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Tags > education
Four short links: 23 November 2009 - Scams, Swirl, Crisis, and Coasters
November 23, 2009
Top E-Tailers Profiting From Scams -- Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion generated more than $1.4 billion by "misleading" Web shoppers, said members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. [...] The government says the investigation shows that [the companies] "trick" consumers into entering their e-mail address just before they complete purchases at sites such as Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers, Continental Airlines, Fandango, and Classmates.com. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 30 October 2009 - Three Minute Theses, Google Wave RPGs, Public Metadata, and The Finitely-Zoomable Natural World
October 30, 2009
The3is In Three -- PhD students must explain their thesis topic in three minutes and one Powerpoint slide. Winner had written on the last words of Shakespearean characters as they met unlikely ends. No video alas, but what a great idea for an Ignite! (via sciblogs) Google Wave: We Came, We Saw, We Played D&D (ArsTechnica) -- gamers using Wave to play RPGs. This can't be the killer app, however, because it is not pornographic. (via BoingBoing)
Four short links: 28 October 2009 - Great Mail Feature, Speed Talks, Virtualisation History, Science Literacy
October 28, 2009
GMail Labs: Got The Wrong Bob? -- When's the last time you got an email from a stranger asking, "Are you sure you meant to send this to me?" and promptly realized that you didn't? GMail looks at the clusters of CCs you send and, if you normally send to Bob X but are trying to send it to Bob Y, asks you "did you mean Bob X?". This might be the best thing to happen to email since webmail and full-text search--it's ridiculous how little innovation is happening in email given how widely and heavily it is used. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 23 October 2009 - Beautiful Information, Teen Game Designer, Creative Science Writing, Open Source Schools
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 23, 2009
Information is Beautiful -- gorgeous descriptions of the design of infographics. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 22 October 2009 - Cognitive Surplus, Scaling, Chinese Blogs, CS Education for Growth
October 22, 2009
Isaac Mao, China, 40M Blogs and Counting -- "Today, there are 40 million bloggers in China and around 200 million blogs, according to Mao. Some blogs survive only a few days before being shut down by authorities. More than 80% of people in China don't know that the internet is censored in their country. When riots broke out in Xinjiang province this year, the authorities shut down internet access for the whole region. No one could get online." This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 13 October 2009 - Open Source, Gov 2.0, Gaming, Education
October 13, 2009
Google Replaces TeleAtlas -- Google has decided to go with a new source of data for its U.S. maps: Google's StreetView cars. Tele Atlas will no longer provide U.S. map coverage, but will continue being Google's source of data for non-U.S. based maps. A report about the change speculates that with Google's own data source, map error fixes may happen in as little as 24 hours. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
A More Public Role for Public Broadcasting: Education
October 9, 2009
Imagine a broadcast network in America that was dedicated to education, where the best educators had the opportunity to produce its programming, and where individuals as well as institutions could develop a new genre of wide-ranging educational programs? Educational programming could elevate the role of teaching in our culture and promote the value of lifelong learning. This blog post explores why education is a more important role for public broadcasting in America, a new role that would re-align PBS with its original mission as an educational network.
Happening Today: How To Save Math Education (And A Tiny Piece Of The World Along With It) - Join Us Today @ 10am PT / 1pm ET
October 1, 2009
For everything it does well, the US model of math education conditions students to anticipate narrowly defined problems with narrowly prescribed solutions. This puts them in no place to anticipate the ambiguous, broadly defined, problems they'll need to solve after graduation, as citizens. In this free, live webcast with high school math teacher Dan Meyer, we'll define two contributing factors to this intellectual impatience and then suggest a solution. Attendance is limited for this event, so register now! More Upcoming Webcasts - Meet Experts Online: Virtual Currency in One Hour Architecting Applications for the Cloud Augmented Reality in One Hour Nuclear Energy: Future Directions Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!
Four short links: 30 September 2009 - Smart Materials, Google OCR API, Teaching Webinar, HistEx
September 30, 2009
Smart Materials in Architecture -- Using thermal bimetals can allow architects to experiment with shape-changing buildings, Ritter said. Thermal bimetals include a combination of materials with different expansion coefficients that can cause a change in. Under changing temperatures this can lead one side of a compound to bend more than the other side, potentially creating an entirely different shape, he said. A little impractical at the moment, but think of it as hackers experimenting with what's possible, iterating to find the fit between materials possibility and customer need. (via Liminal Existence)
Four short links: 9 September 2009 - SMS Data Collection, Love of Math, Anti-File Sharing Rubbish, Open Manufacturing
September 9, 2009
RapidSMS -- See how RapidSMS, an open-source framework for "data collection, logistics coordination and communication" is being used in UNICEF sponsored projects to facilitate data gathering in Africa via mobile phones. In Nigeria, workers monitored the supply and distribution of 70 million mosquito nets. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 8 September 2009 - Mobile jQuery, API to Google Book Search, Open Learning, Popularity Algorithms
September 8, 2009
jQTouch -- Want some help developing your mobile app for the iPhone, Android, PalmPre or other device? Check out jQTouch, a plugin for mobile web development that offers a library of pre-built functions. Visit the jQTouch site to get the plugin and explore a demo. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Taking Education into the Digital Information Age
By Sarah SorensenSeptember 2, 2009
In this Digital Information Age, that way is constantly evolving, growing in scope, both in terms of possibilities and challenges. An education represents one of the foundational steps on that path, and as such it arguably plays the single largest role in preparing our children to participate in the global economy.
Four short links: 31 August 2009 - Digital Textbooks Rock, Diagrammed Sentences, Urban Games, Quirky Food
August 31, 2009
CK-12 Textbooks Accepted by State of California -- kudos to open textbook non-profit CK-12 for having many of their textbooks okayed for use in classrooms. Their books did better than those from commercial publishers! (via Slashdot) This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four short links: 10 August 2009 - Propaganda, Computer Science, Web Science, CS History
August 10, 2009
The Propaganda Newspapers -- The London Evening Standard reports that London councils are increasingly providing their own newspapers, masquerading as mass-market popular appeal newspapers but without anything critical of the council that produces it. This is an evolutionary dead-end for reinventing newspapers, and is why the non-profit/trust structure works so well. This and more in today's Four Short Links.
Four roles for publishers: staying relevant when you are no longer a gatekeeper
By Andy OramJune 18, 2009
In many areas of publishing, there are enormous resources of free online material and innumerable forums where individuals can quickly and conveniently post their own observations. Since we are no longer gatekeepers, publishers have to focus on how we add quality.
Getting Involved in Higher Education
By Tom BarkerMay 14, 2009
The single biggest recommendation I can give to developers out in the field, the one thing that they can do that will impact their career and personal growth, is to get involved in higher education by teaching. The benefits are so many, so far reaching, and so distributed that I felt they would make a great topic for discussion.
Hackers wanted! Scholarships available to coders who'll come to journalism and help save democracy
May 8, 2009
It's not news that journalism is in crisis. CNN turned newspapers into first-day fishwrap and Craigslist killed the business model. Solutions are scarce, and our democracy is at risk. I don't have a chart to guide our way through the darkness to Citizenry 2.0, but there are some who can navigate the singularity. Journalism needs great hackers. Not just nerds, but programmers who care -- about the values of journalism and the power of a free press to hold government accountable.
Challenges from a book sprint: the great things about ignorance and disorder
By Andy OramMarch 24, 2009
I tried to write a conventional computer manual in two days, and the experience has made me reconsider the conventions of computer manuals. The computer field is still in the kindergarten stage of exploring serious questions of how people learn, questions at the center of psychology and pedagogy for many decades. Even those disciplines don't quite get it, because they're fumbling with the instant messaging culture that gives us so many more tools today for learning together.
As the Internet Rewires Our Brains
By Kurt CagleMarch 1, 2009
The Internet, ironically, has been abuzz this week with dire news about how the Social Media and the Internet itself is stunting our mental growth, is turning us into idiot savants, Aspergers and reverting our brains to a more primitive state. The first such statement came from Lady Greenfield, an Oxford University neurologist, baroness, and director of the Royal Institution in England, who warned that sites such as Facebook and Twitter were contributing to the decline of critical skills in children who used them heavily, claiming that repeated exposure could effectively rewire the brain.
The Intersection of Algebra and Technology
February 16, 2009
There's been a lot of talk about the role of technology in education recently. In part, because the economic stimulus plan has various provisions ($650 Million for Enhancing Education through Technology) that deal with it, and in part because it has been a fairly constant issue in education since the technology was created. So first, define technology. From the perspective of the classroom, technology can mean calculators, iPods, cell phones, Active Boards, computers, the internet, and on and on.
Creative Commons needs your donations
December 15, 2008
Creative Commons is more dependent than ever before on the funds of individuals. More and more people these days are grabbing pictures, text, and other random goods they find online and using them in their own presentations or creative efforts; some of us even build businesses on open contributions. All of us should be promoting the Creative Commons, which has provided licenses to support such sharing in 50 countries and is working with people in many more.
Practice, Play and Computers
By Kurt CagleDecember 11, 2008
Back channel communications at O'Reilly can be fun. Lately, we've had a running thread about the role of practice and play in learning, and how that impacts the educational process (and the educational industry, which are not even remotely the same thing).
Knight Foundation Scholarship: Bringing Developers to the Newsroom
December 7, 2008
Rich Gordon, Associate Professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, discusses the Knight Foundation Scholarship for working developers to attend a one-year Master's program in Journalism. Gordon discusses the current trends in news and technology, and how developers will play an important role in the continued evolution of "news".
Education of software project members: New API posted
By Andy OramDecember 7, 2008
Over the past month I've made a few significant updates to my API for educating software project members.
Incredible images of the Sun
October 15, 2008
The Boston Globe has assembled a beautiful gallery of images of the Sun. This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so that the blast...
DonorsChoose Giving Campaign Technology & Learning
October 2, 2008
DonorsChoose is having their annual Blogger Challenge. O'Reilly's blog network hat is in the Technology Blog category along with Fred Wilson, AllThingsD, BoingBoing and Techcrunch. Let's see whose readers will bring more donations in. Donate here. I personally just donated to help a kindergarten class get WiFi. We've selected other technology-oriented requests for us to assist. Join me in...
Born Digital: A review for the moment
By Andy OramSeptember 10, 2008
Born Digital postulates a watershed between those born on or before 1980 and those born after. Although the book is advertised as a guide to the latter for those born earlier, I suspect that the marketing became unmoored from the authorship. That's because the book's arguments culminate in the message that its lessons need to be learned by "digital natives" most of all, and that they are the ones best positioned to alleviate the social dislocations caused by digital media and the Internet.
Proposed API for tools to help educate computer users online
By Andy OramAugust 14, 2008
For several years I have recommended improvements to the tools that software projects use to answer technical questions and provide documentation, such as wikis and mailing lists. My latest contribution is a draft of an API that could be implemented in tools such as IDEs and content management systems.
RIP: Randy Pausch - Known for the Alice Project and the Last Lecture
By Todd OgasawaraJuly 25, 2008
Randy Pausch, PhD, best known the Alice 3D programming environment for kids (of all ages) and The Last Lecture passed away earlier today.
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