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Andrew Williamson

Scientists discover nature's newest, strongest material, thanks to a snail - 2 views

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    "It's as strong as steel and tough as a bulletproof vest, capable of withstanding the same amount of pressure it takes to turn carbon into a diamond. Scientists have discovered nature's newest, strongest material, and it comes from . . . a sea snail."
Rhondda Powling

Top scientists agree climate has changed for good - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting C... - 5 views

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    ABC article: "The nation's top climate scientists and science bodies have for the first time endorsed a major report that says Australia's climate has shifted permanently in some cases."
Rhondda Powling

Brit Lab - YouTube - 1 views

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    A growing number of videos that may be of interest for science. "for instance BBC Brit's Biggest Bangs is a fun, interactive video experience that allows users to channel their inner mad scientists, mixing dangerous chemicals with sometimes explosive results without a proper laboratory. The secret behind the interactivity is a central choose-your-own-adventure video around which annotations lead to separate videos that respond to your chemical selections." You choose your first chemical and then select another from among eight on the laboratory table.  You'll see the team scientist take each chemical from the table.  Then pause to consider-will it explode or won't it? If it doesn't, the oh so serious, oh so British narrator offers background on why the bang, or the lack of bang (NR or no reaction) may have disappointed, as well as what the resulting compound is and does.
John Pearce

Field Guide to Victorian Fauna for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad on the iTunes App Store - 0 views

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    "The animals found in the south eastern Australian State of Victoria are unique and diverse. Detailed descriptions of animals, maps of distribution, and endangered species status combine with stunning imagery and sounds to provide a valuable reference that can be used in urban, bush and coastal environments. The content has been developed by scientists at Museum Victoria, Australia's largest public museum organisation. The app holds descriptions of over 700 species encompassing birds, fishes, frogs, lizards, snakes, mammals, freshwater, terrestrial and marine invertebrates, spiders, and insects including butterflies. From animals found in rockpools, minibeasts in your garden, to wildlife you might see in the bush. We've put in a lot of species, but it's still a fraction of the complete fauna of Victoria. Our scientists will continue to add additional species and refine descriptions over time."
John Pearce

Spongelab | A Global Science Community | Home page - 3 views

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    "Spongelab Interactive is a group of scientists, teachers, animators, artists, and programmers passionate about science education. We believe that cutting-edge technology and stunning interactive media should be available to everyone, regardless of fiscal constraints. Most of the content on our site is free. Like what you see? It's yours. To use anything identified as premium (usually full games, interactives or case studies) you can: Redeem the credits you have earned while using our site - each piece of premium content is marked with a "P" and can be redeemed when you select it from the search results page Buy a bank of credits through our PayPal ordering system - In the My Profile area, order blocks of credits in the Buy Credits section. Purchase a Site License - Get access to all content, unlimited student seats, all for $600 CAD, contact us and we do the rest. "
Rhondda Powling

Instant Wild - Live Wildlife Photographs - 0 views

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    "Images of wild animals are sent to you directly from small automatic cameras placed in remote locations. When you identify the wild animal by matching the photo with the relevant image in the Field Guide you save conservationist thousands of hours by helping to sort the images by species group. This enables scientists to analyze the data much faster and assess whether the threatened animals are increasing or decreasing."
Roland Gesthuizen

Computer Science Unplugged: School Students Doing Real Computing Without Computers | Mi... - 1 views

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    "The "Unplugged" project, based at Canterbury University,uses activities, games, magic tricks and competitions toshow children the kind of thinking that is expected of acomputer scientist. All of the activities are available freeof charge at csunplugged.org ... This paper will explore why this approach has become popular, and describe developments and adaptations thatare being used for outreach and teaching around NewZealand, as well as internationally."
Rhondda Powling

http://www.acleadersresource.sa.edu.au/index.php?page=bringing_it_to_life - 1 views

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    From Dept of Ed & Child Development, SA. "We have thought deeply about what we value for our students' learning, how this is represented in the learning areas through the essence, and how this essence helps us work with all the components of the learning area. In this section we work with our colleagues using the BitL tool to ensure our pedagogy brings the essence of the learning areas to life in the classroom. It helps us engage our learners as scientists, as mathematicians, as historians, and as great communicators - so that they not only know about the important understandings and develop the skills within each learning area, but can bring this understanding to bear in their everyday contexts in powerful ways."
graham hughes

The Futures Channel - 2 views

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    using new media technologies to create a channel between the scientists, engineers, explorers and visionaries who are shaping the future, and today's learners who will one day succeed them.
John Pearce

GROWING UP DIGITAL - 8 views

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    The content and technology are continually changing. This article reminds us that learners are also changing. For the past decade, faculty who won awards for teaching expressed concern that they could no longer hold the attention of their students. John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist at Xerox and director of its Palo Alto Research Center, hired 15 year olds to design future work environments and learning environments. He observed that the students did not conform to the traditional image of learners as permissive sponges. It requires us to rethink and redesign education for the Digital Age.
Tony Searl

What is data science? - O'Reilly Radar - 1 views

  • how to use data effectively -- not just their own data, but all the data that's available and relevant
  • Increased storage capacity demands increased sophistication in the analysis and use of that data
  • Once you've parsed the data, you can start thinking about the quality of your data
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • It's usually impossible to get "better" data, and you have no alternative but to work with the data at hand
  • The most meaningful definition I've heard: "big data" is when the size of the data itself becomes part of the problem
  • Precision has an allure, but in most data-driven applications outside of finance, that allure is deceptive. Most data analysis is comparative:
  • Storing data is only part of building a data platform, though. Data is only useful if you can do something with it, and enormous datasets present computational problems
  • Hadoop has been instrumental in enabling "agile" data analysis. In software development, "agile practices" are associated with faster product cycles, closer interaction between developers and consumers, and testing
  • Faster computations make it easier to test different assumptions, different datasets, and different algorithms
  • It's easer to consult with clients to figure out whether you're asking the right questions, and it's possible to pursue intriguing possibilities that you'd otherwise have to drop for lack of time.
  • Machine learning is another essential tool for the data scientist.
  • According to Mike Driscoll (@dataspora), statistics is the "grammar of data science." It is crucial to "making data speak coherently."
  • Data science isn't just about the existence of data, or making guesses about what that data might mean; it's about testing hypotheses and making sure that the conclusions you're drawing from the data are valid.
  • The problem with most data analysis algorithms is that they generate a set of numbers. To understand what the numbers mean, the stories they are really telling, you need to generate a graph
  • Visualization is crucial to each stage of the data scientist
  • Visualization is also frequently the first step in analysis
  • Casey Reas' and Ben Fry's Processing is the state of the art, particularly if you need to create animations that show how things change over time
  • Making data tell its story isn't just a matter of presenting results; it involves making connections, then going back to other data sources to verify them.
  • Physicists have a strong mathematical background, computing skills, and come from a discipline in which survival depends on getting the most from the data. They have to think about the big picture, the big problem. When you've just spent a lot of grant money generating data, you can't just throw the data out if it isn't as clean as you'd like. You have to make it tell its story. You need some creativity for when the story the data is telling isn't what you think it's telling.
  • It was an agile, flexible process that built toward its goal incrementally, rather than tackling a huge mountain of data all at once.
  • we're entering the era of products that are built on data.
  • We don't yet know what those products are, but we do know that the winners will be the people, and the companies, that find those products.
  • They can think outside the box to come up with new ways to view the problem, or to work with very broadly defined problems: "here's a lot of data, what can you make from it?"
John Pearce

Sesame Street Science: Sink or Float? - START THE EXPERIMENT HERE - YouTube - 2 views

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    "Ask a question, make a hypothesis, and observe what happens in this Sesame Street interactive science experiment! Help renowned scientists, Cookie Monster and Emma, investigate what sinks in water and what floats in water! Experiment with a rubber band ball, a lime and lemon, Ernie's rubber duckie, and a coconut. Start the experiment here! Will Bert's underpants sink or float? Go to http://www.sesamestreet.org/sinkorfloat for the full interactive experiment and find out."
Nestor Ndzi Talla

Earth could plunge into sudden ice age « Nestlines - 2 views

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    20th century Fox The film "The Day After Tomorrow" was all good fiction when it came out in 2004, but now scientists are finding eerie truths to the possibilities of sudden temperature, So much for the "global warming" controversy. Are we getting warmer or colder? Looking ahead to the future, there is no reason why such a freeze shouldn't happen again
Rhondda Powling

Science Fair Project Ideas, Answers, & Tools - 1 views

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    Science Buddies is a website for science teachers. It offers lots of ideas and tips for science projects. They are well set out and it even offers a topic selection wizard to help students narrow down a topic if they are unsure of what to choose. From them: It " empowers K-12 students, parents, and teachers to quickly and easily find free project ideas and help in all areas of science from physics to food science and music to microbiology. Whether your goal is to find a fun science activity for your kids or win the international science fair, Science Buddies puts comprehensive, scientist-authored tools, tips, and techniques at your fingertips."
Tony Searl

Turning Children into Data - 4 views

  • The teachers understood that learning doesn’t have to be measured in order to be assessed. 
  • It focused on teachers’ personal “connection[s] with our subject area” as the basis for helping students to think “like mathematicians or historians or writers or scientists, instead of drilling them in the vocabulary of those subject areas or breaking down the skills.”  In a word, the teachers put kids before data.
  • All that does is corrupt the measure (unless it’s a test score, in which case it’s already misleading), undermine collaboration among teachers, and make teaching less joyful and therefore less effective by meaningful criteria.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • kids should have a lot to say about their assessment.
  • we want to create an environment where students can “experience success and failure not as reward and punishment but as information."  
  • students’ desire to learn?
  • The more that students are led to focus on how well they're doing, the less engaged they tend to become with what they're doing. 
  • A school that’s all about achievement and performance is a school that’s not really about discovery and understanding.
  • teachers’ isolation, fatalism, and fear (of demands by clueless officials to raise test scores at any cost).
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    "While some education conferences are genuinely inspiring, others serve mostly to demonstrate how even intelligent educators can be remarkably credulous, nodding agreeably at descriptions of programs that ought to elicit fury or laughter, avidly copying down hollow phrases from a consultant's PowerPoint presentation, awed by anything that's borrowed from the business world or involves digital technology. Many companies and consultants thrive on this credulity, and also on teachers' isolation, fatalism, and fear (of demands by clueless officials to raise test scores at any cost). With a good dose of critical thinking and courage, a willingness to say "This is bad for kids and we won't have any part of it," we could drive these outfits out of business -- and begin to take back our schools."
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