Mac20Q Podcast 119 Featuring Bob Middleton

Two old geezers talking tech

Well that was the way that Bob from Japan described it and I had to say “Hang on a minute mate, less of the old!” Well, maybe I do have a few years under my belt, but in my head I’m still a teenager. It seems that at my age it is easy to be amazed that the kids are not impressed by technology. On account of the fact that when I was a teenager if I wanted to make a phone call I would have to go out of the house walk a couple of hundred metres to a red telephone box. I would have to put ten pence pieces into the phone box and the call would be limited by how far away I wanted to call. It really feels like I’m living in the future. Like today when I was able to chat to my brother on a video chat using FaceTime. I was able to see my brother’s granddaughter jumping up and down and being completely hyper on account of her being excited by Christmas. Technology is brilliant!

Photo Bob Middleton Mac20Q

The Graffle at Christmas

Bob likes to use the application called Omnigraffle by the Omni group for making flashcards to use in Japanese classrooms teaching kids English. We also talked about various applications from the drawing and painting applications. The apps you can use on the iOS and Mac computers to do animation were also mentioned. Naturally, with Bob being in Japan we had to mention the drawing application called Manga Studio. We also chatted about the stop motion software that you can get called iStopMotion. I have to admit that I do own that software, but as yet I have not managed to create any movies with plasticine figures moving around the place. I believe it is possible to use the application using the camera on one device while controlling it from another. This makes it possible to leave the camera fixed in position which is necessary for good quality animation using iStopMotion.

Last weeks Mac20Q podcast

The iPad in Education

There is a guy in Scotland in a school called Cedars School by the name of Fraser Spiers who is in charge of the technology used. The pupils at the school are incredibly lucky to have an iPad at each with which to do their schoolwork. Bob tells me that they have recently got 12 iPads in the classroom of the Japanese school and the children have to share. It is funny because I imagined that a Japanese school would have lots of technology. Yet at the same time it is not surprising that they don’t, because the Japanese also have a big thing about tradition. Maybe it has been the case that the tradition was to use Windows computers at the school, because that is the way it is. Bob Middleton is able to get around this to a certain extent by taking his own Apple MacBook into school. Bob also uses an iPhone.