Saturday 30 April 2011

A Lesson on Voting reform

Some days the best lessons just happen unplanned, and the numbers drop out beautifully.

I was going through exam papers with my Y11 last week, and a number of the class weren't there, due to Dance, PE, and Art exams (its that time of year). Some of those left were asking about next week's referendum, and commented that AV wasn't fair and was too complicated.

So we did it.

We modelled the situation, running a vote for where they would like to go on their end of year trip. They suggested the following places...
  • Alton Towers
  • Bournemouth Beach
  • Chessington
  • Legoland
  • Thorpe Park
I asked them to vote, and the votes came out at...
3 for Alton Towers, 11 for Bournemouth, 3 for Chessington, 1 for Legoland and 5 for Thorpe Park. The general consensus was that clearly a trip to Bournemouth was out and out the winner. Then I pointed out that while 11 had voted for a trip to the beach, 12 had voted for a theme park trip.

We then AV'ed the vote, by physically moving around the room to redistribute the votes. As it happens Bournemouth did win, as some people wanted as a first choice to go to a theme park, but couldn't face the long coach trip to Alton Towers.

They weren't all convinced by the argument that it was a better system, they did at least understand how it worked, and why some people see it as fairer.

Again, I was lucky - the fact that the numbers added up so well to 11/13 for the fptp system was something of a gift - something you just cannot plan for.

This is similar to the video on youtube by "Dan Snow", if you're interested, but I got lucky the numbers worked out the way I wanted!

Thursday 21 April 2011

Referendum on voting as a lesson

I'm planning to use the referendum on voting (FPTP vs AV) as a lesson on sampling etc.

I'd really appreciate it if people would fill in my survey, and then we can compare my sample with the final result. I realise that there is significant bias built in to my sample / sampling, but thats kind of the point!


Thursday 14 April 2011

My 1st Android App

I've written my first Android App. I'll be honest, I have cheated, but it's my app nonetheless.

I had been good, and downloaded the right software from google, but then I got lazy. I didn't want to work through a pile of tutorials that makes a picture of a cat miaow.

So I googled 'android app templates' in the hope I could find someone had some the techy bit for me. I ended up at www.appsgeyser.com; which almost does it.

It takes a url or bit of a site, and turns it into an app with a custom icon and everything.

Then, once you've downloaded it to your phone, the app shows a more mobile friendly view of the website.

It's not really what I want, but it was fun to set up, and run. It doesn't work offline at all. I'd like it to still run off line with the stored history, and update data when possible. I may have ot make the cat miaow after all!

If you have android then there are 2 qr code links below. 1 to my school blog, the other to the app for that blog. Compare & contrast, and then coment here please!







Web blog

App link

Wednesday 6 April 2011

Portable Visualiser



Some of you will know I got all excited last night when I discovered a new trick with my phone.

I found an app in the Android Market place that lets me use my phone as a wireless webcam. Its called ipwebcam, and can be found on the right.
Its dead easy to set up. Install, choose image size, refresh rate etc, and click run. You need both your phone and PC connected to the same wireless network.

It really is that easy. You then point your browser to the address at the bottom of the screen, and choose how you want to view - I used the "browser built in viewer" with Firefox.

Here are the results...
As you can see, not bad results.

I had issues at school. It didn't work (I was gutted). Turns out the proxy servers can't cope. Fortunately a friendly ICT teacher found a solution. Turn off the proxy. Now (at school) I have Chrome for the internet (all proxied up), and Firefox with proxy turned off for the webcam.
Edit:  It seems to just work now, updated school network possibly. May 2013


My Dept eLearning rep is @Maridavies82, and while she is a brilliant teacher, she is team apple! There is an iPhone app that does much the same thing - called Mini Web Cam, I believe. All the setting up and proxy issues are the same.

Sadly as a portable visualiser it doesn't really work - the resolution on the camera, and the lighting is not really up to the job. That could be a function of my phone (ZTE Blade btw) as much as anything else.

I have however, enjoyed playing with the gadgetry, and reckon there is scope for using this in other ways. It'll support sound, and as it will work anywhere in the school's wireless bubble it could be a lot of fun...

I'd love to hear if anyone uses phones in this way.

Edit: May 2013:  I now have a better phone with a flash (Samsung Galaxy Ace 2), as well as a tablet (Asus 300) and a Samsung Galaxy camera.  This all works much better now thankyou!