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"All you social dystopians can unclutch your pearls; no linguist thinks this bodes the end of writing. Text is our most powerful, go-to communication tool. For most people, these ideograms are an upgrade. And what an unusual one! Language always changes, of course; slang is born, prances, and dies. But it's exceedingly rare-maybe unprecedented-for a phonetic alphabet to suddenly acquire a big expansion pack of ideograms. In an age where we write more than ever, emoji is the new language of the heart. Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article. "

"My premise is that we're all sympathetic towards students who dislike mathematics, this course they're forced to take. We all have answers to the question, "What does it take to interest students in mathematics?" Though those answers are often implicit and unspoken, they're powerful. They determine the experiences students have in our classes. I lay out three of the most common answers I hear from teachers, principals, policymakers, publishers, etc., two of which are "make math real world" and "make math relevant." I offer evidence that those answers are incomplete and unreliable. Then I dive into research from Willingham, Kasmer, Roger & David Johnson, Mayer, et al., presenting stronger strategies for creating interest in mathematics education. "

"Kazemi is part of a small but vibrant group of programmers who, in addition to making clever Web toys, have dedicated themselves to shining a spotlight on the algorithms and data streams that are nowadays humming all around us, and using them to mount a sharp social critique of how people use the Internet-and how the Internet uses them back. By imitating humans in ways both poignant and disorienting, Kazemi's bots focus our attention on the power and the limits of automated technology, as well as reminding us of our own tendency to speak and act in ways that are essentially robotic. While they're more conceptual art than activism, the bots Kazemi is creating are acts of provocation-ones that ask whether, as computers get better at thinking like us and shaping our behavior, they can also be rewired to spring us free. "

Reducing someone to the number of languages he or she speaks trivializes the immense power that language imparts. After all, language is the living testament to a culture's history and world view, not a shiny trophy to be dusted off for someone's self-aggrandizement.

Language is a complex tapestry of trade, conquest and culture to which we each add our own unique piece - whether that be a Shakespearean sonnet or "Lol bae g2g ttyl." As my time in the media spotlight made me realize, saying you "speak" a language can mean a lot of different things: it can mean memorizing verb charts, knowing the slang, even passing for a native. But while I've come to realize I'll never be fluent in 20 languages, I've also understood that language is about being able to converse with people, to see beyond cultural boundaries and find a shared humanity. And that's a lesson well worth learning.

"Crossfilter is a JavaScript library for exploring large multivariate datasets in the browser. Crossfilter supports extremely fast ( h/t Stan

"A common phenomenon at the time was that people would start blogging on Blogger - because it was free, popular, and easy to set up - and then "graduate" to more powerful tools. Movable Type, Greymatter, and, later, Wordpress, had a much higher barrier to entry (before WP had turnkey hosting). But once someone had discovered the joys of sharing thoughts on the Internet, they were willing to invest the effort in order to get the added features and flexibility that the install-on-your-server software afforded."

The potential power of Twitter / social media

"When I suggest sketching as a visual thinking tool, I often I hear "I'm not an artist" or "I can't draw." While I understand the hesitation, I'm here to tell you that the artistic quality of your sketches is not the point. The real goal of sketching is functional. It's about generating ideas, solving problems, and communicating ideas more effectively with others. "

"Doodling may be better described as 'markings to help a person think.' Most people believe that doodling requires the intellectual mind to shutdown, but this is one misrepresentation that needs correcting. There is no such thing as a mindless doodle. The act of doodling is the mind's attempt to engage before succumbing to mindlessness. "

"Having exhausted traditional learning methods such as highlighting, note-taking, and rote memorization, Virginia chose to unleash a powerful, primitive tool that ultimately turned out to be her savior: The Doodle. Virginia decided to draw rudimentary visual representations of every concept in her Morrison and Boyd textbook. She deployed a problem-solving technique that defied conventional wisdom and all the academic advice she had received. And the story has a happy ending. Not only did Virginia ace her organic chemistry final and eventually become Dr. Scofield, she also became a celebrated immunologist, earning accolades for one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs related to HIV transmission. She credits much of her success, then and now, to her world-turning decision to doodle. "

My friend wrote these ebooks for K12 learners. If you are interested in reviewing them, let me know. The Stack Model Method-An Intuitive and Creative Approach to Solving Word Problems (Grades 3-4) is the first title of a two-book series in Singapore math publishing, which comprehensively reveals the beauty and power of the stack model method as an intuitive and creative problem-solving strategy in solving non-routine questions and challenging word problems. Like the Singapore's bar model method, the stack model method allows word problems that were traditionally read in higher grades to be set in lower grades. The stack model method empowers younger readers with the higher-order thinking skills needed to solve word problems much earlier than they would normally acquire in school.

There is in his syllabus no compromise with expediency, no taking for granted of power structures, nothing but rigorous honesty and tireless interrogation; there is some feeling or hope that if you could put every single thing under the sun into words you can head off sorrow, frustration, resentment, missed communication, thwarted ambition. Wallace refuses the habitual patterns and usual fictions that govern a classroom. His syllabus warns: "If you are used to whipping off papers the night before they're due, running them quickly through the computer's Spellchecker, handing them in full of high-school errors and sentences that make no sense and having the professor accept them 'because the ideas are good' or something, please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of one's ideas and the quality of those ideas' verbal expression, and I will not accept sloppy, rough-draftish, or semiliterate college writing. Again, I am absolutely not kidding."

No idea why I got this ad in my private email, but it has an interesting video on "myths about online learning." After I stopped laughing at the cheesy approach, I thought, "Hmmmm....we actually could use something like this."

"Hi, my name is Nikolaj Cyon and I am an artist from Sweden who has worked with precolonial Africa as a theme in my art for over a year. I have, as a mind experiment, made a map of what Africa could have looked like in the mid 19th century if Europe had never  become a colonizing world power. In order to do this I have tried to construct an alternative historical time-line in which Europe was much harder struck by the plague in the 1350's and never recovered. Therefore  African nations would have gotten the opportunity to flourish unhindered. "

"What follows is - depending on how you want to think about it - either a gallery of technologies we lost or an invitation to consider alternate futures. Some of what might have been is fantastical: a subway powered by air, an engine run off the heat of your palm. Some of what we lost, on the other hand, is more subtle, like a better way to bowl or type. As new standards emerge, variety fades, and a single technology becomes entrenched. (That's why the inefficient Qwerty keyboard has proved so difficult to unseat.) We can take heart, however, in the fact that good ideas never disappear forever; the Stirling engine didn't pan out in the Industrial Revolution, for example, but it can keep the lights on for a small village. As you look through the images, then, please consider not only what might have been but what could still be again."

But it is still a fringe idea, and the advocacy groups calling for digital standards are under-resourced and tiny. Both in the US and Australia, advocates for digital inclusion are dwarfed by the size of online media companies - lacking the power of lobbyists, they often struggle to be heard.

"Originally published in the Harvard Monthly in March 1903, "The Ph.D. Octopus" by philosopher William James offers a powerful critique of the "tyrannical Machine" of graduate education and the growing obsession with examinations, diplomas, and "decorative titles.""

"American higher education seems to be experiencing a kind of teaching renaissance. Articles on the subject proliferate on this site and others, suggesting a renewed interest and commitment to the subject across academe."

" he starts with a rapid-fire primer on heady concepts like the Internet of Things, the mobile revolution, cloud computing, digital disruption, and the perpetual increase of processing power. ("It's exponential, folks. It's just growing and growing.") The upshot: If you don't at least try to think digitally, the digital economy will disrupt you. It will drain your town of young people and leave your business in the dust. Then he switches gears and tries to stiffen their spines with confidence. Start a website, he'll say. Get on social media. See if the place where you live can finally get a high-speed broadband connection-a baseline point of entry into modern economic and civic life."