Hans Rosling on the World Population

Those of you who read these pages will know that I am a fan of Hans Rosling and GapMinder. His graphical analysis tools are cool.

So - here's his recent TED talk on the impact of Religion on Babies born ... watch for the simple explanation at the very end which uses some very simple technology to explain his view that the world population will peak at a certain level.

Enjoy - it's 13 minutes of enjoyment of maths, social science and thinking.



And by the way - the graphing engine that Rosling uses is either the same or similar as the graphing option in Google Apps spreadsheet - so if you haven't tried it yourself yet on some of your own data, then head to the Motion Chart option in Google's spreadsheet.

TED for Ed

Many of us know and love TED for the vast array of inspirational "talks" that have graced the internet over recent years. Today sees the official launch of Ted-Ed, an initiative to introduce the world's greatest teachers and animators to classrooms across the world.

Don't get the wrong message to start - this is an initiative to try and generate great lessons by joining great ideas by teachers with great animators - so there is not much content available yet (12 videos there at present) - the initiative is designed to get you to nominate your ideas to TED and then the community will do its thing and bring the best to life. That's the way I read it anyway. This is from the PRNewswire release:

"In the first stage of this initiative, TED-Ed launches a new education channel on YouTube today [http://www.youtube.com/tededucation]. It offers up original video content that marries the talent of great teachers with top animators to bring concepts like neuroscience to life in in short videos, typically 5 minutes long.  The channel is part of the youtube.com/edu offering – a collection of half a million educational videos – available in many schools as well as to the public online.
Through its open submission process, animators and educators from around the globe can contribute lesson plans and video reels on any topic [http://education.ted.com/]. Select lesson submissions will be matched with chosen visualizers to create video lessons worth learning, watching, and sharing."

Here's the launch video on the Youtube channel for TED-Ed.



So - I'd encourage you to do three things.

1. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for TED-Ed - this is the link
2. Suggest a lesson or nominate someone you know to contribute the great idea - we must have some of those here in our own community.
3. Share this blog post with colleagues of your around the country - as I said earlier - many of us have benefitted from using TED talks, so the more we get for education, the better our classrooms might be.

Thanks TED and good luck!

TED Talks: The mathematics of cities ... our future?

Have just watched Geoffrey West give a talk on the "simple" mathematics that governs the growth of rats, people, cities and companies. Well worth 17 minutes of anyone's time.

Experiments in Learning

If you read Tom Friedman's "World is Flat", then you will recall the story about the airline that outsourced some of it's holiday planning and advice to retired people that may just be answering your phone call while they were sitting in their hot tub ... or something like that anyway.

I've just watched Sugata Mitra on a short 7 minute clip about "Gateshead Granny Cloud" - a project where elderly in the UK are donating an hour a week of their time to connect with students in India to help learning. Interesting. The video is below. But what may be more interesting is the bit after the "grannies" have had there turn. The two sections on letting young kids loose on the internet armed with nothing more than what i guess is a pretty damn big question. In the example "Where does language come from?" - 

I've seen enough in this clip to make me go and join the 103,000 others who have watched the TED talk from Mitra of a few years ago - I've known of it since it appeared on the TED site - just not bothered to watch.

And as I watch I have numerous thoughts running through my head ...some of them are

• how do we capture the enthusiasm of our students in the same way?
• how do we encourage staff to take the chance and try something like this?
• why don't we encourage these types of behaviours - especially at year levels where we should be experimenting?
• what might our students have to contribute to students in other parts of the world in a similar way? [I think I am going to have a shot at something like this with one of my classes this year. In fact - it may just become the target for next term's work for some of my team. 

I've been inspired by Alan November's "meaningful work" and it's time to test what I hear from so many sources - that today's youth want to make a contribution. 

So, I will watch Mitra's TED talk over the next few days. Here it is  - all 17 minutes of it.

Learning with a Real Purpose

Two years ago I had a class that studied the 2008 Horizon Report and published a wiki as the end product of their work. What I have found interesting is that while they finished their work 2 years ago, their wiki site still attracts around 50 unique visitors per day from countries like the US, UK, Russia, Canada, Ireland and Australia - oh, and a few from NZ.
This reinforced to me the importance of having a real purpose for learning. In the past if students had created a research report on the Horizon Report it would likely be be shared with at most two people - the student and the teacher. Here - the students have created a resource which is being shared with upwards of 1000 people per month.
Alan November talks of learning with a real purpose in his TEDxNYED. This neat little 15 minute talk of several student stories has one really cool one - the one about the 13 year old girl using Fan Fiction. "When I wake up I have to decide - do I write for my teacher or do I write for the world?"
Enjoy Alan's talk - he's a great thinker and practitioner.

Is this the future of K-12 education?

Bill Gates hints to the audience at the end of this TED talk by Salman Khan that "you have just seen a glimpse of the future of education". I wonder if you agree?

To start with, here's the talk - it's 20 minutes worth, but it is worth it imho, particularly if you are a teacher of maths, science or geography - and from memory the Khan Academy also has a growing library of accounting and economic resources too.



So, is it the future of education?
Alan November gave a recent interview on TV in the US where he quoted brain research stating that "if you make the mistake at home in your homework, chances are you'll make the same mistake in the test - even if the error is corrected the next day".

So, maybe Khan is right.
With digital video content -

• you can watch it as long as you like
• you can rewind it as often as you like
• you don't need to be made feel uncomfortable by taking "an age" to get the point about something
• you will always get a consistent approach from the video
• you won't be told "I've already explained that twice"

Are you prepared to turn your classrooms around as Khan suggests?

What might some of the pros and cons of this approach be?

Just what is the point of the current curriculum in schools?

Conrad Wolfram gave a talk at TED in Oxford earlier this year. it's just been posted on the TED site. And wow, does it pose some big questions. If you are a maths teacher, you will likely form an immediate view of what he is saying. I don't think there is any middle ground here. You will either agree with him or you won't.

But there are bigger questions here too than just those pertaining to maths. The way in which we very likely approach many subjects in the school curriculum, for example. And the point about exams ... I think I've made this point several times in the past.

I've shown WolframAlpha to Year 12 students about to embark on their IB extended essay research over the past 12 months. What I find truly scary is not so much that they haven't seen WolframAlpha before, but that many of them still don't even know that there are search engines other than Google. And even scarier, that Google even has an advanced search tab, and worse, you can look through Google Books or Scholar.

The whole point of using computers for powerful things ... not trivial things ... comes out in Conrad's talk. (He makes reference to an online tutorial showing how to manually solve a problem.)

So, this is I think one of the better TED talks I've seen. It asks some serious questions. It hints at a solution. I wonder if you agree? I rate this talk up there with those of Hans Rosling and Ken Robinson, both of whom I have featured on this blog in the past.

So - take 17 minutes of your valuable time and have a look.

Another inspiring TED talk - visualizing data with David McCandless

Making sense out of data is an art. Hans Rosling has shown this very graphically event times with his wonderful bubble charts. And now we have David McCandless, a UK journalist turned data analyst, bringing clarity to a wealth of data sets. And of course, if there is one thing that the Internet has brought us over recent times, it's a wealth of data.

So enjoy McCandless' talk - he's got some great examples to share, and enjoy the data right at the end about that volcano that shut down Europe in the middle of the year.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Gapminder Releases Desktop Version

Hans Rosling's awesome visual statistics on the Gapminder site just got more accessible for everyone. The most requested feature on their web site was a desktop version for those times when you don't have the web or can't rely on it - like in a classroom, or for a presentation. Well, they've just released a desktop version which is just brilliant - probably even easier to use than the web version.

Here's a quick map looking at CO2 emissions since 1820 - interesting graph to track by the way.

The easy to use help file looks like this

If you haven't seen Gapminder, you should. It is a great discussion starter for mathematics, statistics, philosophy, geography, social sciences, science ...

And if you haven't seen Hans' TED talks - they too are just incredible. Here's his 2007 talk I've referred to before ..

Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything | Video on TED.com

In my inbox this morning was the usual TED update - and I noticed that Stephen Wolfram was speaking on "Computing a Theory of Everything". I've not heard him speak before, but I have used (at a very low level) his Mathematica software when it first came out in the early 90's. And I have used and actively promoted use of the Wolfram|Alpha search engine he released last year.

I'll need to rewatch this talk at least a few more times to get a better understanding of some of what he said. But a couple of immediate observations ...

1. He's very, very, very smart.
2. He has ideas that are difficult to explain to a lay person (from a physics view point anyway), but he understands that - that's the reason he is investing so much time and money into exploring if the universe is computational. And that's why Wolfram|Alpha is such an awesome tool. The thought that a human language interface (like Wolfram|Alpha uses) might be available to create hitherto extremely complex models of "everything" is mind boggling.

The first part of his talk I found a bit slow - but once past the first 5 or 6 minutes and he gets onto Wolfram|Alpha - then it gets interesting.

The talk is below - watch one of the best brains around in the physics/mathematics space and see if you are inspired to learn more. If so, head to this link for a 13 minute overview by Stephen on what Wolfram|Alpha can do for you right now. Any teacher or student at secondary level can use this.

TED India Live - See Hans Rosling and Pranav Mistry live!!!

Now - this should be very cool for anyone interested in data visualisation and the power of technology to increase learning opportunities. In my inbox from the great people at TED this morning

Dear TEDsters -
We're thrilled to announce that Day 1 of TEDIndia and the closing session on Day 3 will be webcast live, to the world, for free. The webcast is hosted by the Times of India, TEDIndia's online media partner.
On Thursday, the first day of the webcast, you can watch at ted.indiatimes.com (note that this page is not yet live).
Read more about the TEDIndia speaker program.
Webcast schedule (all times are India Standard Time , GMT+5:30):
Thursday, November 5
Session 1: Fast Forward -- 11am-12:45pm
Session 2: Not Business as Usual -- 2:15pm-4pm
Session 3: Wonder. Wonders. -- 4:45pm-6:30pm
Saturday, November 7
Session 9: Within You, Without You -- 11am-12:45pm
Want to watch the stream on your television screen? Download instructions for connecting your television to a Mac or a PC.

So, why am I excited about this? Two immediate reasons -the first is:
Hans Rosling is presenting in the first session. I have mentioned his awesome GapMinder web site and talks before. The opportunity to see him present his latest live just seems like any mathematicians or social scientists dream come true. His session is set to go at 11am Thursday 5th in Mysore India - so by my calculation this is 6.30pm Thursday evening NZ time.

The second is Pranav Mistry - Pranav is a student at MIT and is the brains behind a project that goes under the name Sixth Sense. If you haven't seen Pattie Mae's TED presentation earlier in the year then make sure you have a look at the video below - it'll give you an insight into the work.



Pranav's session is due for kick off around 12.15am Friday morning - so might be a bit of an ask - but if you're a night owl ...

And there are a host of other peple delivering inspirational talks too - you never know - you just might find something useful.

You can watch these at this site http://ted.indiatimes.com/ - it is not live yet.

Enjoy!

Data Visualisation, Authentic Learning, and Why the Web is so Cool.

Two years ago I had no idea who Hans Rosling was. Then I happened upon his first TED talk where he floored me with the way that his software gave a powerful visual meaning to the wealth of data that was, at that stage, locked away in the archives of the United Nations. 


Hans' first TED talk was inspiring - as is his second.

Now that all of the UN data is available, you have an incredibly powerful tool to work with students of all ages when considering many of todays major issues. All available at Hans' web site http://www.gapminder.org/

What is really cool about the software is that it tracks data over time and plays as an animation. There are much more powerful and important data sets than the one I have used here - I chose education (Yr 8 Maths grades) and compare against a technology indicator of internet users per 100 people. Now of course, there was no web before 1995, so that's where this data starts. The two images show starting and end points.

So, if you are looking for statistics with impact and real meaning, or are looking for a discussion starter for a Religious Studies or Social Studies or Geography or Business or anything lesson, then use Gapminder - and use the talks from Rosling - truly inspirational, all due to the power of the web and the awesome story telling tools it provides.

The Long Long Tail of Education

I was lucky enough a couple of years ago to hear Chris Anderson (of WIRED fame) talk about "Long Tail economics" and its application to technology. It was at the Digital Summit 2.0 run by the NZ Government. I remember the talk quite clearly and wrote about the potential application of long tail economics to K-12 education when I returned to work a few days later. It's a thought that has stayed with me since. Just when will "education" become "commoditised"? And what will that mean for the independent school sector? [Note - you can hear Chris talk about the Long Tail and Technology on TED].

Now, in this talk Chris talks of "free" - particulary in reference to band width and fibre optic capacity. As you may know, the capacity of fibre is huge - currently capable of delivering 2500 CDs of data per second, and increasing at a rate of 3 fold every year or so. The FREE notion is the basis for Chris's new book -"Free : The Future of a radical Price". His promo for the book makes some interesting analogies (Gillette, coffee machines, cell phones, video game consoles) of products basically "given away for zero or very little cost, with the benefit to the company coming in downstream consumables. I thought that probably printers would have been a better example for many today - zero cost for the printer and exorbitant cost for the ink/toner. Malcolm Gladwell doesn't agree with all of Mr Anderson's assumptions - in his New York Times review he points to the inability of YouTube to make a profit as a key flaw in Anderson's position. As Gladwell points out, with a potential audience of 75 billion, even 75 billion x a few cents is still a lot of money.

Despite this, its hard to argue too much against Anderson in the educational sphere, and particularly the K-12 space - a space where education, at least in my country, is supposed to be free anyway. MIT have provided vast libraries of free content through their Open Courseware site. The Open Educational Resource movement (eg OER Commons, Wikieducator) are other examples where anyone can access learning material. Couple these types of resources with the myriad of other online sources and the ability to customise learning opportunities for people of any age is just sitting there waiting fore someone to challenge the embedded educational systems in many countries.

As Robinson points out, most societies have a similar system of education, so surely some clever group is going to challenge the status quo? As bandwidth continues to increase, the availability of courseware/content continues to increase and your ability to participate in communities anywhere continues to increase, then putting all of these together seems to make online learning for any age highly likely ...

... Or is the embeddedness of education, broader governmental involvement and the strange way we assess student learning at the senior end of schooling enough to suppress any revolution in this area? Perhaps the custodial reasons for existing school (aka baby sitting while parents work) is still way too strong for this change to happen?

We are awash in a sea of change, and that rate of change is increasing. With so much knowledge and information available on the network, it does seem rather quaint that we still have so many classrooms around the world that exist in a way where the teacher is still seen as the font of all knowledgea

Why I love TED

I've just had the chance to watch Clay Shirky's TED talk from May of this year on how the likes of Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites are changing the fundamental notion of media and media construction and consumption. If you haven't heard it, spend 17 minutes now ... it is well worth the watch.



This video complements perfectly Ray Kurzweil's on the continued exponential growth in computing in general terms. (If you haven't seen Ray's original talk from 2005, then watch it first!) Thanks TED!

i, i, i ... it's all about i or do i mean me?

I've had my iPod Touch for about 3 weeks now - wish I had enough to get an iPhone but the local rates for what I'd use it for are prohibitive, so iPod Touch it is.

Since I've had it my 7 year old now wants to learn a foreign language on it (after he saw some stuff off iTunes) and I love the way it collects my email and calendar so that I know what I am supposed to be doing during the day. In fact, the thing I am using it least for at the moment is listeningto music. I watch TED talks regularly on it (Ray Kurzweil's update on technology and exponential growth is my current favourite.)

I have noticed a tendency for it to loose network settings (home and school) and so I guess I need to explore that a little more - could get frustrating if I don't resolve that soon. However, I do need to start using my new Pulse Smartpen too - showed it to my latest Horizon Project class on Friday and they were blown away to the point of calling it a hoax!

But NECC is nearly upon us - one of my favourite events of the year where I can start to catch up on some of my own PD - and just today came across this site which looks to be a repository of everything iPod/iPhone for education. So, more time to be devoted to i-something ... it's just that I sometimes feel that the i-something is just all about work and not about me ... think I need to change that somehow.