Infographics by Visual.ly

Infographics interest me - for a number of reasons. I'm basically a visual learner is probably the main one, but I'm also a closet mathematician so always look for a way to present data in visually attractive ways.

A long time ago I registered for visual.ly and heard nothing until my email this morning reminded me they were there and are now "open for business". Well, kind of - they have a couple of options only at the moment taking your stats from Twitter and Facebook. I took the opportunity to see just what the "you are what you tweet" option gave - and the result is below.  What I look forward to is the tools becoming readily available to build infographics like the ones they have here.

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!

The Ethics of Solitude - vs Group and Shared Everything

I have subscribed to the Ethics Newsline for a while now - ever since I started teaching the IB ITGS course a few years ago. Often I merely skim their regular updates, but this time I was intrigued by the title of one of their posts. The Ethics of Solitude.

In a world where everything seems social, from the peer pressure "need" to be on FaceBook and Twitter, to be on Tumblr, LinkedIn or whatever. Everywhere we seem to be challenged to be "social" in our use of technology. Maybe this is a reaction to the often heard comment that technology makes people less social - they have less need for community because they can "commune" at a distance now. In fact, a report I heard yesterday on radio news stated that online dating was now second most common way to meet a love interest - behind being introduced by a mutual friend.

So - I read the Ethics of Solitude. It's worth a read. The world is not made up of clones. Everyone will have a different perspective. At a time where we do seem to spend a lot of time on sharing and teamwork - and they are important - there is a place for solitude.

Enjoy the read.

The Importance of Being Awesome

Faris Yakob is the Chief Innovation Officer for some crowd ... likely a media and advertising company. What attracted me to this 18 minute video was not, however, his name nor the fact I had never heard of him. It was the comment on my Mashable feed that he was a founding partner of Spies and Assassins. What a great title - and on their page they are "Thinkers of Things. Makers of stuff." I love that! That and the title of his presentation which is basically that the future belongs to the most awesome.

Now, at first look, don't be put off by his style of presentation,or the fact that this is just a video of it and some of the detail on his slides doesn't show all that well. There are some very important messages here. For individuals,  business and education (at lest, I think there are). Listen for the commentary around information flow and time for effect. Make the connections between rate of development being almost infinite and the cost of technology basically zero.  Think of the opportunities that are being created daily as a result. The link between content, the media, the medium, and awesomeness.

The danger I think is that we ignore this type of thought provocation at our peril. I think Faris touches on critically important issues. It's up to us how we react and respond. Enjoy.

AudioBoo - audio recording direct to the web!

I'll admit it - I'm a late developer as far as AudioBoo is concerned. I've known about it for a while but it wasn't until yesterday when two of my Year 9 students used it as part of their presentation to the class about Web 2.0 tools that the penny dropped for me.

What a cool tool! So - before I forget, thanks to Farrah and Isabel for showing me the usefulness of AudioBoo!
Basically AudioBoo lets you record (free) 3 minutes of audio - plenty for a brief message. BUT - you can record it directly to the web via their browser capture (and it works happily behind our firewall at school) OR their is both an Android and iOS app that lets you record via that means too! It works well.

And - once recorded, you can embed your Boo onto your site. Like this ...

So, I'm going to be a fan of AudioBoo - seems to make the process of recording nice and simple. Give it a try - or better still, get your students to give it a try. I'm sure they'll find some interesting things to do with it.

TAGGED

"When a group of high-school friends posts an online rumour about a rival, it sparks a chain reaction that leaves no one untouched. Cyberbullying, sexting, filmed fights and police action ensue—will these friends be Tagged forever?

Developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority's Cybersmart program, Tagged is a short film for teenagers that encourage students to discuss the core ethical obligations of going online. It explores issues like the widespread impact of cyberbullying, how internet users can manage their digital reputation and how online interactions may have real-life consequences." 

That's the intro to the YouTube video "Tagged". It's a great resource for teachers and parents - in fact anyone who needs to work with young people (around 10 - 15 years of age) about the power of using your head and to "think before you click". 

Here is the video - its worth the 16 or so minutes to watch.

One of the nice things about the ACMA site is that they have resources for schools, parents and teens at the appropriate page of their site. If you are a school head to this link , if you are a parent head to here, and if a teen head to here. 


And while on the "think before you click" idea, don't forget the great resources that NetSafe offer here in New Zealand.

An Open Education Maths Course for Secondary Schools

Open Education Resources (OERs) have been in the press a lot of late - for very good reason in my opinion. After all, if we really do believe in the notion of an accessible education for everyone, it is reasonable to expect that there will be a quantum of resource available that students and teachers can call on for little or no cost.

So why do schools invest large amounts of $ on text books when there are many resources already there? There are of course lots of answers to this ... but from a simple perspective ... Is it viable to use OER for a traditional secondary course? Is there enough out there for a teacher to find and use without too much stress?

Well, being a maths teacher in a past life, I set myself the goal of finding an open source text book to start with that would serve the purpose of my text book for a secondary course



A simple Google search turns up plenty of options - but the one I settled for was CK-12's flex book - they have a number of mathematics and science titles that are appropriate for secondary level. One of the nice things is that CK-12 offer both PDF and web versions of their texts. Of course, the PDF doesn't have any of the video tutorials that the web version does - but you can simply provide both versions for your students ... The best of both worlds.

The videos in the web version ... Turned out they are from Khan Academy - and that reminded me of the potential power of the Khan Academy online tutorials and related system ... And here they are matched with a text book! Brilliant!!



So - in my mind a great line up to supplement any Maths course ... You have a text book, large numbers of video examples and you as the teacher. All you need to do is change to a free textbook ... Maths content doesn't appear to change much year on year (that's the subject of another debate!) - so this should work.

Want to give it a try? Just think - if it worked ... And with a Maths text costing say $40 per copy ... And 30 kids per class, and (in our case) maybe 6 classes per year level ... That means we could save $7200 per level on texts, plus any annual replacements.

And let's be really honest ... If you can be bothered looking ... you will find plenty of free resources from texts to video to ... you name it. Today's teachers and students have the world at their fingertips. It's really time to start harnessing some of this great power.