The Segway（平衡车）was invented by Dean Kamen, and was first shown to the public in 2001 by ABC’s Good Morning America program. 【小题1】 The word Segway is remarkably close to the word ” segue” which means “to move smoothly from one thing to another”

The Segway looks like a large stick with two wheels. The wheels are connected to a platform. The stick has handles for a person to hold. The person stands on the platform and holds the handles. The transporter moves forward or backward when the person moves his or her body in that direction. 【小题2】 Computers and certain devices on the Segway make the vehicle move and balance. It is powered by batteries that can be recharged. It can travel at a speed of 20 kilometers an hour.

【小题3】 Today these vehicles are used to take people on tours in parks .The Angel Island in San Francisco uses the Segway to take people around. The Segway was also used by the police at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

However, the vehicle has not found acceptance from the general public. 【小题4】A review of the history of the Segway will show that some people are still uncomfortable about riding a two –wheeled self-balancing vehicle. Another reason is that the US has different regulations on the roads and streets where the Segway can be used. Most states recommend that a helmet be worn when riding this vehicle.

【小题5】 While its usage may be limited for now, there is still no telling what it will be used for in the coming year.

Mr. Guo is a teacher from Xi’an．He asked his students to hand in their homework through a QR code (二维码)．“We spent an hour or two in class learning how to generate (使产生) the codes, and in the end everything gets easier.” Said Guo, “When students finish the homework, they keep it on WeChat．Then, each student makes his own QR code and gives it to me．So I can check their work anywhere using my computer or telephone.”

The QR codes can be sent to Mr. Guo by email, QQ and WeChat． When Guo scans his students’ QR codes, their homework appears on his phone．He finds that their homework becomes more creative, with many pictures, music and even videos．

Guo’s students like the new way and think it is interesting．“We are living in the information age．Many students like to work with computers, which makes learning more fun.” said Tingting, a student of Guo’s．

“The paper is not easy to keep, but the code is easy to keep and share.” Guo said, “It is worth trying to use new technology in education．Education itself is a kind of creation．I don’t want my students to fall behind the times.”

However, some parents are worried ． They are afraid that their children will spend too much time surfing the Internet and less time communicating with teachers ． But in fact, it’s unnecessary ． Students still need to look up information in books and write it down when they do their homework．They only use the codes when they hand in their work, which doesn’t take them too much time． Also for teachers, it allows them to check the students’ work at any time．And it’s also an easy way to share homework with other students．

The computer mouse is familiar to everyone because it is a most useful device used by people to communicate with a desktop computer. It gave way to the touch pad（触摸板）for laptops but some people still use it for their laptops.

The man who invented the computer mouse, Douglas Engelbart died at home on July 2, 2013.Engelbart’s daughter Christina notified his death to the state’s Computer History Museum in an email. She said that her father had kidney failure and died peacefully on Tuesday night in his sleep.

Engelbart developed the mouse in the 1960s—a wooden shell covering two meal wheels, obtaining a patent for it long before the mouse’s widespread use.

Engelbart was born on January 30, 1925 in Portland, Oregon, to a radio repairman father and a housewife mother. He was working in a government aerospace laboratory in California when he had the vision of the computer mouse.

When he started working, the computer was at the infant stage and was a big machine that required huge amounts of time to process data. But Engelbart had already imagined the future of the computer and related technology. He was ahead of many scientists working on the same technology.

After the Vietnam War he started working on the interactive computer at an experimental research group at Stanford Research Institute, which had the financial backing of the Air Force, NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the Defense Department.

In 1968at a conference, he demonstrated a working model of a mouse, computer and keyboard that was used to share data on network. He demonstrated text editing, video conferencing and hypertext. His idea of computer network was the base and first step towards ARPANET.

He never made money with the invention of the mouse as his patent was till 1987 and the mouse came into wide use after the 1980s when Steve Jobs of Apple bought one button mouse. Apple never paid any money to Engelbart.