Customizable bicycle bell

Photo from Mybell Inc.

In my last post I wrote about the Engadget website. In the next few posts I will highlight the top five finalists of the Engadget Insert Coin Competition: "The best of crowd-funded hardware projects."

This link as a video (11:27) of highights of the event:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/engadget-show-47

One of the five finalists is MYBELL, a "digital noisemaker" that is mounted on the handlebars of a bike, and plays customized sound or music (you can upload any MP3 file) at up to 96 dB (loud!). It also has LEDs for nighttime visibility, for which different LED patterns can be chosen.

This article describes the gadget further:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/mybell-hands-on/

The product is said to increase safety for the rider and to "improve the relationship between bikers and drivers" since the sounds chosen can be less obnoxious than air horns.

This 42-second video clip shows how it works:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/mybell-hands-on/

I wasn't sure why this gadget was chosen as a finalist in this competition, since it didn't seem so important to me. But my students thought it was "cool" and liked the idea for their own bicycles. They said the device is simple, inexpensive and effective. So what's wrong with that?

In my next post I will look at another finalist in this competition.

Website for techies

A great source of material for all areas of ESP (particularly areas related to engineering and technology) Engadget is a techology blog that has the format of an online magazine.It describes itself as "a news, reviews and opinion outlet with obsessive coverage of cutting edge gadgets, consumer electronics and the science and technology they're built upon."

http://engadget.com

In addition to English, there are International Editions in German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

The sections of the English edition include News, Reviews, Features, Shows, Forums, and More (which includes "latest videos").

My students found the Reviews section particularly useful, and it covers:

• mobile
• photography
• gaming
• computers
• peripherals
• personal tech
• networking
• storage
• home theater

I had students look at some reviews for cell phones (their choice which ones) and we noted how the positive and negative features were presented, how comparisons were made, and how point of view was expressed. We used these examples as models for student-generated "reviews" of their gadget of choice.

Once students were introduced to this website via this activity, they found plenty of other areas of interest, and are motivated to read further reviews and the news articles on their own.

New Technical English Newsletter

Inch by Inch is a new website that presents two pictorials of labeled pieces of technology, and sends them in a free newsletter each week to subscribers. This is not only useful for teachers of technical English, but a great resource for students in all engineering disciplines.

http://inchbyinch.de

The resource is from Germany, and so focuses on German learners of English (with bilingual translations), but the visuals and vocabulary are useful for learners from any language background. It is particularly useful for lower level learners who will find the visual material very clear.

The first website page has pictorials of the following terms:

• sprinkler head
• escalator / moving stair
• ball bearing
• LED
• scissors
• bolt
• suspension bridge

The description of the resource on the website is:

"Every engineer knows: A picture is worth a thousand words. So, for a learner of technical English two tech pictorials a week would surely equal 2000 technical words, right?

Unfortunately, learning technical English isn't that easy. It's a slow and steady process, but pictures and drawings can certainly make it easier to learn and remember technical terms -- especially for visually oriented learners like us.

That's why we have set up this free newsletter with two tech pictorials per week to improve your knowledge of technical English -- inch by inch."

This is certainly a resource I will recommend to students, and I'll be letting you know in a future blog post how we work with this in and out of the classroom.

What do you know about email?

For most of my students, email has existed their entire lives. So they don't generally think about how it all started. Even though I'm old enough to remember life before email, I wasn't sure how it started, or by whom, or when or where or why.

In fact, the other day a student's question sparked some interesting discussion about email: How do you spell it? A variety of spellings are used in different sources: email, e-mail, Email, E-mail, eMail.

This discussion focused on what we knew about email, and since there were inconsistent answers, this lead us to look into email's history.

Some of the material my students found:

An Infogram on the history of email (both links from Mashable):
http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/email.png
http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/email.png

Similar information in a different format:
http://mashable.com/2012/09/20/evolution-email/

This later version adds the years 2011 and 2012. Students could do the same: each student or each group can find a piece of information about email from 2012 and 2013 (and soon 2014), and then share their choices and vote for the one that will be added to the timeline.

Another timeline:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1167303/timeline_a_brief_history_of_email.html

My students liked discussing the information on the link below, and are currently looking for more "fascinating facts" to add. #6 refers to the different spellings. This also has information about what the @ symbol is called in different languages - interesting imagery! Some of my students didn't know what it is called in English.

10 Fascinating facts about e-mail
http://mashable.com/2011/01/26/e-mail-facts/

How do you spell e-mail?