The Howard Legacy :

Australian's international competitiveness is under threat because up to eight million Australian workers don't have the reading, writing or numeracy skills to undertake training for trade or professional jobs.

The nation's 11 Industry Skills Councils will today call for a new campaign to tackle endemic numbers of workers with poor reading and writing skills, launching a report detailing the problems being faced by industry training bodies.

And :

"International studies have shown that over the past two decades, Australia's literacy and numeracy skill levels have stagnated while those of other countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, have improved.

More :

Mr Taylor said industry had been complaining about the poor quality of literacy and numeracy among school leavers looking to enter the trades for more than 10 years and there had been no improvement.

Prime Minister John Howard left Australia as a nation of coal diggers and fruit pickers, where sports stars are valued more highly than scientists and buying a home is more important than a sound education.

RoboPessimism : First Use Of The Word Robot Involved Robots Wiping Out Humanity

A simple but visually compelling, fact-rich example of a modern graphic educational tool. You are more likely to remember distinct facts from this, than from wadding through a 1200 word text book entry.

From OnlineSchools via @rod3000.


Via: Online Schools

Let the historians of the future take note, former police commissioner Mick Keelty tried to warn us of the coming robotic criminal underground when we still had time to do something about it. Did we listen? No, we did not :

Technology such as cloned part-robot humans used by organised crime gangs pose the greatest future challenge to police....

Mr Keelty said the police force would have to use experts from the private sector to fight tech-savvy organised criminals, because it lacked the necessary skills.

...he identified the use of robotics and cloning as future challenges.

"Our environmental scanning tells us that even with some of the cloning of human beings - not necessarily in Australia but in those countries that are going to allow it - you could have potentially a cloned part-person, part-robot," he said.

"You could (also) have technology acting at the direction of a human being, but the human being being distanced considerably from the actual crime scene."

It's only a matter of time before a bank robber gets shot and bleeds blood and battery acid.

Fortunately, Australians are already being trained in how to deal with hordes of RoboBarbarians On Segways :

Kevin Rudd's promise to provide access to a laptop for all primary school students in Australia would have made Australia the first country in the world to do so.

But Uruguay got there first, and went one better :

Uruguay has become the first country to provide a laptop for every child attending state primary school.

President Tabaré Vázquez presented the final XO model laptops to pupils at a school in Montevideo on 13 October.

Over the last two years 362,000 pupils and 18,000 teachers have been involved in the scheme.

The "Plan Ceibal" (Education Connect) project has allowed many families access to the world of computers and the internet for the first time.

Now that's an education revolution. And no Windows for these laptops. Free and easy Linux instead.