OER options; they believe that while many people seem to know where to find supplemental materials, most curriculum directors would not know where to look if they were planning a textbook adoption next year. After an article I wrote about OERs last year, I had the opportunity to interview their community evangelist and Chief Marketing Officer, Karen Vaites. In this interview, Karen elaborates on this...
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