Academic vocabulary

Dear 6AB1 students,

The article and video I have just posted are about the reading topic I talked about in today's lesson. I strongly recommend you to go and take a look. You can then know more about the issue of "digital divide".

There was a classmate of yours telling me her problem of learning new English words. I here try to recommend a good website from PolyU to you all. This website contains some lists of words that you should be able to know at this stage of learning. There are a total of ten lists. For each word you can click on the links to get a definition, example sentences, pronunciation and a Chinese translation. I think the website is handy for you if you want to start learning new words more systematically.

Try your best to make use of the website.

Regards,
Mr. Fu

Here's the website:
http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/CILL/eap/wordlists.htm

$100 Laptop in Nigeria (Video)

BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones takes a look at the XO laptops given to a Nigerian school.

Link to the video.

A race to solve the problem of "digital divide"

There is a race to connect the next billion people worldwide and one of the main arenas where it is being played out is Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.

In the West African nation, home to more than 140m people, humanitarian efforts rub shoulders with commercial schemes to bridge the digital divide.

The Ministry of Education is currently evaluating schemes from Microsoft, Intel and the One Laptop per Child group to give the country's 30 million school-aged children access to computers.

Although no decision has been made about which, if any, it will buy into on a large scale, some schemes are already starting to move ahead.

Link to the story.

A US school provides 1,000 wireless laptops that will fit on students' desktops

Kid-size computers

For nearly a year, Fresno Unified school officials searched for a laptop that wouldn't clutter a student's desk.

Thursday, school officials said they purchased 1,000 wireless laptops that fit on a desk alongside textbooks and notebooks, as well as give students the opportunity to build a digital portfolio of essays, drawings and other creations.

"This is cool," said Chris Mitchell, a student at Bullard High School, where school officials unveiled the 7-inch wireless laptops.

Fresno Unified hopes the laptops will help students increase test scores through the ability to research information on the Internet, as well as halt five years of declining enrollment by enticing parents to send their children to the district's schools.

Currently, the district has about 69,000 students.

"Anything we can do as a district to engage students in learning and keep them here is a good thing," Superintendent Michael Hanson said at a news conference that drew about 50 people.

In the next few weeks, the laptops will be in about 60 classrooms at 16 other schools. They will be shared by students and will remain in the classrooms.

But not every educator is thrilled with the $650,000 investment.

Larry Moore, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, said new computers are useful tools, but a majority of teachers and students will not have access to the tiny laptop. He said the district should have spent the money on fixing broken computers in many classrooms.

There are also mixed feelings among educators. Stephen Lewis, a geology professor at California State University, Fresno, thinks laptops are a useful tool, but they can also hinder the teaching process -- he often sees students with their heads buried in their laptops instead of paying attention to a lecture.

"Teaching and learning is a person-to-person business. Are we moving toward a remote-control classroom?" Lewis said.

Roy Bohlin, an education technology professor at Fresno State, however, said laptops can motivate students to solve problems that affect their friends or community or the world.

"Problems in textbooks are sometimes boring," Bohlin said. "Laptops can increase critical thinking because students will have access to resources on the Internet."

Kurt Madden, the district's chief technology officer, said he has heard the debate before. In his final analysis, he said: "Teachers will always be a critical part of the classroom."

Fresno Unified's endeavor is the first of its kind in the nation because the laptop maker, ASUS, unveiled the 7-inch creation just last week. What makes the ASUS laptop unique is its built-in keyboard, said ASUS project manager David Leung. Other small laptops have touch-screen keyboards, he said.

Fresno Unified was the first school district to purchase ASUS' 7-inch laptop, Leung said.

In addition, Fresno Unified might be the only school district experimenting with giving every student a digital portfolio, Madden said.

In the old days, a student's portfolio included drawings, essays and poems written on paper, and art creations such as ceramic sculptures. Parents often saved their child's work in a folder or large envelope, causing the larger creations to get folded or ruined.

With this technology, Madden said, a student's portfolio will include everything a student writes and saves in the district's computer network from kindergarten to 12th grade. Because the laptop has a camera, students can take a photograph of their artwork or make a video of their school project.

"Kindergartners can take pictures of finger-paint drawings that can embarrass them the rest of their lives," Madden joked at a news conference.

Students will have their own identification code and password to protect their portfolios from intruders. Only school officials and parents will have access to the portfolios, Madden said.

Though he found the small keyboard a bit difficult at first, Mitchell, a Bullard junior, gave the 7-inch laptop a passing grade. "They call us the Y generation and sometimes the Internet generation. It's confusing what to call our generation. All I know is that technology has been part of my world."

Possibly the most enviromentally friendly car

Fewer have self-image as Chinese, HK survey finds

More Hong Kong residents see themselves as Hongkongers, with fewer saying they are Chinese, a survey has found.

The study, by the University of Hong Kong, National Chengchi University in Taiwan and the University of the Ryukyus in Japan, compared the cultural and national identities of Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Okinawa residents.

More than 1,000 respondents aged 18 and over from each place were interviewed this month.

In the Hong Kong poll, 21.2 per cent of respondents said they saw themselves only as Hongkongers, up 7.9 per cent from a similar survey last year.

The proportion considering themselves both Hongkongers and Chinese rose 3.3 points to 56.3 per cent.

A total of 21.7 per cent claimed to be Chinese only, down 11.3 points from last year.

Combining the latter two options showed the total proportion of respondents seeing themselves as Chinese dropped from 86 per cent last year to 78 per cent this year.

Macau had the highest proportion of people identifying as Chinese, 31 per cent, with 55.8 per cent saying they saw themselves as being Chinese and coming from Macau.

Taiwan had the lowest Chinese identification, with only 3.1 per cent, and 40 per cent reporting their identities as Chinese and Taiwanese.

On the factors affecting identity, 84.1 per cent of Hong Kong respondents agreed that China's rising international status would raise Hongkongers self-recognition as Chinese, with 82.7 per cent saying closer economic ties was a contributor. A total of 81 per cent cited democratisation in China as a factor.

By comparison, a survey by Chinese University's Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies in April found 52.4 per cent of about 800 respondents considered themselves Hongkongers, while 36.5 per cent recognised themselves as Chinese. Only 9.6 per cent considered themselves both.

Institute researcher Timothy Wong Ka-ying, who has conducted the survey since 1997, said the proportion of respondents recognising themselves as Hongkongers and Chinese remained stable in the survey carried out by the institute last month compared to the April study.

Professor Wong said 51 per cent saw themselves as Hongkongers in the institute's latest poll, which has yet to be published.

He said findings on people's perception of their identity always remained stable, as the issue involved emotional attachment, and opinions took time to change. Serious fluctuations in the findings were therefore not expected, he said.

A survey by the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme in June found 23.4 per cent of respondents considered themselves Hongkongers, compared with 26.4 per cent who claimed a Chinese identity. A further 31.8 per cent saw themselves as Chinese Hongkongers, while 16.7 per cent said they were Hong Kong Chinese.

Further rioting in Paris suburb

French youths have been battling police for a second night in a suburb of Paris where two teenagers died after their motorcycle collided with a police car.
Up to 30 police officers are said to have been injured in the clashes.

Earlier in the day, a state prosecutor ordered a manslaughter inquiry into the deaths of the two teenagers in Villiers-le-Bel.

Local youths blame police for the deaths but police say the two teenagers were speeding and not wearing helmets.

Link to the story.

PCCW hits back with HK$3b system upgrade

PCCW, Hong Kong's biggest communications and media group, plans to spend HK$3 billion on system upgrades next year, according to group managing director Alex Arena.

The investment would be made to upgrade the fixed-line network to full fibre-optic broadband to meet customer demand for high-bandwidth applications such as pay-television, Mr Arena said yesterday.

While staff should not expect an across-the-board pay rise for the new year, the bonuses for this year should be more than one month if employees reached business targets, he said.

"We are investing much more than our competitors," said Mr Arena at the company's sports and fun day held yesterday. "In the past two years, we spent a lot on mobile network and pay-television service. We expect to spend more next year on the optical fibre network."

He said the commercial launch of the high-speed fibre-optic broadband network had been in preparation for a while and it was time for the company to "strike back" at rivals such as City Telecom (Hong Kong) and Hutchison Global Communications.

PCCW last week unveiled its latest full fibre-optic broadband service with transmission speeds of 100 megabits and 1,000 megabits per second, at monthly fees of HK$588 and HK$2,188 respectively.

The speeds are much faster than its existing offering of download speeds of between six megabits and 28 megabits per second.

"We are watching the new technology very closely and we have been investing in the optical-fibre network for 25 years," Mr Arena said. "We launched the service now as applications such as peer-to-peer file transfer and high-definition television are in the market which meet the demand for high-speed broadband."

Mr Arena said the new service, available to all residents, had drawn positive initial response.

PCCW will also offer a mobile service operating under the US-based Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA 2000) technology but will do so for international roamers only as the company had no plan to launch another domestic retail brand for the CDMA service next year.

PCCW won the 15-year licence for CDMA 2000 last month at a reserve price of HK$70 million. It was the sole bidder.

"Our business plan is that CDMA service will be for international roaming business only. We have all technologies and we can serve users from around 250 CDMA networks globally when they come to Hong Kong. It's not just China Unicom that operates a CDMA business," Mr Arena said.

Awesome Virgin Airline TV ad

Nintendo's nightmare - The R4 "modchip"

The R4 chip is only small - but it looks like a giant pirate to Nintendo

The R4 looks like a simple piece of plastic. It is just a couple of centimetres square, a few millimetres thick and unbelievably easy to use. For Nintendo it is the Christmas stocking filler from hell.

Made in China, available for sale over the internet and now doing a roaring trade on the streets of Tokyo, the R4 has emerged as perhaps the ultimate video game piracy tool.

Costing a little more than £20, the device is a virtually unlimited passport to illegally downloaded software titles for the Nintendo DS – the handheld games console that has taken Japan, and much of the world, by storm.

Link to the story.