I am a progressive educator, a podcaster (EdTechTalk.com/21cl), a blogger, and dean of faculty of JK-11 school (building a high school) in New York City.
@lenkendall tuned me in to this brilliant visualization of 28 Van Gogh's represented by the 5 most prominent colors in each. I found it visually stunning.
Here is an earlier post of mine with 10 free tools to make infographics that I am sharing with you and my visual art and math teachers. It's the perfect opportunity for an multidisciplinary, integrated technology project.
Are your students making infographics? Care to share?
To our friends around the world: The Events in Egypt 30 Jan 2011 The world has witnessed an unprecedented popular action in the streets of Egypt. Led by Egypt’s youth, with their justified demands for more freedom, more democracy, lower prices for necessities and more employment opportunities. These youths demanded immediate and far-reaching changes. This was met by violent conflicts with the police, who were routed. The army was called in and was welcomed by the demonstrators, but initially their presence was more symbolic than active. Events deteriorated as lawless bands of thugs, and maybe agents provocateurs, appeared and looting began. The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria. They are collaborating with the army. This makeshift arrangement is in place until full public order returns.
The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters. I am there daily within the bounds of the curfew hours. However, the Library will be closed to the public for the next few days until the curfew is lifted and events unfold towards an end to the lawlessness and a move towards the resolution of the political issues that triggered the demonstrations.
Ismail Serageldin
Librarian of Alexandria
Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
This post by the Director of the new library at Alexandria gave me goosebumps. First, it showed his dedication to protecting this iconic institution of learning, and second it showed how fully he trusted the positive power of young people.
We as adults, we as teachers, need to recognize how vital a role youth can play in the most important and real-world situations. We mustn't only let them experiment in a sandbox, in our classrooms. Real growth and learning can, should, and must occur in their worlds, with them shaping the path.
Let's work on letting kids loose to save the world as their young Egyptian counterparts have demonstrated.
This video is incredible. This company has put the research, time, and effort into creating a powerful video game experience. I could see this technology becoming less expensive and more approachable, and then what we could do with it in schools would be left only to our imaginations.
Even just to communicate lecture-style information to students who are far away, absent, or who want to review, would be novel. Imagine being able to watch a 3-d model of your teacher from your phone, your laptop, etc. Then imagine giving that student a joy stick, letting them play with a lab that the teacheris running, letting them explore a sin curve in three dimensions. The possibilities are limitless here, and this type of technology will become a disruptive innovation in our classrooms sooner than later.
via @lenkendall
The President of the United States is about to deliver the first-ever enhanced State of the Union address. Tune in to watch slides be delivered along with the talk to enhance the President's message. It is quite a historic turn in the ways in which the President speaks to the nation, and the world.
I teach a Principles of Programming class. Today our objective was to understand the concept of states. The challenges had four states: state 0, state 1, state 2, state 3. The program was to make a small square move around a screen in a clockwise direction, hugging the edge of the window.
Because there were four students I assigned each one a single state and let them know they were responsible for "passing their section on" to the next programmer. So they individually worked on their own state, and then had to combine them.
Now, how to combine? Easy, the elegant website TypeWith.me. I gave the students the link to the site and they could each enter their own code with their contributions being highlighted in unique colors. What happened in a 60 minute period was a lengthy conversation on what states could be used for, a joint programming project, and joint debugging (the best part, where we fix our programming mistakes).
Watch the videos below to see what the programming looked like (played slightly faster than real time) and the resulting animation.
It was a beautiful way to collaborate all doable because of the TypeWith.me software.
p.s. the language we use is Processing, an open source, visual programming language, built on Java. The challenge problem is from Learning Processing, by Daniel Shiffman.
p.p.s one of my students exclaimed during class, "this is so much better than Google Docs!"
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