• ProSpanish has a couple of free lessons, which act as a great introduction to the very basics.
• SpanishDict has about 25 video lessons available. These are good, if you can stand the horrible American accent of la profesora!! And there are some interactive activities after each lesson.
• BBC Spanish Steps complements the above nicely, with some good practice for listening.
• LiveMocha is a fascinating website combining language learning with social networking. After completing some interactive learning exercises, you are tested on writing (answering a short essay question) and speaking (recording into the microphone). The magic part is that your work is then handed off to a native Spanish speaker (another community member, who might, for example, be using the site to learn English), who provides feedback and corrections.
• NotesInSpanish is a useful podcast to complement the above, which we listen to in the car.
• I bought the book “Spanish Verb Tenses” by D. Richmond. Very useful, it’s a textbook which includes many exercises that drill the verb conjugations into your head.
• I also had a few private lessons at my house before leaving.

My internship at OLPC continues to be very enjoyable; we’re making inroads all over the world, and we’re working on communicating our successes more effectively. Big things are happening. My internship ends in a month’s time, and I’ll be leaving the US soon after.

I’m applying for a business/management masters to continue my studies in September 2009. This leaves a gap of 11 months to fill. I’m working on finding opportunities to spend that time assisting OLPC deployments around the world.

All that plus a small business venture is keeping me very busy.

The learning lab is staffed by some key people, including David Cavallo from the MIT Media Lab and Cynthia Solomon, one of the original founders of Logo. These people have years of experience working alongside top scientists such as Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert.

Last week, David Cavallo gave an enjoyable presentation about the education model behind the efforts of learning group. He shared some experiences from around the world and started a discussion on how to better integrate such ideals into the XO laptop and its software. The session has been published on dailymotion – if you’ve got an hour to kill, I’d definitely recommend watching it.

Today was my first day of a 14 week internship at One Laptop per Child, an exciting company producing cool laptops to distribute to children in developing nations with the aim of improving education. I’m going to be working on aspects of the XO software, starting by helping the efforts to upgrade to Fedora 9 for the v8.2.0 August release.

OLPC is based in Cambridge, MA, USA, and this is my 2nd time in this area. I’m living in Brookline until September, and then will need to find somewhere else to live for a month.

My plans for after the summer are uncertain. I’m thinking about hunting for some work in Europe somewhere, I might write more about that nearer the time.

I am looking to rent a furnished bedroom in a location with access to public transport (I’ll need to get to and from Kendall/MIT each day).

If anyone knows of anything, please let me know.

Dreaming is similar to their 2006 debut album Someone to watch over me – a mix of well-known songs with some classical tracks too, all uniquely arranged for the quartet.

Buy it from HMV or Amazon.

Track list

1. Grieg’s Nocturne
2. Moon River
3. Dream a Little Dream
4. Somewhere Over the Rainbow
5. When You Wish Upon a Star
6. Schumann’s Traumerei
7. Gershwin’s Lullaby
8. Elgar’s Lullaby
9. Moonlight Sonata
10. Forgotten Dreams
11. Fly Me To the Moon
12. Clair de Lune
13. New World Symphony

The game kept track of my high scores in terms of both the number of countries I got right/wrong, and also the time it took me to identify them all. I played this repeatedly, trying to beat my own records. I learned a lot about European geography this way, and it was fun. It’s similar to this online game except the game I’m thinking of had metrics to keep track of your performance and highlighted the right answer whenever you clicked on the wrong country.

This is a great example of hard fun, one of the principles of educational constructionism behind the OLPC project. As such, I’m considering writing a clone of the game for the XO laptop.

I’d love to dig out the old DOS game again, but I can’t remember what it was called! Does anyone else know of its name, or have any recollection of this game?

Formal testing is a big thing at the moment, so I spent some time helping out testing the upcoming release branches. I also sneaked in a few bug fixes here and there, and managed to solve some irritating interface quirks.

This was my first interaction with the laptops, and I must say, those little XO machines are incredible. I’m overly impressed on all accounts, especially with the vast level of improvement of the currently-being-finished Update.1 software release over the current stable Ship2 release. There are a number of great people there, from an interesting variety of origins – mirroring the multicultural aims of the organisation, I suppose. Many thanks to those who helped me fit in and get started.

The first, titled “A Christmas Collection”, is a collection of Christmas carols uniquely arranged for the quartet by Carlo Martelli. At £6.99, it makes for an ideal Christmas gift and £1 of each sale goes to the Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity. Buy from Amazon or hmv.com.

Track list

1. Silent Night
2. Away In A Manger
3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
4. Angels From The Realms
5. Christmas Medley
6. Vaughan William’s Carol
7. The Shepherd’s Farewell
8. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
9. Sleigh Ride
10. O Little Town Of Bethlehem
11. Once In Royal David’s City
12. Suite From The Snowman

The second album release of today features performances of two classical quartets composed by Bax and Elgar. It is released in celebration of Elgar’s anniversary. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk or HMV.

Track list

1. String Quartet No 1 In G (Bax)
2. String Quartet In E Minor Op 83 (Elgar)