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Showing posts from November, 2009

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/21/2009

Using Visual Literacy: Eye Opening Apps / FrontPage Presentation from IETC 2009 by Dawn Moore and Heidi Kay tags : visualliteracy , visualization , pictures , graphical , wordle Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/18/2009

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus "Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate. Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections. * It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus! * Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists. * The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection. * No membership required. Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers. Combined with a visualization tool and user interface built from a combination of modern w

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/17/2009

Visualising the Guardian Datablog | Information Is Beautiful "There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.). Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms." tags : visualization "You're fired. I only want people who already know how to do their jobs." - Dangerously Irrelevant "When will we, as educational systems, redefine the job descriptions and expectations of educators to include their regular and effective incorporation of relevant digital technologies?" tags : pd , professional , learning , comic Posted from Diigo . The re

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/16/2009

K12_SocialNetworkingSurvey.pdf (application/pdf Object) To benchmark attitudes, perceptions and utilization of social networking websites and content-sharing tools by teachers, principals and school librarians. tags : web2.0 , media , statistics , k12_socialnetworkingsurvey , socialnetworking nielsen_howteensusemedia_june09.pdf (application/pdf Object) It’s easy to get caught up in the hype around teenagers. The notion that teens are too busy texting and Twittering to be engaged with traditional media is exciting, but false. To develop the best strategy around teens and media, start by challenging popular assumptions about teens. Don’t focus on the outliers, but on the macrolevel trends of media and preferences for the segment. The averages will show you that teens can often be reached by the same means as their parents. In this report, “How Teens Use Media,” we debunk the myths and give you the hard facts. tags : web2.0 , teens , media , statistics , debunk , myths Posted from Diigo .

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/14/2009

Land Mass and Population Size By Country | Herald Daily tags : visualization Don’t-Miss Video: Incredible Look at U.S. Airways Flight 1549 | Autopia | Wired.com We’ve seen a lot of simulations of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 going into the Hudson River, but a new video painstakingly compiled by an engineer offers the most comprehensive and compelling look yet at the airliner’s short but incredible flight. tags : video , leadership , critical thinking , preparedness , expert Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/13/2009

The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 | EDUCAUSE "Since 2004, the annual ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology has sought to shed light on how information technology affects the college experience. We ask students about the technology they own and how they use it in and out of their academic world. We gather information about how skilled students believe they are with technologies; how they perceive technology is affecting their learning experience; and their preferences for IT in courses. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 studies. It is based on quantitative data from a spring 2009 survey of 30,616 freshmen and seniors at 103 four-year institutions and students at 12 two-year institutions; student focus groups that included input from 62 students at 4 institutions; and review of qualitative data from written resp

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/12/2009

cyoa visualized Visualization of choose your own adventure books At its atomic level, a cyoa book is a collection of numbered pages of a few different types. Most pages tell a portion of the story, then finish by telling you to jump to another page. A smaller number of pages tell a conclusion to the story and represent an endpoint with no further jumps. We can subdivide these ‘narrative’ and ‘endings’ groups further based on the number of choices offered or the goodness of the ending. To visualize this, imagine color-coding every page in the book and then laying the pages out next to each other: tags : libraries , cyoa , books , visualization , tear out the pages Dangerously irrelevant libraries - Home - Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk Blog tags : libraries , books , questions , library , education , 10 , web2.0 , irrelevant libraries , dangerously , home 10 questions about books, libraries, librarians, and schools - Dangerously Irrelevant 10 questions about books, libraries, librarians,

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/11/2009

Changing primary domain name - Google Apps Help tags : google , domain , primary , changing Evolving Technologies Reports | EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Reports The Evolving Technologies Committee is charged with the identification of developing technologies and the evaluation of their impact on higher education for the EDUCAUSE community. Annually such technologies are identified, researched, and white papers are produced by members of the committee. The information gathered is presented at the EDUCAUSE annual conference committee meeting tags : technologies , evolving , reports Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/10/2009

Cell Size and Scale Demonstrates Scale of items ranging from a grain of rice down to an atom tags : science , cells , biology , scale , Interactive , size , genetics , atom CoSN VOI K-12 technology leaders are under increasing pressure to justify current and proposed technology expenditures. Value of Investment (VOI) is a CoSN project to help schools to better understand the costs and benefits of proposed technology related projects. Much as corporations use Return on Investment (ROI) to evaluate the worth of these projects, schools should perform a similar evaluation. However, there is a fundamental difference between K-12 and business goals: a business exists to make money; business technology projects are in place to increase top line revenue and/or decrease overall costs. The business of schools is education; schools need to understand their educational goals and how investments in technology will support them. tags : edtech , technology , research , assessment , planning , indicat

Brain Research and Visual Learning

I had the opportunity to hear Wes Fryer keynote today at the 1-1 Laptop Conference in Chicago. He used a stat that I have heard before and have debated a little. The idea is: "What we see travels to the brain 60X faster than what we hear" We discussed it afterward because I have recently looked at that information for another presentation that I was working on. I think it should actually be: "At any one time 60X more information can travel to the brain from the eyes than from the ears" Did some research tonight to confirm my off the head numbers today and here is what I found... Optical nerve fibers = 1,200,000 Several spots on the web - here it is from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_nerve Auditory nerve fibers - 20,000 - 30,000 depending on the source wikipedia has it at 30K At 20K you get the 60X number 1,200,000/20,000 = 60 That would just impact the amount of information that could be carried at any one time. It is all electrical impulses trave

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/04/2009

nsf.gov - Funding - Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers - US National Science Foundation (NSF) The ITEST program responds to current concerns and projections about the growing demand for professionals and information technology workers in the U.S. and seeks solutions to help ensure the breadth and depth of the STEM workforce. ITEST supports research studies to address questions about how to find solutions. It also supports the development, implementation, testing, and scale-up of implementation models. A large variety of possible approaches to improving the STEM workforce and to building students’ capacity to participate in it may be implemented and studied. ITEST projects may include students or teachers, kindergarten through high school age, and any area of the STEM workforce. Projects that explore cyberlearning, specifically learning with cyberinfrastructure tools such as networked computing and communications technologies in K-12 settings, are of special in

My Bookmarks and Annotations 11/03/2009

Oversold and underused: computers in ... - Google Books Larry Cuban's Oversold and Underused on Google Books tags : instruction , improvement , capacity , instructional_capacity , underused , oversold instruction capacity improvement.pdf (application/pdf Object) three decades of research has found that only a few interventions have had detectable effects on instruction and that, when such effects are detected, they rarely are sustained over time. A review of research and professional experience with school improvement suggests several explanations for these disheartening findings. One is that schools are complex social organizations situated within, and vitally affected by, other complex social systems including families, communities, and professional and regulatory agencies. The larger social environment of schools constrains and shapes the actions of teachers, students, and administrators, often in ways that greatly complicate the work of school improvement. tags : instruction ,