How Brilliant is Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope?
I’d love to be able to answer that question, but unfortunately my home PC is under spec’ed to do it justice - graphics card not up to the job of rendering the terabytes of images.
Nor is my school machine - lovely MacPCBookWinProXP - able to do it justice, simply because Websense will not allow it access to the internet.
I was quite excited by the announcement of the release of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, as I hoped it’d make for some interesting ‘find out for yourself’ collaborative Web 2.0 work for the kids as part of our up coming ‘Space’ topic.
Alas, Websense feels it is unsafe to allow such programs (and Google Earth, Stellarium etc) to be used in the education of children. This piece of software is slowly crushing my enthusiasm for incorporating ICT into my teaching.
[I had to laugh when I saw Websense's corporate website - where they are selling themselves as 'Integrated Security for the Web 2.0 world]
Andrew Brown made an interesting observation on his blog regarding filtering - www.whereisab.co.uk
I wish there were some trust in the professionalism of teachers, rather than a blanket ban on everything until its proven to be’safe’. In the meantime, I’m thinking of abandoning any attempt at using ICT and going back to chalk.
May 17th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
[...] Drew writes: I was quite excited by the announcement of the release of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, as I hoped it’d make for some interesting ‘find out for yourself’ collaborative Web 2.0 work for the kids as part of our up coming ‘Space’ topic. [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Don’t give up the ICT Drew - chalk can’t be good for your hands, surely?