endnotes
Chalkface Where it all began
Sad news that Steve Rayson has decided to step down as managing director of City & Guilds Kineo. In his charming personal statement announcing his decision he noted that “From a start-up company behind the Dorset pub in Brighton we are now a £20m global company with offices from Chicago to Melbourne.” It was nice the pub got a mention – indeed, it is described as “literally, at the heart of all things Brighton for nearly 200 years”. So did the work take place in an office behind the pub or actually in it?
Spanish ranked as the most popular to learn (25%) while Turkish was the least popular to learn (1%). Which seems a bit harsh. The most annoying habit of Brits abroad, says the survey, is speaking in English slowly and loudly (41%), followed by shouting in English (39%). Perhaps it is significant that the app is called Busuu. This is the native language of Cameroon where, according to an ethnological study from the 1980s, Busuu is spoken by only eight people. And eight is probably the amount of words most of us know in any language other than English. Mea culpa, eh?
Final triumph almost After the excitement – not – of England’s World Cup performance in Brazil in the summer, Chalkface was heartened to learn that all was not lost. The University of Hertfordshire was about to restore national pride by winning the 2014 RoboCup robotics world championship – which took place in João Pessoa, Brazil, 19–24 July 2014. The concept behind these competitions is
Alien thoughts
Supercharge supercharge
As most of us stagger back from our hols, we should all be grateful to some research from a language app that revealed how half of Brits believe learning a language could raise their cultural awareness (52%), and a third think it could advance their career prospects (29%).
to provide a uniform and comparable test-bed for progress in robotic research. Robot teams from around the world, including the US, Japan, China, Germany as well as the UK, take part in the RoboCup competition which hosts a series of tournaments in various robotic disciplines, the most prominent of them being football. Teams use state-of-the-art artificial intelligence with the aim that by 2050 a team of robots will be able to take on and beat the best human players – to be the world champions. It is probably the best chance England has. The good news is Hertfordshire’s
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robots – called Bold Hearts – made it through to the final. The bad news is they lost 3-2 to Japan. Next time, guys…
Not IRL
Sad moments in The Archers, the BBC Radio 4 soap. You don’t need the details but there was a bit of a to do when – as happens in soaps – someone did a favour for somebody that went horribly wrong. The harvest was delayed after a combine harvester was badly damaged by Ed Grundy, who volunteered to drive it after a no show by the regular operator. In the row that inevitably followed, it turned out that willing volunteer Ed had only actually driven that particular model on a simulator and not IRL. We keep telling each other that games are the way ahead for learning so it is a tad disappointing that the BBC chose to undermine this concept with this negative story line. Still, if you want to go further than just listening to The Archers – and who wouldn’t? – Chalkface understands Farming Simulator 2013 is very good for us townies who fancy the chance of running a farm.
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