Friday Fragments

Once again thanks to Ms. 4444's for hosting the Friday Fragments hop!

• Just finished entering in grades.  What a crazy time that was.  Being the geek I am, I just calculated that I graded 1,020 pages in the past 72 hours. I need some sleep and some stress relief.
• On a happy note, this term has the highest GPAs for all of my classes over the past six years.  I do not know if I was nicer this term or the kids are just getting smarter.  
• I actually think it is a combination of two things, I am getting better at teaching the material and the students are getting smarter as the College becomes increasingly popular.
• My parents arrived yesterday.  Happy to report grand parents and kids are already playing nicely together.
• Erik, will you please finish teething so we can all get some sleep?
• Geeky joke of the week is a one liner - "There are only 10 types of people in the world: those that understand binary and those that don't"
• While I am at it, the word of the week is: abrade - as in what you have to do to me to get me off the floor at the moment.
• This was a cute scene from earlier this week...

One of the weekly features on my blog is Technology & Tourism Thursdays.  Yesterday, was just way too busy to post it properly, so I thought I would tack it on here.

One of the most interesting technology markets at the moment is the one related to gaming systems.  With the expansion and explosion of the tablet market, gaming systems sales have been in trouble.  One of the ares that has really enhanced gaming systems however, is that usage of them as a online streaming system for a TV.    In a report by Forbes magazine, it was found that the Nintendo Wii in particular, was being used as a streaming device 33% of the time versus 55% of the time being used as a gaming device.   The 33% figure in 2011 is up from 20% in 2010. 

The full Forbes story can be found here

In our house,  we use the Wii to stream Netflix onto our TV.  What is really fascinating is that we use the streaming functionality more than we use the gaming.  The Wii in many ways has transformed how leisure time is spent in our household.  What is even more interesting is that we have taken our Wii on vacation with us and hooked it up to hotel TV in order to bring our entertainment system with us.  Now, the question is whether the gaming systems will survive the onslaught of the tablet.  For instance, next year, we will not bring the Wii as we have iPads which are easier to travel with and have much of the same functionality and have thus reduced the need to bring the Wii along.  Perhaps we will find however, that the bouncing around that comes with playing a Wii game is just the perfect way to reduce the energy after a long drive.  That is where the tablet can not compete.  It is amazing how the car trip has evolved with technology.