dougbelshaw.com/blog

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I'm currently in Turkey with Nick Dennis presenting about technology to History educators at the request of EUROCLIO. Resources (in Turkish!) here...

Image CC BY-NC Darren Hester

The biggest thing I learned this week offline was at a DriveTech Speed Awareness course after I was caught doing 36mph in a 30mph zone. It was mostly how not to use technology when teaching people stuff. There’s definitely a blog post in there somewhere…

http://delicious.com/dajbelshaw/TILTW10

Tech.

• Rapportive is a plugin for Firefox or Chrome that replaces the adverts in GMail with some contextual social media information about the people who send you email:

• beWeeVee is like Etherpad on steroids. But likes Microsoft Silverlight a bit too much for my liking.
• Picnik, the awesome browser-based image editor, has been acquired by Google. This is not a good thing: Flickr (owned by Yahoo!) allows you to use Picnik to edit your photos. I guess we can kiss that functionality goodbye.
• Second Life has never been more than a curiosity to me, but Leon Cych has put together a video showing some new features which might make it a viable proposition to do something useful:

• ManyCam (Win/Mac) allows you to add effects to your webcam videos/chats. Which could be interesting for EdTechRoundUp tonight…

Productivity & Inspiration

• Lifehacker has a great post on ‘just in case’ vs. ‘just in time’. The latter might seem like a good idea, but you’ll always miss out on opportunities to apply knowledge and skills when you don’t have them…
• ‘Spezzatura’ is an Italian word that means something like ‘doing your craft without a lot of visible effort’. It’s something I’ll be striving for in future!
• Leo Babauta at Zen Habits has produced The Little Guide to Inspiration. I like his opening quotation from Jack London: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
• It’s a while since I’ve written a stream-of-consciousness. This post by Lifehacker shows how writing 750 words in such a way and then analysing them can lead to increased productivity.
• Dumb Little Man has an important post, I think, on the importance of tracking and writing down your achievements.

Education & Academic

• Google Apps Education Edition is all very well, but what can you actually do with it in practice? This presentation gives you some ideas:

• The Shadow Children’s Secretary, Michael Gove, of the Conservative party, has made some comments about education this week. Turns out he’s a bit of a reactionary. “Most parents would rather their children had a traditional education, with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England,” he said. Not this parent. I’ve changed my voting habits.
• As I blogged about this week, Will Richardson’s started a wiki on 10 big questions for education. I’ve volunteered to moderate the page for What does an educated person look like today? Please contribute!

Data, Design & Infographics

• This is not only a beautiful visualization, but extremely useful: Snake Oil? The Scientific Evidence For Popular Health Food Supplements

• The video below gives some stats on The State of the Internet as it currently stands. YouTube serves 1 billion videos per day(!)

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

• Tableau Public is a free, online visualization tool that I’m looking forward to playing with.
• This visualization of the potential tsunami after the Chilean earthquake I found interesting:

Misc.

• There’s a flower that blooms once every 3,000 years! It’s pretty rare. A Chinese nun found one under her washing machine.
• UEFA want more officials in some crazy positions at Europa League games. The rest of the world wants goalmouth technology. <Sigh>
• The UK Digital Economy bill could wipe out free wifi in many places due to draconian record-keeping requirements aimed to crack down on copyright infringements.
• There’s an official petition to have 10^27 (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) be prefixes with ‘hella’. That would make for ‘hellatons’ and ‘hellawatts’. Awesome.
• “Enthusiasm is compressed expertise” – I like that idea!

Quotations

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. (Samuel Johnson)

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone. (Bill Cosby)

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway. (John Wayne)

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. (Dr. Wayne Dyer)

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. (John Wooden)

Posted: March 7th, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: data, design, Education, infographics, inspiration, Misc., Productivity, quotations, Technology
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If you create a service that people actually find useful then I suppose you’ve got a right to charge for it. Still, it annoyed me that FeedMyInbox has gone paid-for. $5/month is $5 more than I expect to pay simply for the privilege of getting email updates from blogs that haven’t provided the feature themselves. For those in a similar situation, I’m trying out Blog Alert and Reblinks at the moment…

Top 3

1. A stereotype was a printing plate case from movable type. A cliché was a phrase that, because it was used often, was cast as a single slug of metal. Thanks for that nugget, Seth!
2. Toward a grand theory of n00bs. Seriously, you couldn’t make up some of this stuff!
3. Why ’serious games’ work (via OLDaily):

Lifehacker

I felt compelled to devote a section to Lifehacker this week, just because so many of their articles/posts were top-notch:

• What’s the easiest way to share large files and media with friends?
• Make sure you’re not de-motivating your team
• Why Google Apps users miss out on regular GMail features – and some solutions
• Choose Wisely lets you select your default browser on a per-link basis
• Set up a fully-automated Media Center
• Best Start Page? (I’m using Google Sites for my 3 year old son’s new domain: BenBelshaw.com!)
• TuneGlue helps you find new tunes you’d like by mapping music connections
• Sweet Home 3D models your home, rearranges your furniture without breaking a sweat
• How to blur out faces and other portions of video
• Five best netbook operating system (I’m still loving Jolicloud!)
• Air Video streams your videos to your iPhone with minimal effort, is incredible
• Use CoreAVC to enable HD playback on netbooks (Windows-only, unfortunately)

Tech.

• I auto-tweet from this blog when a new post is auto-published. It makes me smile that I could be asleep yet people think I’m active online. The Make Me Social WordPress plugin takes this one step further, auto-posting to services such as Delicious (via @durff)
• Google Docs now has a web clipboard that remains over sessions and between computers!
• RealPlayer SP allows you to trim videos ready for posting to YouTube, etc. I haven’t tried it (yet) but it looks like it could be a basic alternative to Windows Movie Maker. And it’s cross-platform!
• Published blog posts now appear instantly in Google Reader. Which is nice.
• How many oranges does it take to charge an Apple iPhone? About 2,380 slices apparently (via TechXAV)

• Hoccer is a very futuristic way to share info from your iPhone or Android phone (via @iusher)
• You can now track your dog via Twitter with a tweeting dog collar
• HOWTO: make a Google Buzz-specific desktop app
• Intel and Nokia have collaborated to make a new Operating System called MeeGo. Failure imminent (well, as soon as Google Chrome OS is launched…)
• You CAN delete more than one photo at a time in your iPhone’s Camera Roll. Hurrah!
• PumaPhone is like Nike+ but for the whole phone! (via Mashable)



• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have produced a checklist to go through when you buy an ebook.
• TweetGuru allows you to send Direct Messages (DMs) to up to 12 Twitter users at once (via TechXAV)
• Some reasons to ‘drop Google’ (via @ginatrapani)
• URL shorteners are so 2008. ShadyURL makes your shared URL look sinister! (via BoingBoing)

Productivity & Inspiration

• Drowning in email? Zen Habits has some advice!
• Kairos is saying or doing something at the right time. Here’s how you can put it into practice!
• Some suggestions on how to achieve ‘creative flow’.
• Chris Guillebeau has some useful tips for stress-free travel. And let’s face it: he should know!

Education & Academic

• Fisher Price has started making e-readers for 3-6 year olds (via the xplanation)

• A school used laptop webcams to spy on students (Their statement after being found out can be found here)
• Some tips on how to create a live online learning event.
• We should cut teenage girls some slack. It ain’t easy – hence the sugar, fat and carbs!
• Academia.edu is a social network for academic researchers (via @ianrobsons)
• Building an e-learning course? You should probably read this then.
• How to write a 20-page research paper in under a day (slightly tongue-in-cheek) (via @simfin via @Documentally)
• Learning in Hand has some useful advice for deploying a class set of iPod Touches (via @WebGalPat)
• The Differentiator is a great tool for getting teachers where they’re pitching their lessons in relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy (via @lnewton)

• Some schools in the US are showing their true colours and are working in tandem with Wal-Mart, training students to be good workers (via OLDaily)
• Researchers have tracked 19,000 children born in the UK at the start of the 21st century. Lots of data and interesting reading (if somewhat depressing in places)
• Designing a school? Make sure teenagers get enough ‘blue’ light or they won’t sleep very well at night!
• The good people are Futurelab are crowdsourcing ideas for their conference later this year.
• Some recommended iPhone games for young children (via kottke.org)
• A ‘burbclave’ is a walled garden that segregates various people in society. Dean Groom doesn’t like them. Neither do I. Let’s not encourage them, eh?
• Connexions is a site trying to move beyond the textbook. Richard Baraniuk, the brains behind it, has done a TED Talk (via Don’t Waste Your Time)
• By the time children from the poorest families get to school, their vocabulary can be a whole year behind their middle-class peers. (via @Darcy1968)

Data, Design & Infographics

• SlipCover produces icons that look like game/Blu-ray cases, etc. (via @jamesforcee)
• An amusing look at how to create big, important infographics.
• Facebook relationship status and happiness:

• How Open Source runs the world infographic (via @glassbeed)
• The ocean is very, very deep. This is how deep. Deep, eh?
• Some countries didn’t deliver on their promised Tsunami aid. Will the situation be the same for Haiti (I’m looking at you Austria and Germany!) (via @courosa):

• Awesome PhD brain development comic-style infographic (via @usablelearning)
• The Wall Street Journal has new guide to creating infographics (review at FlowingData)
• Fonts as landmasses. Quality.
• Ever wondered how memory works? Check out this National Geographic 3D guide! (via Chart Porn)
• I don’t necessarily agree with the conclusion, but this infographic about the difference between pirated and ‘legit’ DVDs makes a good point.
• This is a rarity. A well-presented argument with fantastic design! (via Scott McLeod):

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Misc.

• PleaseRobMe.com is a Twitter mashup that makes an important point – why are you telling everyone that you’re not at home?
• Bantu is just Japanese craziness taken the extreme. Oh. My. Goodness. (via @nickdennis)
• Birds ‘poop’ every 15 minutes (via @gardenglen)
• This Dilbert cartoon remind anyone of anything?
• Deforestation is affecting the evolutionary shape of birds’ wings.
• Holding a Realist epistemology can be dangerous for your career. Unbelievable.
• Don’t understand the economic theories of Keynes and Hayek? Perhaps this gangsta rap-style explanation will help! (via BoingBoing)
• Create your own comic/story with Spore (via @kukukukuku)

Quotations

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes (H. Downs)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (Henry David Thoreau)

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it. (Edith Wharton)

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. (Anon.)

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. Helen Keller

(image at top CC BY-NC Brandon Christopher Warren)

Posted: February 21st, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: academic, data, Education, infographics, inspiration, Lifehacker, Productivity, Technology
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Happy Valentine’s Day!

On a personal note, I learned that Ben isn’t over his febrile convulsions and that, if a child isn’t ill then don’t make him so by taking him to have a Swine Flu vaccine.

Apologies for the late posting this morning. We were in hospital from 4am with Ben.

He’s OK now.

Top 3

1. Always needing to prompt people and follow-up emails? Try this!
2. Ofsted believes that children who are given more internet freedom are less vulnerable in the long-term to internet dangers. About time! I wonder if it will make any difference in practice?(via @dughall via @teachexpertise)
3. Can words really account for only 7 percent of the meaning of a spoken message? Hint: no. (via @lindiop)

Tech.

• Totally NSFW but awesome idea: ChatRoulette (Review here). The creator is 17. Wow.
• Twitter Reactions is a great Google Chrome extension for finding out what people have been saying about a particular web page.
• Google Buzz launched. Some people didn’t like it (NSFW). All was explained by Lifehacker. Google changed some stuff.
• This is a cool painting thing (via @simfin)
• 5 insightful TED talks on social media. Don’t miss Clay Shirky!

• Coolest, most portable printer. Ever:
• The British Library is to offer free eBook downloads (via OLDaily)
• Amazon Kindles will have touchscreens and colour by the end of 2010.
• Facebook plans to build an email system. I still won’t use it.
• Ah… so that’s how Google’s ranking algorithm works! (via Scott McLeod)

• 21 things that became obsolete this decade. Ah… remember when we used to use public pay phones?
• Need an iPhone app made? Swissmiss suggests you try TheyMakeApps.com
• Wired reckons there’s a ‘good enough’ revolution. Some people having preferences does not a revolution make – even if I can understand the sentiment. (via @jamesclay)
• This Lifehacker post about turning a netbook into a feature-rich ebook reader is on the money given my blog post a few days ago!
• Unsure where Micro$oft’s profits come from? Now you know! (via @chartoftheday)

• Oh great. The UK finally get around to using Chip-and-PIN and now you tell me it’s no longer secure?
• Fav4.org is a really nice, minimalistic start page. Unless you use Google Chrome, whereupon it forgets what CSS is…
• This is cool in a I’ll-never-actually-need-to-do-this kind of way. Play Xbox 360 or PS3 anywhere.
• Opensource.com is a Red Hat community service and a great news feed for OSS stuff (via @Curriki)
• YouTube now has a safety mode (via @creativetallis)
• These are the 15 best apps for jailbroken iPhones. Possibly. I can vouch for SBSettings as it’s pretty much the only reason I keep my iPhone jailbroken! (via @jezlyn)

Productivity & Inspiration

• Here’s some advice on how to filter better. Handy! (via @hjarche)
• Confused about the difference between simplicity and minimalism? Let Leo Babauta (kind-of) help you out.
• You should set aside 10% of your work for retirement, not just your income. Apparently.
• The Small Man Builds Cages For Everyone. Be big!
• I’ve been working on putting the finishing touches to #uppingyourgame: an educator’s guide to productivity (big hint!)

Education & Academic

• Wondering how much your institution/district/authority can save using Google Apps? Read this.
• An Ofsted report (referenced above) on the safe use of new technologies is out. Summary here.
• IBM Academic Cloud is a way to teach technology skills to students. In the US, that is. (via @liamgh)
• Some ways social gaming is improving education (very true about ‘contextual learning’!)
• This take-off of Beyoncé made me laugh: Scholar Ladies (via @michellegallen)

• A handy guide to netiquette for students (not so sure that referencing the 90’s sounding ‘netiquette’ is helpful though)
• The Free Technology Academy uses Open Educational Resources in a virtual campus (via @cogdog)
• I’m a big believer in the importance of tinkering. That’s why I found this post about tinkering with technology especially interesting!
• Trends in E-Learning practices. U-Learning FTW!
• It’s been quite the week for education-related parody videos: ‘The Class’ is a parody of ‘The Office’ (via OLDaily)

• Remember California is moving to digital textbooks because it’s got no money? It’s collating Open Education Resources here. Helpful for everyone! (via @akipta)
• George Siemens reckons/hopes/is-indifferent-about the end will come to peer-review of journals. I’m not too sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
• This MindSight is worth a look if you’re wondering how some schools apply research in neuroscience to everyday life (via @jamiebillingham)

Data, Design & Infographics

• Need some free, legal art for your open source game project? Try here!
• What to track what you do to form a data set? Try Daytum, mycrocosm, nebul.us, eyebrowse, or Personas
• Learn basic colour theory to make better designs.
• The online image editor Aviary is now completely free.
• Track mouse activity on your computer (Mac/PC):

• This Crayola colour chart shows how they’ve expanded their range over the history of the company. Colourful!
• Nathan at FlowingData has another great tutorial on an easy way to make a treemap. I’ll be trying this next week!
• Use the Processing app? It’s now got a framework available for iPhone.
• Need a Winter Olympics venue map? This one’s good.
• Best. Barcodes. Ever.

• Fullscreenweather.com does, well, what you’d expect really. But really, really, well.
• Tableau Public allows you to create interactive visualizations for free (via @BFChirpy)

Misc.

• Seth Godin on change management. He divides us all into ‘frightened’, ‘clueless’ and ‘uninformed’. He has a point.
• People use words to get you to do things. Of course they do.
• Dorodango are balls of mud that shine.
• Henry Jenkins on 5 ways to read the film Avatar.
• No blog post would be complete without a YouTube video of muppets going all Web 2.0 (Beaker’s Ballad):

[Beaker's Ballad]

• This must have been awful: Twins discover brother’s death on Facebook.
• Angry Norwegians in scuba gear chase Google Street View car.
• How to levitate. Kind-of.
• A low IQ is the second-highest predictor of heart disease (after smoking): http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/10/low-iq-second-highes.html
• Cold? Dont’ want to get your hands out of your gloves to use your iPhone? You need a meat stylus!

• Britain isn’t really ‘broken’. Oh good, I was wondering! (via @ewanmcintosh)
• Google have teamed up with Russian Railways to create a Virtual tour of the Trans-Siberian Railway (via OLDaily)
• Be careful out there. Boredom can actually kill you! (via @gsiemens)

Quotations

A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat. (New York proverb)

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. (Leo Aikman)

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts. (Earl Weaver)

Imagination is more important than knowledge. (Albert Einstein)

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Posted: February 14th, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: academic, design, Education, infographics, quotations, Technology
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Image CC BY-NC mikeabney

Top 3

1. I thought that I kept myself fairly anonymous online to all but the people I want to interact with. Turns out I was wrong. Check out Panopticlick to start being worried about ‘browser fingerprinting’.
2. Vooks look either cool or completely pointless, depending on your point-of-view and mood. (via @betchaboy)
3. Dunbar’s Number is the theoretical maximum number of stable relationships an individual can sustain. It turns out that it’s about 150, which makes some people’s Twitter and Facebook profiles look ridiculous!

Tech.

• After some pressure from @mwclarkson, Prezi have announced their Edu Pro and Edu Enjoy licenses for use in the classroom. Now students can abuse Web 2.0 in the same way that they abuse Powerpoint…
• Need to create an iPhone app quickly and easily? Try http://isites.us!
• Google Docs now has thumbnail previews. The world rejoiced (although it doesn’t make my thesis look very pretty)
• Paul Stamatiou re-affirmed his geek credentials by pimping out his Macbook Pro with a RAID 0 array. I’m tempted, but not really ready to sacrifice my DVD-RW drive yet!
• The Apple iPad was never going to live up to the hype. Here are 10 things allegedly ‘missing’ from it.
• Engadget has a handy post for geeks: iPad – the definitive guide so far (via @chrispenny)
• It would be remiss of me not to embed the following YouTube video: Hitler debunks the iPad

• Apparently the iPad is ‘iBad’ for freedom according to the Free Software Foundation. They’ve got a point. But I’ll still be getting one.
• Stephen Fry weighed in, along with seemingly the rest of the world, with his views on what the iPad means for mankind.
• Thankfully, the iPad supports the ePub format for ebooks. You can find lots of these at epubbooks.com (via @chrispenny)
• The Polarize iPhone app allows you to create photos that look that they’ve been taken with a Polaroid camera. Cool! (example here)
• Screensplitr for the (jailbroken) iPhone allows you to output any app to another screen (via @wesfryer)
• I found this 360-degree video of Haiti unbelievable. It uses the same YellowBird camera that Google uses for ‘Street View’ (via OLDaily) I was going to embed it here, but it auto-plays, which is annoying…
• You can now upload email into a Google Apps email account using an (official) OSX app. This might be a good time for me to switch to an @dougbelshaw.com email address…
• That button in Tweetie that I’ve never pressed (see below – looks like a business card)? Turns out it adds contact details from someone’s contact details from Twitter to your iPhone address book. Sweet!

• Air Show is a free iPhone app that lets you stream your camera roll over wifi to any UPnP-enabled device (e.g. Xbox 360, PS3)
• Need a non-linear video editor (like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker) for Linux? Try OpenShot!
• These, apparently, are the 9 most important events in Open Source history (via @sc_r)
• Is the fact that only 20% of Twitter accounts are active ’shocking’? I can think of more things that shock me. Quite a lot. Most things, in fact. :
• Turns out that UK iTunes customers get a better deal than their US counterparts. But less cool stuff, unfortunately.
• The Apple SDK now allows VOIP over 3G. Hello Skype! (via @burntsugar)

• Flickrriver is an easy, enjoyable and intuitive way to view Flickr photos (via @betchaboy)
• You can now get Google Voice on the iPhone thanks to HTML 5 (but when is it coming to the UK?!)
• You can get Google Toolbar’s features without installing it, for those who are concerned about privacy.
• Sikuli is a free (and easy) way to automate stuff for free on Mac/Linux/Windows.
• Looks like Mozilla Weave is living up to its promise as it reaches v1.0. It syncs everything!
• Looking for a game to play on various platforms? BoingBoing’s got you covered
• Create Nintendo Mii-like avatar (via @tombarrett)

Productivity & Inspiration

• Lifehacker has 10 tips for better reading online and offline (definitely check out Stanza and Instapaper if you haven’t already!)
• Some things give you energy, some things drain it. These are the 10 worst energy-zappers, apparently.
• In a wonderful and timely post, Chris Guillebeau makes the simple yet extremely effective point that What you don’t do doesn’t matter
• I found the idea of ‘firing’ your community every so often fascinating. I’ve unfollowed everyone on Twitter and unsubscribed from all blogs before and started again. Perhaps time to do so a second time?
• ‘Hustle’ when you want to learn new things. I think we in the UK would call this ‘blagging’.
• Some ways to make your work environment more creative.
• I always work to music or ambient noise. RainyMood is now another tool in my toolkit.
• Always rushing around? It’s not good for you! Try How not to hurry

Education & Academic

• I was shocked to discover that some UK Local Authorities are going to pay £10,000 on a filter to remove comments from being displayed when students visit YouTube. Kerry Turner (@4goggas) who gave the heads-up also pointed out youtube.com/xl which I hadn’t used before. Handy!
• JISC published their final report into ebooks as (appropriately) a rather nice issuu document. Worth looking at the Executive Summary if nothing else!
• Not having actually used one doesn’t stop some people ruminating on how the iPad will change education. Inevitable.:  (via @baldy7)
• Futurelab has a really well put-together video about the future of education using the research from Beyond Current Horizons (from Beyond Current Horizons research) Apparently, half the population of Europe will be 50 by 2030 and will expect to live another 40 years (I’ll be 50 in December 2030 – scary!)

• Leigh Blackall wrote an interesting post on How to produce, publish and distribute a textbook these days
• I knew about the Open Educational Resource stuff but didn’t, strangely, know about OERcommons – nice search engine! (via @betchaboy)
• Lisa Nielsen (aka The Innovative Educator) has a great post on allowing kids to grow ‘digital wings’. I agree!
• This is a handy visualization to show how everyone from senior leaders to students can use internet technologies  (via @BFChirpy)
• Scott Leslie, one of the advisors for the 2010 Horizon Report, recorded some video interviews with some people who created the report (via OLDaily)

Data, Design & Infographics

• Dan Meyer threatened us all with driving round to our houses to force us to watch this excellent video called Vanishing Point. No need – it’s great!
• I bought Autograph for $6 this week (OSX only). It allows you to draw, in a simple way, using your Macbook trackpad – ace!
• Turns out the type of font you use determines how hard you perceive something to be. There’s a reason I use Georgia in everything I do – I read years ago (when I was at uni) that it has a positive effect, psychologically-speaking…
• This chart shows the number of mobile subscribers, per 100 people, worldwide.
• I saw this first time around but didn’t blog it. Some designers showed how much ink different fonts use by colouring in words with biros. If you’re concerned about the amount of ink you use, try Ecofont!
• I’m rather pleased with the sparkline (mini-graph) I added to the footer of this blog. There’s a kind-of howto here, but I’ll be screencasting how to do this next week. In the course of doing this I was reminded about the Google Charts API. Lots of services provide a front-end for Google Charts, but this tool in particular makes it very quick and easy to make stunning charts!
• There’s a guy who records everything he does. He creates wonderful and interesting visualizations in his annual report. Check it out! (try Daytum or your.flowingdata.com if you’re crazy enough to do likewise!)

• When you think about it, obviously Hubble telescope photographs are false-colour. Here’s how they do it. (via kottke.org)
• Here’s a visual representation of aid to Haiti

Misc.

• Boyce Avenue became famous doing covers of famous songs on YouTube. They’ve now signed a record deal. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, for some reason.
• Men can’t put their trousers around their waist beyond the age of 39. Kill me at 38 if I’m going to end up doing this. Please. (via @jenny_wood via @mickgwyther)
• Simple election posters may be effective on one leve, but then it allws people to create online generators to mock you:

• There are 3 phases of owning a computer. Not if you buy a Mac there aren’t…(via @dougpete)
• Wow! I’ve got to drive some of these roads before I die!  (via @glassbeed)
• Small-breasted pornstar? No work for you in Australia.
• Why write a book in 2010? Seth Godin’s got some good reasons.
• Apparently, just thinking about time makes your body sway – forwards if you’re thinking about the future, backwards if you’re thinking about the past. That’s worth an experiment Chez Belshaw, methinks…
• The US Navy reckon that video games improve ‘fluid intelligence’ (via @Quinnovator)
• Snowpeople. How cute and bizarre:

• Did Mallory and Irvine beat Hillary and Norgay to the summit of Everest?
• It’s all about the [attention] economy, stupid! (via @hrheingold)
• The average Kenyan spends over 50% of their disposable income on mobile communication (via @josiefraser … via @steiny)
• Haiti’s had a troubled history – and not just because of natural disasters (via @johndavitt via @worldhum)
• I’m definitely going to be reading Houdini’s The Right Way to do Wrong: an exposé of successful criminals courtesy of Google Books! (via BoingBoing)

Quotations

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends. (Aristotle)

If change doesn’t cost you anything then it isn’t real change. (John C. Maxwell)

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. (Natalie Goldberg)

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. (J. Michael Straczynski)

Posted: January 31st, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: academic, design, Education, Productivity, redesign, Technology
Comments: View Comments.

CC BY cooldudeandy01

On a personal level, I learned that when taking a toddler on a trip to somewhere (reasonably) far away like the National Railway Museum it’s always a good idea to ensure they have a very good sleep the night before, and to take a buggy. Even if you think they’re too big for it…

Top 3

• I watched David Blaine’s TED Talk entitled How I held my breath for 17 minutes this week. Riveting. A man focused and dedicated beyond belief!
• It turns out that language learning starts before birth. Unbelievable! (via @elonahartjes)
• The following Dilbert cartoon explains a lot about problems I sometimes run into – especially with the opposite sex:

Tech.

• Some (big-name) people have had problems with their Twitter page outranking their personal blog or website. Lifehacker, as you would expect, has aquick-and-easy fix (which I’ve already carried out here!)
• I got my hands on a Pro code for BumpTop, the 3D desktop app, this week. I concluded it’s ‘interesting’ rather than useful.
• My mother’s in the market for a point-and-shoot digital camera, so this warning by Lifehacker to stay under 7 megapixels to avoid photo noise and diffraction in such devices is timely!
• I love this video of mini-ninjas unboxing the Google Nexus One. Best. Unboxing. Video. Ever.

• YouTube has a multi-video uploader (I found out thanks to this post). Unfortunately, it would seem that Google Gears – which powers it – isn’t yet compatible with Mac OSX Snow Leopard?!
• Charles Leadbeater has an article in The Guardian in which he expresses concern (quite rightly) about corporate control of cloud computing. You get what you pay for, I suppose…
• RockYou, who provide apps and services for Facebook users, had a security breach recently and user account details were stolen. An analysis reveals, worryingly that some of the top passwords included ‘12345′, ‘123456′, 123456789′ and ‘password’. Unbelievable!
• Ethan from Flowtown.com got in touch to make me aware of what they do. Put in an email address, get details from various social networking (and other sites) about the person that owns it. Here’s what it has to say about me (not all correct!):

(I don’t live in Doncaster any more and I’m not on Facebook…)

• CaptionTube allows you to easily add captions to YouTube videos (via Mashable)
• Don’t joke about serious things on Twitter unless you want serious consequences.
• TwitterAlerts.net provides, well… Twitter alerts via email, SMS or IM (via TechXAV)

• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars out in the iPhone App store. Woop woop! (via TechXAV)
• G-Recorder allows you to record Skype to GMail (Windows only) (via @wilkoffnetwork)
• BumpTop, the 3D desktop app, launched for Mac OSX. I provided an overview here.
• Deloitte Canada have made some technology predictions for 2010. (via OLDaily) The most depressing? This one:

Cloud computing will grow faster than almost all other tech sectors, but it is not taking over the world because of concerns over reliability and security.

• Nokia is going to bring FREE turn-by-turn navigation to all of its smartphones. Wow!
• YouTube in HTML 5 is geek-tastic (and Flash-free) (via Mashable)
• The PirateBay – either pure evil or digital liberators, depending on your stance on copyright – have launched a VPN solution for private web browsing and downloading ($5/month)
• Appolicious have named their Top 10 apps of the week. I’m not sure how they’re justified in putting one that costs $999.99 in there, though…
• Lifehacker has a good guide on how to put your PC to good use whilst your sleeping. Most of these are repair and optimization-focused which, of course, if you’ve got a Mac you won’t have to do (as much).
• It turns out that, despite criticisms, Spotify (where I get all my music nowadays) is actually paying labels quite well, thank you very much.
• Firefox has ‘Personas’ (via @andyfield). I still prefer Google Chrome.

• Stephen Downes has produced an interesting visual overview of how ideas diffuse in the blogosphere in 2010 compared to 2005 (see above). I’d contend that it’s a bit more complicated than that – as a commenter points out, there’s no mention of Facebook. And what about half-way houses like Posterous? And Delicious/Diigo networks?
• If, as I kept getting this week, you get the WordPress ‘Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size’ error, here’s what to do!

Productivity & Inspiration

• Here’s 50 ideas for a healthy lifestyle that take 10 (or less) minutes to do. (Dumb Little Man)
• I like this Alternaview post on the fact that there is no such thing as a setback (it’s all about how you conceive of it).
• Mashable has a useful post on 18 online productivity tools for business. I’m already using most of them!
• Humble Pied is ‘one inspiring creative [person] sharing one piece of advice, all over iChat’. Interesting!
• Apparently, cutting out grains from your diet temporarily could be a good idea: “Grains come preloaded with anti-nutrients, chemical defenses like gluten and lectins that are designed to dissuade animals from eating them by causing digestive issues and “leaky gut” syndrome.” (via Zen Habits)
• Zen Habits also has some great advice on how to get started running.
• Evernote can improve your productivity. We all know that. But here are 6 ways in particular (via @markhodges)

Education & Academic

• BBC History as a fantastic history of the world through objects
• This post compares Google Apps and Microsoft’s Live@edu. It turns out neither is ‘best’ (via @bengrey)
• It looks like Google is actually serious about Knol – they’re rolling out more features.
• STRIDE Hanbook 8 is out, this time focusing on E-Learning. It has separate sections on ‘Conceptual Overviews’ and ‘Technologies and their Applications’ (via OLDaily)
• Do teachers need agents? I like the idea of them being traded like Premiership footballers…
• bigbluebutton is an OSS web conferencing system for distance education (via @helenrf)
• We all know that kids get bored and switched off at schools sometimes. But this is motivating, depressing and interesting all at once.
• The Conservatives (in the UK) want to create an ‘elite’ teaching profession by only paying for teacher training for those getting a first or a 2:1. Is that the best way forward?
• This is a quick way to make elearning templates in Powerpoint, if you need to!
• Alec Couros has expanded his Open Thinking Wiki even further. There are now 90+ videos for tech. and media literacy.
• Newsflash: if your kids are awake, they’re probably online. So what? So am I…

• According to another study, kids spend 53 hours a week on media, apparently (via TechXAV):
• D’Arcy Norman defined educational technology as “whatever stuff you need to use to support the practice of effective teaching and learning”. That’ll do for me! (via OLDaily)
• Ludoliteracy is a book about games in education. It’s a free PDF download. (via OLDaily)
• Will Richardson makes a good point: this is the first generation of students not to have a choice about using technology in their learning.
• In the UK, languages are becoming ‘twilight subjects’ in state schools.
• There is no adequate evidence for ‘learning styles’ (via @hjarche). Stephen Downes would argue (I think) that no evidence doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I’d defend myself with Occam’s Razor…

Data, Design & Infographics

• This video games by the numbers infographic is interesting. The average age of gamers is 32 and the average amount of time playing per week 18 hours, so I’m still justified in ramping it up!
• I like this hand-drawn overview of the electromagnetic spectrum (via Cool Infographics):

• Digital access varies hugely worldwide, according to this graphic.
• I’ve never heard of the term ‘information architecture’ before, but these are some useful resources!
• Google Earth can be used for stunning data visualizations (via datavisualization.ch):

• Bing destination maps look cool in a fake hand-drawn kind of way.
• I learned how to make a heatmap this week. It’s far from perfect, but a start!
• The UK government launched data.gov.uk this week (via The Guardian)
• What causes jet lag? This infographic explains it:

• I like this idea of always ’starting with the doorknob’. Makes sense!
• The Internet 2009 in numbers. It’s crying out for an infographic! (via @courosa)
• When people sing about the body in songs, what do they sing about? It turns out that it varies by genre! (via @csessums)

Misc.

• Tom has a great post entitled Lessons from the Uncanny Valley. Explains how Avatar is getting closer to seemless CGI/human interactions.
• It turns out that the sound of massive ice sheets cracking is almost exactly like the blasters in Star Wars. Ace!
• Hugh McLeod won’t be releasing any more gapingvoid cartoons on his blog as he wants more interaction with his community via email. And probably more sales too. Harold Jarche has reflected on what this means.
• Clay Shirky wants more female assholes, so to speak.
• Shirky has also pointed out that previously-scarce things are no longer valuable. Which means quite a lot for everything from business to education.
• DeweyMusic is a frontend for all of the wonderful (free) music on archive.org.
• I’ve taught the Vietnam war before, but wasn’t aware that McNamara’s actions has led to what’s known as the McNamara fallacy (via @ChrisPadden)
• Seth Godin says that too much data leads to not enough belief. How true!
• Could the reason our Stone-age ancestors settled down and started farming have something to do with beer?
• Depressive Realism is the theory that people suffering from depression actually have a better grip on ‘reality’ (via @courosa)

Quotations

He who knows enough is enough, will always have enough. Lao Tzu

It is never to late to be what you might have been. George Elliot

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it. Woodrow Wilson

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Louis Hector Berlioz

Knowledge will give you power, but character, respect. Bruce Lee

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. Louis L’Amour

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future. Kathleen Norris

And finally, as Nick Bilton from the New York Times states, and (appropriately) Scott McLeod links to, we’re all human aggregators now:

If someone approached me even five years ago and explained that one day in the near future I would be filtering, collecting and sharing content for thousands of perfect strangers to read – and doing it for free – I would have responded with a pretty perplexed look. Yet today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share.

More important, I couldn’t conceive of a world of news and information without the aid of others helping me find the relevant links.

Posted: January 24th, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: data, Education, infographics, learning, quotations, Technology
Comments: View Comments.

Just to mix things up a bit, I thought I’d do this as a series of videos – it seemed appropriate to the subject matter. Learning Score is a visual planning tool for educators. And. It. Rocks.

1. Official promotional video
2. My quick overview
3. Planning a lesson from scratch in 10 mins

1. Official promotional video

2. My quick overview

3. Planning a lesson from scratch in 10 mins

You can get a 14-day free trial at http://www.learningscore.org/trial, but if you’re quick you can get a longer trial at http://www.learningscore.org/bett!

Posted: January 19th, 2010
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: Education, learning, Learning Score, lesson planning, software, teaching, Technology, video, YouTube
Comments: View Comments.

CC BY-NC-SA Jeezny

I know I said that these posts would be called ‘Sunday Scientia’ but that, erm, isn’t very snappy. Or descriptive.

Top 3

• From the wow-as-a-History-teacher-this-rocks-my-world department, it turns out that the Egyptian pyramids weren’t built by slaves after all!
• Matt Mullenweg (he of the WordPress-coding fame) turned 26 this week. He made some resolutions for the coming year (much as I did) and on the list was ‘learn more about Captology’. It turns out that Captology is ‘the study of computers as persuasive technologies’. Interesting!
• Nathan Yau from FlowingData has created a great infographic from UNdata called Graphical World Progress Report. It’s fascinating and obtainable as a print. All proceeds go towards the UNICEF relief effort in Haiti.

Tech.

• Need to send and receive anonymous questions? Try formspring.me (via @burntsugar)
• I’m sure that Graffiti markup is going to be extremely useful, but for me it just looks extremely cool…
• I was reminded of Jott for voice to text transcription on-the-go via a post on dy/dan
• Google offer some very competitive pricing for extra GMail/Picasa storage. I thought this could be used for off-site backup using gDisk (Mac OSX only), but it didn’t seem to be compatible with Snow Leopard…
• The wireless networks at my house have fairly boring names. I like these ones better (via @swissmiss)

• David Pogue reckons that the iPhone is for sheep, whereas Android is for geeks. Baa baa. (via Smarterware.org)
• Reed’s law on social networking sounds very grand and scientific, but is saying that they scale because they can have sub-groups very profound? (via @ewanmcintosh)
• There’s lots and lots of free ebooks out there – especially useful if you’ve got an Amazon Kindle – ebooksearchr caught my eye in particular (via @coolcatteacher)
• Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, reckons that privacy is ‘no longer a social norm’. I’d contend that he’s correct about a certain kind of privacy but it would take me a full blog post to explain…
• Aza Raskin wonders whether we need a Creative Commons for Privacy? (via @chrismessina)
• It turns out selling ebooks DRM-free doesn’t hurt sales. In fact, despite rampant piracy, it was found that sales actually went up!
• Tuper Tario Tros is a mashup of Tetris and Super Mario. Play Tetris (kind of) as usual, then play Super Mario on the landscape you’ve created!
• From the oh-my-goodness-this-is-unbelievable department, RCA Airnergy apparently charges gadgets using wifi signals. Which kind of makes me worry about what they’re doing to my body… (via @timlauer)
• You can now upload any type of file to Google Docs (with resumable uploads). Handy!
• Ever need to edit a PDF? Me too. Try this! (via @maggiev)
• I won’t be buying an e-reader, and especially not after reading 2010: the only year of the e-reader. They’re stop-gap devices.
• Need some Creative Commons-licensed media? Try looking here. (via @russeltarr)
• If you need some guidance on how to use Creative Commons-licensed media in presentations, you could do worse than checking this out. (via @downes)
• Alan Levine wondered what happens when a CC-licensed photo vanishes? (hint: it’s still CC-licensed)
• Are you still, as I was, wondering “why use Google Wave?” Try this FAQ. I especially like the definition of it as a multimedia wikichat.
• Need to schedule some tweets? Twuffer is a Twitter ‘buffer’. (via @cwebbtech)
• You can crop & remove ads/offensive content from YouTube videos using safeshare.tv (via @kiwicarol)
• Although I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, if you’ve been crying out for a way to use up to 24 cursors on one screen you can now with this Microsoft tool. (via @tobywilson)
• There’s a bewildering number of iPhone apps, which is why I was pleased to come across app.itize.us, a site dedicated to ‘the best produced and designed iPhone apps’ (via BoingBoing)

Productivity & Inspiration

• I was delighted to come across this ‘How I work’ series again from a few years back, including how Marissa Meyer at Google deals with the amount of information she has to process. (via dy/dan)
• If you’re not great at making decisions, Hunch might help. Or not.
• Happiness, it would seem, spreads like a virus. Are you infectious?
• Almost everyone I know uses an online calendar, usually Google Calendar. But what about if you need something slightly different? This online calendar roundup mentioned Cozi.com which looks especially useful for families.
• Zen Habits looks like it’s turning into a list blog, but when Leo delivers posts like 20-plus amazing fitness blogs to inspire you, I don’t mind too much.
• Kathy Sierra (@KathySierra) recommended a book about the link between exercise and brain performance. That’s recommendation enough for me – I just bought it! If you don’t follow Kathy on Twitter already, do so now.
• Google have reorganized their Become a GMail Ninja help section to be more useful:  (via @mortenoddvik)

Education & Academic

• Here’s some useful resources for iPod Touch in Education (via @johnjohnston)
• The new English GCSE could include study of Facebook and Twitter according to the Telegraph (via @JenM)
• Here are the Best Education blogs of 2009. Allegedly.
• The 2010 Horizon Report is out. Executive Summary here – open content and mobile technologies FTW!
• The Guardian has a useful article on Why playing in virtual worlds has a lot to teach children (via @Eingang)
• TeachMeetBETT 2010 happened on Friday. I wasn’t there, unfortunately. Still, it was previewed in the Guardian and you can catch it again here.
• 270,000 poorer pupils in UK are to get free laptops under the ‘Home Access’ scheme (via @csessums)
• Harold Jarche links to a useful Community maturity model on Flickr.
• The claim that students only have an attention span of 10 mins is dealt with by James Clay. As he says, if you can only gain students’ attention for ten minutes, you’re doing something wrong. Having said that, I have heard it said that students have the attention span of their age plus 2 minutes… (via @downes)
• Studies have shown that music education can build up your brain in a way that can have a positive effect for the rest of your life. So that Grade 4 piano aged 9 wasn’t a complete waste of my parents’ money… (via @elonahartjes)

Data, Design & Infographics

• You’ve probably noticed from this site that I like minimalism. Swissmiss links to some great ones.
• Macbooks cost different amounts around the world, which makes for an interesting infographic.
• I found this infographic showing what covers the surface of the earth. Have a look below – I was surprised that there’s as much land covered by snow as good farming land):

• This infographic showing ’social networking via letters’ in the 19th century shows that having to cope with a glut of information is nothing new!
• I’ve been using the Sleep Cycle iPhone app for a week or so, which is why I found interesting this infographic showing what makes you feel good according to Circadian rhythms.
• Whilst the majority of the western world has increasingly top-heavy populations in terms of age, that’s not the case everywhere in the world. That makes for an informative infographic showing population of the world under the age of 15. (via @derekeb via @benleis)
• I’m aware of the basics of using typography online, but this takes it one step further. Great stuff! (via @brynn via @smashingmag)
• Nathan Yau of FlowingData has a ‘data underload’ series at the moment. I liked this one on what it takes to amuse us at different ages:

Misc.

• Metaphor can be a powerful way of looking at some complex issues. Take organizational theory and decentralization, for example. A ’starfish’ and ’spider’ metaphor seems pretty useful (via @hrheingold)
• 50 dangerous things you should let your children do [book]. Not so sure about ‘looking at the sun’ but probably agree about some of the others.
• Finding the right images for blog posts and design projects is all about searching using the right words. Try this Getty keyword guide and Stockvault.net for some free stock images.
• We had a lot of snow. For us. People routinely get a lot more (via @ransomtech):

• Some people, apparently, have felt the blues after watching Avatar. Boo hoo.
• If you’re using social media seriously, you might want to check out Social Media – a legal guide.
• Martin Weller asks Do you have to do social media to get social media? Yes. You do.
• BoingBoing has an amazing photo of Martian dunes:

• The BBC has a list of 100 things we didn’t know last year. Breaking wind is a bookable offence in football?! (via swissmiss)
• Want to take photos with High Dynamic Range? Try this definitive guide to HDR photography (via @johnjohnston)
• Flickr Flow shows the colours of the year.

Quotations

It’s better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly. (via @igorkheifets)

The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was before you came in. – James Baldwin (via @heatherdenton)

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great – Machiavelli (via @dahara)

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough. – John Christian Bovee (via @dahara)

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. – Ralph Waldo Emerson (via @IsabelLambert)

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them – Benjamin Franklin (via @lynnegordon)

Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. – Theodore Levitt (via @TheArtMan)

Posted: January 17th, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: academic, Education, infographics, inspiration, Productivity, Technology
Comments: View Comments.

The most significant things I’ve learned this week have been snow-related. Have a quick look at the above YouTube video of me building an igloo. That took me 7 hours! Instead of getting all philosophical and talking about how good it felt to create something out of nothing and how I started to feel ‘at one’ with the snow, I’ll reflect on some practical considerations:

1. I should estimate how long things are likely to take before they start
2. The size of an igloo depends on the angle of the walls – easy to forget!
3. There are lots of different types of snow.
4. Igloos are actually quite warm!

I considered sleeping in it, but having worked on it for 7 hours straight every single muscle in my body hurt. I went in the bath, read my book and went to bed…

Here’s a brief overview of other stuff I’ve learned this week, broken down by category.

Tech

• Flocking.me allows you to search through your friends’ tweets only (via TechXAV)
• It’s possible to embed Flickr images and show any notes (as I did on my post Mac OSX apps I currently use). I used this script but you can also use Mbedr or this Wordpress plugin.
• This is a cool flip-type clock screensaver for Mac OSX
• Mashable has a great post entitled iPhone Apps List 2010: 700+ Apps Reviewed by Category
• SnagIt, a great screen-capture app, is now available in beta for Mac OSX
• Pretty much everything you need to know in terms of how Google’s new Nexus One phone stacks up against the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone can be found in this post at Mashable.
• Encoding.com looks like a rather useful way to transcode video so it’s in a suitable format for various mobile devices (via Mashable)
• Confused by what the ‘Semantic Web’ and ‘Web 3.0′ are? Try this video!
• Jay Cross posted links to Handy free online tools this week – including the rather useful-looking Rypple (for getting anonymous feedback)
• This Google page is very handy for showing people the various types of searches you can do and information you can find quickly and easily.
• I really, really want this iPhone stand that makes it look like an iMac!
• Chris Messina, only a few days younger than me, has celebrated his 29th birthday by announcing he’s going to work for Google. I suddenly feel a lot more confident about Google’s ‘openness’.
• Google Chrome extensions are now available for Mac (if you install the Developer build). I’m running several without slowdown! (via Mashable)
• CommonCraft have a new, rather useful, video about how to protect your online reputation (via @mtechman)
• It’s true, I wasn’t aware of these 60 educational game sites that you’ve probably never seen (via @datruss)
• Balsamiq is a nifty site to help you mock-up websites, iPhone apps and other digital stuff quickly and easiliy (via @nickdennis)
• Chris Brogan brought my attention to his Brief and informal Twitter etiquette guide.
• Swaggle.mobi allows you to send text messages (SMS) to groups. When they reply, it goes to the whole group (via @DanitaR)

Productivity & Inspiration

• 100 All-Time Best Productivity Tips for Working & Learning from Home
• Hurry Up and Wait (why slowing down is good for us, according to futurists consulted by GOOD)
• 23 ways to work less and achieve more (Dumb Little Man)
• The Happiness Project – one woman’s quest to make her life even happier following various guides (via BoingBoing)
• Benjamin Franklin’s 13-point plan for virtuous living (BoingBoing)
• How to focus your attention and avoid distractions (alternaview)
• 9 secret ways to persuade and influence people (Dumb Little Man)
• Seth Godin on why you should stop blaming other people and external circumstances from holding you back.

Academic

• I read about Tetrads on Harold Jarche’s blog and incorporated it into my Ed.D. thesis. He’s also got a useful post entitled Sharing tacit knowledge on how hierarchies aren’t great for emergent practices.
• MIT Press have free access to a series of journals on Youth, Identity & Digital Media.
• Wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology” that is replacing hierarchies in forward-thinking organizations.
• Chris Lott has been on fire this week at Ruminate – first providing a neat summary of the current ‘openness’ debate (prompted by Google) and thenmaking some analogies between openness and the work of Umberto Eco. Great work, Chris!
• Stephen Downes talks about the difference between developing capacities versus delivering subjects in Questioning Pedagogy.
• Ben Grey, in a post which I’m more than likely to take inspiration from and emulate, has made explicit his educational philosophy. Much to agree with there!

Data, Design & Infographics

• Mashable on How Data Will Impact the Way We Do Business. We will know pretty much everything there is to know about ourselves soon…
• The subjective nature of visualization and its power as a political tool is outlined in Chart Wars (Infosthetics)
• FlowingData links to a great infographic showing how popular music has become louder in recent years through the use of compressors. I also really appreciated Nathan’s post on 11 ways to visualize changes over time.
• Chart Porn links to an infographic showing the History of the Book.
• Fast Company shows how some graphic designers have ditched the resume for an infographic about their career thus far (more at Cool Infographics). FC also have a post linking to Pentagram, where a faux psychologist will ‘analyse’ you to determine your font type (password = Character)
• Datavisualization.ch has a timeline of major events and trends (1750-2100). The infographic interested me less than the excellent use of Zoomorama.
• Spyre Studies has a great post talking about the anatomy of an infographics and how there are 5 steps to create a powerful visual.

Misc.

This made me laugh! (via Mashable)

• The Flickr blog highlighted some excellent pictures of ancient standing stones.
• BoingBoing commented on the ascendancy of the non-private person (who has nothing to lose). The BBC also has an interesting piece on How online life distorts privacy rights for all (expect a blog post on this issue soon!)
• GigaOM has a fantastic post on How to present like Steve Jobs. Did you know he spends 90 hours preparing a one-hour presentation?!
• The Future of Work is a very interesting presentation on how the whole workplace and concept of work has changed in the last 10 years.
• Academic Earth’s Media, Education and the Marketplace looks good – especially Henry Jenkins’ lecture on Media Literacy as a strategy for combatting moral panic (via @ewanmcintosh)

This resonated with me – via Jennifer Hagy @ indexed

• The ever-relevant and insightful Harold Jarche looks back at Seth Godin’s predictions for 2009 from 5 years ago (startlingly accurate) and his own from 2007, as well as looking forward to new and emerging business models.
• I love mashups and Best of Bootie 2009 absolutely rocks. Especially DJ Earworm’s United State of Pop 2009 (top 25 Billboard songs, mashed up!).
• Mashable reflects on ways social media has changed us. This post makes a lot of sense and I’m going to start to use the term ‘ambient intimacy’ to explain a lot of what goes on, online. It makes sense.

BBC News posted a great satellite photo of what Britain looked like without the Gulf Stream last week.

• There are some places in the world you’re just not allowed to go. This post on listverse (via @dougpete) highlights the ‘Top 10′ of these.
• Vicki Davis (aka Cool Cat Teacher) in a reflective and revealing post entitled Sojourner Truth outlines her recent struggles with blogging and celebrity.

Quotations

You’re only given a little spark of madness. You musn’t lose it. (Robin Williams)

A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it. (Bob Hope)

(both via @gbmiii)

Posted: January 10th, 2010
Categories: Things I Learned This Week
Tags: academic, data, design, igloo, infographics, inspiration, links, Productivity, reading, snow, Technology, video, YouTube
Comments: View Comments.

</pretentious title>

You can’t expect people to go from zero to Twitter junkie in 3.2 seconds. The other day, as I jogged past the local parish noticeboard, I thought, “I should take a picture of that and put it online.”

Somewhat serendipitously, I came across a link to http://hyperloco.wordpress.com. Have a guess what you find when you visit the site? Yep:

This is Noticeboard 1.5. Technology-enhanced, but perpetuating a paradigm.

Whether it’s ‘your job’ to facilitate technology integration or not, remember that there are stages between where people are and where people like you are. It’s easy to forget that you had to go through the inbetween stages too. Although you can learn from others’ experiences, it will be different for you and the people around you.

Remember that.

Posted: December 19th, 2009
Categories: Technology
Tags: hyperlocal, integration, noticeboards, Technology
Comments: View Comments.

Image CC BY-NC-SA Stuck in Customs

I stumbled across this quotation from the Chinese sage Chuang-Tzu, writing 2,500 years ago, in Marshall McLuhan’s The Gutenberg Galaxy (p.29-30):

As Tzu-Gung was travelling through the regions north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into the well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very meagre.

Tzu-Gung said, “There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?” Then the gardener stood up, looked at him and said, “And what would that be?”

Tzu-Gung replied, “You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well.”

Then anger rose up in the old man’s face, and he said, “I have hear my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.”

Technology integration in education may seem to make sense in terms of society and the future, but is that everything? What about individual identity and the ’spiritual’ dimension?

An open question.

Posted: December 17th, 2009
Categories: Education, Technology
Tags: Education, Gutenberg Galaxy, integration, Marshall McLuhan, quotation, Technology
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