Group items tagged

" Generations are different, and for digital natives, what looks like wasting time may actually be doing research or something else productive."

"Like a lot of children, my sons, Toby, 7, and Anton, 4, are obsessed with robots. In the children's books they devour at bedtime, happy, helpful robots pop up more often than even dragons or dinosaurs. The other day I asked Toby why children like robots so much. "Because they work for you," he said. What I didn't have the heart to tell him is, someday he might work for them - or, I fear, might not work at all, because of them. It is not just Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking who are freaking out about the rise of invincible machines. Yes, robots have the potential to outsmart us and destroy the human race. But first, artificial intelligence could make countless professions obsolete by the time my sons reach their 20s."

"Google has now given us an option to set search and location data to automatically disappear after a certain time. We should all use it."

"WINTER GARDEN, Fla. - On the wall of a classroom that is home to the West Orange High School TikTok club, large loopy words are scrawled across a whiteboard: "Wanna be TikTok famous? Join TikTok club." It's working. "There's a lot of TikTok-famous kids at our school," said Amanda DiCastro, who is 14 and a freshman. "Probably 20 people have gotten famous off random things." The school is on a quiet palm-tree-lined street in a town just outside Orlando. A hallway by the principal's office is busy with blue plaques honoring the school's A.P. Scholars. Its choir director, Jeffery Redding, won the 2019 Grammy Music Educator Award. Amanda was referring to a different kind of stardom: on TikTok, a social media app where users post short funny videos, usually set to music, that is enjoying a surge in popularity among teenagers around the world and has been downloaded 1.4 billion times, according to SensorTower. "

"Social media storytelling tool Storify finally untethered itself from the desktop on Wednesday with the launch of a free iPad app. Like the web-based version of Storify, which has been used by news organizations such as the New York Times and Al Jazeera, the app makes it easy to scroll through and assemble Tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook photos and Instagram photos in a social media timeline. Its drag-and-drop interface translates perfectly to the iPad."

"On one particular day, I began to question my rationale behind all of this print media I was accumulating. Media that - in a matter of days - would get tossed in the recycling bin. "Why," I asked myself, "was I reading all of this print media when I have an iPad? Isn't print media supposed to be on its deathbed? Why was I sticking with a format that will soon depart this life?" Adding fuel to this query, I have more than two dozen news-related apps on my iPad - from the New York Times to Flipboard. Some of them are spectacularly well-designed. Yet, I was rarely using them. Why?"

"So how should educators handle the death of a student's loved one? A new website - GrievingStudents.org - is trying to help teachers and school leaders answer that question. It's a database of fact sheets, advice and videos. The materials were produced by the Coalition to Support Grieving Students, a group including 10 national organizations that represent teachers, school administrators and support staff. Using census data, the group estimates that 1 in 20 children will lose a parent by the time he or she graduates from high school. And that doesn't include the many more kids who will lose a sibling, grandparent or close friend. Grief is a fact of life in our nation's schools; 7 out of 10 teachers have a student currently in their classroom who is grieving, according to research by the New York Life Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers."

"While the original layout for the app was quite straight-forward, Snapchat has now evolved into a jack of all trades. The app offers direct communication like texting, calling, video messaging, and more with friends and family in a one-on-one messenger style, lets people record and post their videos and photos to their Snapchat Story that last 24-hours while giving people the option to save their Snapchat Stories to their camera roll, and delivers current news and information from credible sources and entertainment sites like IGN, The Economist, Refinery29, Mashable, Harper's Bazaar, VICE, National Geographic, CNN, The New York Times, and so, so much more."

"Educators, policy makers and business leaders often fret about the state of math education, particularly in comparison with other countries. But reading comprehension may be a larger stumbling block, writes Motoko Rich in an important article in today's New York Times: "

"How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services - and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself."

Finch makes slow Internet bearable, by stripping away the fat of web pages, leaving just the content. It takes out CSS, images, flash, metadata, iframes, purple mongooses (mongeese?) and more, meaning less for your computer to load. For example, the New York Times homepage is over 110KB, and uses external resources (images, scripts, what have you) that make it amount to about 1.4MB. Finch trims that down to 84KB, which doesn't look as pretty, but is 94% less for your computer to download.

"Introducing: the first search engine that can find podcasts according to the words spoken during them!" New York Times, July 27, 2005

The keyword is infographics.  This is a round up article from the New York Times.  It will lead you to a series of resources that provide a basic understanding of the field.  Follow the work of Hans Rosling if you want to see a master at work..

"Google receives between 2.5 and 3.5 million job applications a year. It only hires about 4,000 people. Senior vice president of People Operations, Laszlo Bock presides over the ultra-selective process. In interviews with The New York Times, the Economist, and students on Google+, the hiring boss sheds light on how the search giant evaluates candidates. We sifted through those interviews for the most surprising takeaways. Find them below."

"The Irish Times has a good, short piece on The Moth, the not-for-profit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. The Moth started in George Dawes Green's living room in 1997, but soon the storytelling club founded by Green started hosting events in cafes and clubs throughout New York City. The name "The Moth" came from the idea that people are attracted to stories the way moths are attracted to a flame. From The Moth website: "Each show starts with a theme, and the storytellers explore it, often in unexpected ways. Since each story is true and every voice authentic, the shows dance between documentary and theater, creating a unique, intimate, and often enlightening experience for the audience." The storytellers are usually novice storytellers who have something interesting to share. Yet, The Moth directors work with the speakers before each show to help them find their stories and shape them. The focus is on meaning and quality but also on naturalness and authenticity, therefore, no notes or scripts are allowed. "