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Holly Barlaam

Measuring Hell - 25 views

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    An interesting article about Galileo measuring hell (Galileo's lectures on the Inferno). Could be some ideas gleaned here for cross-curricular project of some sort? Thinking specifically about English and Physics.
anonymous

Fresh Hell What's behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers? - 36 views

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    "Fresh Hell What's behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers?"
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    a few months old...still a great reminder!
Christopher Lee

Why I Like Prezi - 0 views

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    Why I Like Prezi In my life, I have given a *lot* of presentations. In high school, they were presentations on group projects. In university, they were presentations on research projects. At Google, they're presentations on how to use our APIs. When I first started giving presentations, I used Powerpoint, like everyone else. But I kept thinking there must be a better way, and I experimented with other options - flash interfaces, interactive Javascript apps. Then I discovered Prezi, and it has become my presentation tool of choice. Prezi is an online tool for creating presentations - but it's not just a Powerpoint clone, like the Zoho or Google offering. When you first create a Prezi, you're greeted with a blank canvas and a small toolbox. You can write text, insert images, and draw arrows. You can draw frames (visible or hidden) around bits of content, and then you can define a path from one frame to the next frame. That path is your presentation. It's like being able to draw your thoughts on a whiteboard, and then instructing a camera where to go and what to zoom into. It's a simple idea, but I love it. Here's why: It forces me to "shape" my presentation. A slide deck is always linear in form, with no obvious structure of ideas inside of it. Each of my Prezis has a structure, and each structure is different. The structure is visual, but it supports a conceptual structure. One structure might be 3 main ideas, with rows of ideas for each one. Another might be 1 main idea, with a circular branching of subideas. Having a structure helps me to have more of a point to my presentations, and to realize the core ideas of them. It makes it easy to go from brainstorming stage to presentation stage, all in the same tool. I can write a bunch of thoughts, insert some images, and easily move them around, cluster them, re-order them, etc. I can figure out the structure of my presentation by looking at what I have laid out, and seeing how they fit together. Some people do this
Roland Gesthuizen

for the love of learning: Here is what Education Hell looks like - 17 views

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    "Chicago is getting ready for a standardized test called the ISAT. Here's a 1 minute video of an Inservice session to help teachers prep for "The Vocabulary Matrix"."
Steve Kelly

What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include? -... - 48 views

  • What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include?
  • This isn't a complete answer, but one thing the very first introductory classes should require is that the students turn off all their electronic computers and actually learn to walk through  algorithms with a computer that exists only on paper. (Or, I suppose, a whiteboard or a simulator.) This exercise would give the students a grounding in what is going on inside the computer as a very low level.My first computer programming class in my Freshman year of high school was completely on paper. Although it was done because the school didn't have much money, it turned out to be very beneficial.Another class I had in high school, that wouldn't normally be lumped into a Computer Science curriculum but has been a boon to my career, was good old Typing 101.
  • If you followed the CS Unplugged curriculum your students would know more about CS than most CS grads:http://csunplugged.orgIt's a really great intro to basic computer science concepts and very easy for students to understand.  Best of all you don't even need a computer per student if your school doesn't have the budget,
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  • For younger students, I think that the ability to make something professional-looking, like a real grown-up would, is paramount.  Sadly, I think this means that LOGO and BASIC aren't much use any more*.
  • So, we have a few choices.  You can try to write phone apps that look just like real phone apps, design interactive websites that look just like real interactive websites, or do something with embedded systems / robotics.  Avoid the temptation to make these things into group projects; the main thing every student needs to experience is the process of writing code, running it, debugging it, and watching the machine react to every command.
  • It is important to consider what an 11 to 18-year old is familiar with in terms of mathematics and logical thinking. An average 11-year old is probably learning about fractions, simple cartesian geometry, the concept of units, and mathematical expressions. By 15, the average student will be taking algebra, and hopefully will have the all-important concept of variables under his/her belt. So much in CS is dependent on solid understanding that symbols and tokens can represent abstract concepts, values, or algorithms. Without it, it's still possible to teach CS, but it must be done in a very different way (see Scratch).
  • At this point, concepts such as variables, parenthesis matching, and functions (of the mathematical variety) are within easy reach. Concepts like parameter passing, strings and collections, and program flow should be teachable. More advanced concepts such as recursion, references and pointers, certain data structures, and big-O may be very difficult to teach without first going through some more foundational math.
  • I tend to agree strongly with those that believe a foundational education should inspire interest and enforce concepts and critical thinking over teaching any specific language, framework, system, or dogma.
  • The key is that the concepts in CS aren't just there for the hell of it. Everything was motivated by a real problem, and few things are more satisfying than fixing something you really want to work with a cool technique or concept you just learned.
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    Great resource for teachers (especially those of us not initially trained in Computer Science) about what should 'count' as Computer Science.  Worth the read!
Scott Walters

On Campus, Vampires Are Besting the Beats - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • Here we have a generation of young adults away from home for the first time, free to enjoy the most experimental period of their lives, yet they're choosing books like 13-year-old girls -- or their parents. The only specter haunting the groves of American academe seems to be suburban contentment.
  • two-thirds of freshmen identify themselves as "middle of the road" or "conservative." Such people aren't likely to stay up late at night arguing about Mary Daly's "Gyn/Ecology" or even Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
  • "I have stood before classes," he tells me, "and seen the students snicker when I said that Melville died poor because he couldn't sell books. 'Then why are we reading him if he wasn't popular?' "
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  • a notable uptick in superficiality and a notable uptick in the anesthetizing of that native curiosity that was once a prominent feature of the adolescent mind."
  • maybe young people's reading choices reflect our desire to keep them young
  • "People don't necessarily read their politics nowadays. They get it through YouTube and blogs and social networks. I don't know that there is a fiction writer out there right now who speaks to this generation's political ambitions. We're still waiting for our Kerouac."
  • "Don't trust anyone over 140 characters."
Ed Webb

Websites 'must be saved for history' | Technology | The Observer - 0 views

  • while the Domesday Book, written on sheepskin in 1086, is still easily accessible, the software for many decade-old computer files - including thousands of government records - already renders them unreadable. The ephemera of emails, text messages and online video add to the headache of the 21st-century archivist.
  • personal digital disorder
  • In 2007 the library worked with Microsoft and the National Archives at Kew to prevent a "digital dark age" by unlocking millions of unreadable stored computer files. Microsoft installed the Virtual PC 2007, allowing users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same computer and unlock what are called "legacy" Microsoft Office formats dating back 15 years or more.
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  • Do we want to keep the Twitter account of Stephen Fry or some of the marginalia around the edges of the Sydney Olympics? I don't think we necessarily do."
    • Ed Webb
       
      Hell yes!
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    Something to ponder as we rely increasingly on the web for information and for publishing.
Uche Amaechi

The Internet has not transformed civic engagement... yet - Ars Technica - 0 views

  • If there is any subject that optimists and pessimists love to bang heads over, it's the Internet. To follow the experts, we're either on the cyber-road to utopia or going to alt-hell in an iPhone app handbasket, depending on what day of the week it is.
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    Ars Technica's take on the grand question of our time
maureen greenbaum

Edu-Traitor! Confessions of a Prof Who Believes Higher Ed Isn't the Only Goal | HASTAC - 52 views

  • many brilliant, talented young people are dropping out of high school because they see high school as implicilty "college prep" and they cannot imagine anything more dreary than spending four more years bored in a classroom when they could be out actually experiencing and perfecting their skills in the trades, the skills, and the careers that inspire them.
  • The abolishing of art, music, physical education, tech training, and shop from grade schools and high schools means that the requirement for excellence has shrunk more and more right at the time when creativity, imagination, dexterity, adaptability to change, technical know-how, and all the rest require more not less diversity. 
    • Peg Mahon
       
      AMEN!
  • we make education hell for so many kids, we undermine their skills and their knowledge, we underscore their resentment, we emphasize class division and hierarchy, and we shortchange their future and ours,
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  • There are so many viable and important and skilled professions that cannot be outsourced to either an exploitative Third World sweat shop or to a computer, that require face-to-face presence, and a bucketload of skills--but that  do not require a college education:  the full range of IT workers, web designers, body workers (ie deep tissue massage), yoga and pilates instructors, fitness educators, DJ's, hair dressers, retail workers, food industry professionals, entertainers,  entertainment industry professionals, construction workers, dancers, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, landscapers, nanny's, elder-care professionals, nurses's aids, dog trainers, cosmetologists, athletes, sales people, fashion designers, novelists, poets, furniture makers, book keepers, sound engineers, inn keepers, wedding planners, stylists, photographers, auto mechanics, and on and on.  
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    Cathy Davidson
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    In general, I agree. However, novelists and poets don't need college?? And perhaps less so to artists and musicians? Perhaps... but what better way to learn the history and analysis of their Art, in order to place their own work in context?
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    I could not agree more with you Maureen. As a long time middle school teacher in Oakland and Mpls I am thoroughly convinced that our nation and our states are nuts to have cut all of the tech and arts classes out of elementary, middle and high schools. EVERY student should learn a trade/skill set in high school. The hs drop out rate is horrifying and no surprise that the crime rate follows. We have a nation of under achieving teens because the adults have not kept up with funding the myriad of opportunities that would capture and harness their interests and creativity. I look forward to reading your book Maureen and to following you on here.
Justin Medved

The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media... - 24 views

  • Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.
  • To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.
  • But what Demand has realized is that the Internet gets only half of the simplest economic formula right: It has the supply part down but ignores demand. Give a million monkeys a million WordPress accounts and you still might never get a seven-point tutorial on how to keep wasps away from a swimming pool. Yet that’s what people want to know.
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  • That’s not to say there isn’t any room for humans in Demand’s process. They just aren’t worth very much. First, a crowdsourced team of freelance “title proofers” turn the algorithm’s often awkward or nonsensical phrases into something people will understand: “How to make a church-pew breakfast nook,” for example, becomes “How to make a breakfast nook out of a church pew.” Approved headlines get fed into a password-protected section of Demand’s Web site called Demand Studios, where any Demand freelancer can see what jobs are available. It’s the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot. Writers can typically select 10 articles at a time; videographers can hoard 40. Nearly every freelancer scrambles to load their assignment queue with titles they can produce quickly and with the least amount of effort — because pay for individual stories is so lousy, only a high-speed, high-volume approach will work. The average writer earns $15 per article for pieces that top out at a few hundred words, and the average filmmaker about $20 per clip, paid weekly via PayPal. Demand also offers revenue sharing on some articles, though it can take months to reach even $15 in such payments. Other freelancers sign up for the chance to copyedit ($2.50 an article), fact-check ($1 an article), approve the quality of a film (25 to 50 cents a video), transcribe ($1 to $2 per video), or offer up their expertise to be quoted or filmed (free). Title proofers get 8 cents a headline. Coming soon: photographers and photo editors. So far, the company has paid out more than $17 million to Demand Studios workers; if the enterprise reaches Rosenblatt’s goal of producing 1 million pieces of content a month, the payouts could easily hit $200 million a year, less than a third of what The New York Times shells out in wages and benefits to produce its roughly 5,000 articles a month.
  • But once it was automated, every algorithm-generated piece of content produced 4.9 times the revenue of the human-created ideas. So Rosenblatt got rid of the editors. Suddenly, profit on each piece was 20 to 25 times what it had been. It turned out that gut instinct and experience were less effective at predicting what readers and viewers wanted — and worse for the company — than a formula.
  • Here is the thing that Rosenblatt has since discovered: Online content is not worth very much. This may be a truism, but Rosenblatt has the hard, mathematical proof. It’s right there in black and white, in the Demand Media database — the lifetime value of every story, algorithmically derived, and very, very small. Most media companies are trying hard to increase those numbers, to boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.
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    This is facinating!!!
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