"The terms Data visualization and Infographics are used interchangeably, the former means the study of visual representation of data and the latter is its representation per se. In this article, I have showcased some of the most creative infographics and data visualization examples, along with some really effective tools to help you improve your skills in creating infographics. Enjoy the journey!"

I was looking for some good examples of displaying data in meaningful ways and came across this post.

"Simply Speaking is a series of brief videos created by Teaching and Learning with Technology that explain technology topics in everyday language and with a little humor. They are modeled after the "... in plain english" videos that explain more general technologies such as Google Docs."

A new page to show all of the Simply Speaking videos that we have created over the past couple of years. Other ideas for similar videos like this are in the works, such as one to explain the importance of open educational resources and another talking about the ideas behind flipping a course.

"The beauty of this app is that you can create professional slick interactive presentations all on the iPad. You simply take a series of screen shots, order the images and then include any written instructions you need and then when it is all ready you simply hit the little red record button and put your voice-over onto the presentation."

Gary Chinn shared this with me. We've been talking about some other apps like ShowMe and ScreenChomp

"Core Council Recommendation Letters"

Finally - a single place where many of the Core Council letters have been posted. These often contain recommendations such as the need to revise courses or offer more online versions. These units may not know about ways that TLT can help meet the recommendations in their letters. We can go to them with ideas.

"Global Social Problems" course where students are asked to take on the role of a superhero and save the world through research, hands-on work on a local social issue, and imagining a solution to a broader social problem.

Doesn't look like a massively-open online course, but makes me think about setting up one of our own. I love how all of this (assignments, discussion, etc...) is completely exposed. With a course like this, I don't see the need for an LMS.

"Zombies, Run! is an ultra-immersive game for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android where you help rebuild civilisation after a zombie apocalypse. By going out and running in the real world, you can collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts that you can use to build up and expand your base - all while getting orders, clues, and story through your headphones."

Interesting concept: you play this game by running in the real world. The app tracks your run, but also unlocks items (ammo, vitamins, medical supplies). When you're done, you get to distribute those supplies throughout your city. During the run, there is an interactive experience where you're being chased by zombies and getting instructions through your headset. They're releasing this next year. I'll definitely try it out.

"Zohra Guisse, a lecturer in French and Arabic at Penn State Berks, is one of 11 faculty members selected across the University to participate in Penn State's Mobile Media Pilot program. The program, an initiative of the Penn State Media Commons, will explore how mobile devices can be used in students' media production workflow."

Writeup in Penn State Live about one of the faculty members who are using the video recording, editing, and posting capabilities of iPods for teaching and learning purposes.

62 Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom

Some ideas for using iPads in a classroom. Many of them are focused on elementary school, but there are a few golden nuggets in the mix.

"App Inventor for Android Create apps for your phone! Creating an App Inventor app begins in your browser, where you design how the app will look. Then, like fitting together puzzle pieces, you set your app's behavior. All the while, through a live connection between your computer and your phone, your app appears on your phone."

Video on this site shows an interface that reminds me of Authorware back in the day - drag and drop visual programming. Could be an interesting part of a student programming project or our work with Jansen. I wonder if something like this exists for the iOS.

Thanks. Getting started on a new platform can be daunting, but an early success like this could spark interest in mobile app development.

"Enhance your involvement with the Student Technology Advisory Council by taking advantage of the software on your iPad 2. The preloaded apps will help you to make the most of meeting materials and presentations, share your thoughts on Blogs @ PSU and learn more on technology topics."

Page put together by Justin Miller listing the apps that the students on the student technology advisory committee will be using. Good collection of tools for other purposes.

"The game EteRNA, which was started by the Stanford biochemist Rhiju Das and the Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Adrien Treuille, allows researchers to farm out some of the intellectual legwork behind RNA design to 26,000 players, rather than a relatively few lab workers. Players are given a puzzle design-an RNA molecule in the shape of a star or a cross, for example-that they must fill in with the components, called nucleotides, to produce the most plausible solution. The community of players then votes for the blueprint it thinks will have the best chance of success in the lab. The Stanford researchers select the highest-rated blueprints and actually synthesize them. The scientists then report back the results of the experiments to the crowd to inform future designs. The crowd-sourcing has produced results that tend to be more effective than computer-generated arrangements. "Computational methods are not perfect in making these shapes," says Mr. Das, "and as we get to more and more complex ones, they essentially always fail, so we know that there are rules to be learned." Players are figuring out these principles on their own, says Mr. Treuille. He says that while they're more like a grandmother's instructions on baking a cake than a strict scientific formula, they work remarkably well in practice. "EteRNA players are extremely good at designing RNA's," says Mr. Treuille, "which is all the more surprising because the top algorithms published by scientists are not nearly so good. The gap is pretty dramatic.""

Interesting example of crowdsourcing to work on scientific issues.

"Museum of the City of New York -- New York, NY HD 51480, Improving Digital Record Annotation Capabilities with Open sourced Ontologies and Crowd sourced Workers Lacy Schutz, Project Director Outright: $50,000 To support: The development of methods and tools to facilitate the description of digitized primary sources by combining "crowdsourcing" tactics with linked open data and semantic Web technologies."

Interesting list of grant awards in the humanities. The quoted one above jumped out at me, but there are plenty of other good ideas in there. I'd be interested to see what others think.

"Eighty-seven percent of college students surveyed said they considered their institution's technology when selecting their college. This finding is also reflected in CDW-G's 21st-Century Classroom Report, which looked at educational technology in K-12 and found that 92 percent of current high school students say technology is an important consideration as they evaluate colleges. "

Jamie posted this to the Facebook wall and I thought it was worth looking at further. It's connected to what we are doing with our classrooms, Media Commons, EGC, learning space designs, Knowledge Commons, and mobile learning projects.

Oh - and it reminds me of the University of Michigan learning spaces designs - Cole took pictures. I think it's their North Quad.

"Hoping to give its users a more intimate way to stay in touch, Facebook on Wednesday introduced video chatting inside its online social network through a deal with Skype, the Internet calling service. "

Interesting partnership between two communication giants. Much of the rest of the article discusses this as a counter-attack on Google+. Honestly, this must have been in the works for a while, but it's also okay if it is true. When companies feel the need to innovate to stay competitive, users win.

"Under federal rules that take effect on July 1, Bismarck State will have to seek approval to operate in every state where it enrolls students, or forgo those students' federal aid. With some states charging thousands of dollars per application, the college is weighing whether it can afford to remain in states where the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits, in tuition terms."

Under the new rules, some of the smaller online institutions may go under or need to partner with a larger institution like Penn State to continue offering online courses.

"During the event, faculty and staff led children through a variety of hands-on learning stations. For example, Zimmerman, along with Associate Professor of Education Susan Land and a team of six education graduate students, led a station titled, "Tree Investigators," in which they used iPads and iPods (provided by Penn State's Educational Technology Services) to give the kids an in-depth lesson on how to identify trees. "We used iPads to figure out what type of tree we were planting," said Collin Wayne, a student from Park Forest Elementary School, who attended the event. "We were in groups and we used a tree-finder app. You take a picture of a symbol and it tells you about the tree.""

Penn State Live article about a College of Education project. Elementary school students used iPads and iPod Touches to interact with data about trees in the arboretum. We talked with Susan Land and Heather Zimmerman about the project and helped out by loaning them some equipment. Future partnerships with them are in the works.

"After carefully considering all of these, other online sources found by searching for terms such as 'tablet PC' and 'lecture recording' and presentations by others at the Teaching and Learning Symposium at Penn State I decided to purchase a powerful Lenovo Tablet PC with Windows 7, Microsoft One Note, and Camtasia Studio 7.0. I plan on taking my .docx lectures into One Note, opening the page in One Note during class, and recording the screen with Camtasia studio as I go through the lecture, writing on the tablet PC with the stylus pen as I speak to students about each topic. Then I can save my screen capture and edit it into nice 10-15 minute segments in Camtasia Studio and post them online for student review."

I'm interested in exploring a Kahn Academy approach and I've gotten some inquiries about how to do it from others (recently Carol McQuiggan). Between lecture capture software, Camtasia, iPads, tablet PCs, bamboo tablets, and other software/input device combinations, I'm sure we can come up with a supportable combination. The trick is to make it easy for faculty, similar to the one-button studio project.

I know what you mean Bart. I've found that to be the case with podcasting - a recording made for an external audience is more engaging because the person is talking to you. It has a very different feel than a recording of a meeting, presentation, or training session where the presenter is primarily addressing a local audience.

"Onswipe enables publishers to provide the best browsing and advertising experience to their readers on tablet and touch devices. Get Started In Under 3 Minutes Infinitely Customizable Anytime. Anywhere. Any device. Breathtaking Ads"

During the 7 Things discussion today, we're talking about tools like Flipboard and Zite which are on the aggregation side. OnSwipe is on the production end - creating mobile/touch friendly layouts. Might be nice for the TLT annual report.

"Get a closer look at a few of the over 200 features that make iOS 5 the best update yet for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch."

Some great features coming out in iOS 5. All of the ones in this video make sense: wireless syncing, improved push notifications and a notification center, etc...

"With OS X Lion, we've challenged the accepted way of doing things by introducing new features that change the way you use a computer"

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the new OS. It's interesting to see so many iOS ideas moving to the desktop/laptop environment.