A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education
The Science of Happiness. Happiness means different things to each of us, but biology and psychology reveal a lot of factors that contribute to our overall mood and emotions. Read through this infographic to learn tons of easy tips and hacks to improve your happiness levels and better understand how our minds work.
We did this is all of my classes and I was impressed with what the students accomplished. I hope to make this approach, and these tools, a regular class activity to direct students to learn something about Computer Science.
Thank you for supporting computer science and making the Hour of Code an amazing success. In 2 weeks, 20 million students worldwide learned an Hour of Code, including 1 in 4 U.S. students, and half were girls! Have you tried it?
I’m humbled and overwhelmed by the response we’re getting:
- “Best educational product I’ve ever come across” (adult)
- “One of the two best things that happened in 2013” (7-year-old)
- “I have NEVER, EVER seen my students so excited about learning” (teacher)
Before New Year’s
As you relax and gather with family over the holidays, challenge yourself to try an Hour of Code before the new year. Learn the basics, or help your children. And start your new year knowing more computer science than you do today. It’s foundational knowledge for everyone in the 21st century.Since last week, the biggest question we’re hearing from participants is, “what can I do now?”
Here are a few ways to keep learning and supporting computer science:
1) Tell Congress that you support the Computer Science Education Act
It will make a big difference in giving students access to computer science in U.S. schools. Ask your representatives to support it too, here.2) Keep learning (for yourself or your child)
Find local schools, camps, or workshops that teach coding.
Or learn online.3) Ask your local school to teach computer science
Your schools can teach this self-serve intro course, partner with us to bring computer science to your entire district.4) Donate money or time
We’re a very lean and mean organization, and we appreciate your help.5) Wear Code.org shirts and hats
5% of your purchase will be donated to Code.org.Thank you for helping us make history.
Hadi Partovi, Founder, Code.org
From the NYTIMES, this is a partial reprint to update the local knowledgebase of understanding, for the complete article, full pictures, comments and all the useful items head over to the full article on NYTimes.com Updated Microsoft Photosynth Makes HDTV Look Low-Resolution, the pictures are amazing.
Microsoft’s latest update to Photosynth, a technology that stitches together overlapping photos, to create 3-D panoramas.
While online panoramas have been available for years, the new updates to Photosynth, which will be available on a first-come first-serve basis Tuesday, can now create panoramas that are hyper-detailed and actually look 3-D.
Microsoft said it is able to make the 3-D panorama look so realistic by actually creating a sort-of 3-D model of a photo using proprietary algorithms, then taking high-resolutions photos and layering them on top of each other. The company’s latest updates also make panoramas much smoother and speedier — they could sometimes be jittery in the earlier versions of the software.
The new software shows images almost like a high-resolution video that is fully interactive. Swiping your mouse up will move you forward on the screen; swiping down will smoothly bring you backwards through an image.
The image above is pieced together in 3-D. Below, an images show how a Photosynth photo is layered together.
The images are incredibly detailed, too. The Mount Everest Photosynth demo was shot by David Brashears, a mountaineer, and is made up of 177 different 60-megapixel photos. Microsoft says this resolution allows the panorama to play like a video that is 30 times more detailed than an HDTV signal.
David Gedye, lead program manager at Microsoft, said that while there is an artistic goal to offer people software that makes these types of images, there is also a business reason behind the software.
“At Microsoft, we’ve long had a goal of documenting the important places in the world and sharing them on Bing,” he said in a phone interview, referring to the company’s search engine. ”We don’t need to drive trucks or employ people to capture the world, we can work with enthusiasts who take these pictures” and then stitch them all together in a highly immersive way.
Mr. Gedye said that adding these images to Microsoft’s search features, including Bing search and its mapping software, makes a more compelling offering for users who are searching through Microsoft products.
“It’s about giving this power to Bing to make it a place where things are really presented beautifully and in a place where it’s immersive and interactive,” he said. People can also use the updated software to document their own objects or places that can be embedded on a personal website.
The new software does not work on iPads or smartphones that don’t support WebGL, a JavaScript 3-D rendering engine. But Microsoft said it is working on updates that will enable the software, or a variation of it, on these platforms.
The company also plans to add updates to Photosynth apps that allow people to create these immersive images on their smartphones. Until then, users will have to upload an array of photos to the Photosynth website to be turned into an interactive 3-D space.
A version of this article appears in print on 12/16/2013, on page B8 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Making Images Appear 3-D.
Partitions may divide countries, but friendships find a way. A touching story about the power of information in improving people’s lives. (Be sure to watch with English subtitles.)
A special thank you to all of you, who make this sort of thing possible every day through all of the incredible local knowledge you contribute to Google Maps through Map Maker. You are changing the world, one map edit at a time.
Luc MelansonGo to Book Review essay, “A Nose for Words” »
Updated: Nov. 1.
We’ve been publishing a Word of the Day every school day since our blogbegan, and sometime this December we’ll reach our 1,000th.
A perfect time, we thought, to celebrate with a contest.
So here’s the challenge: Along with our collaborators for Word of the Day — the linguists who run Vocabulary.com and Visual Thesaurus — we invite you to create a short video that defines or teaches any of the words in ourcollection.
You have until Dec. 3 to do it, and all the rules and regulations, plus some inspiration from other students and teachers, are below.
Remember: tenacity + a desire to edify + an enterprising nature – sloth = abeguiling result.
Q. I’m in! What are the rules and guidelines?
A. – All words must come from our Word of the Day feature. Each word must be pronounced and defined, and the part of speech must be given.Update: We now have a PDF of all 979 words published through Nov. 1.
–All definitions must come from either the Word of the Day orVocabulary.com. If there are several definitions, you may just use the first one if you like.
– You must be 13 to 19 years old, but can be from anywhere in the world.
– Your video should be no more than 15 seconds, but can be shorter.
– You can work alone, with a partner or in a group, but only one submission per student, please, whether you’re working alone or with others.
– Use your imagination. You can act the word out, animate it, use puppets, draw, sing a song, create a dance, incorporate photographs, create a Claymation, or anything else that will help viewers understand and learn your word.
– Post a link to the video as a comment on this blog post, along with the first name of everyone who worked on the video. We will watch the videos first to make sure they are appropriate before we approve your comment, so don’t worry if you don’t see your link for a day or two.
–The contest ends on Dec. 3 at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Q. So we only post a link to our video on your blog. Where do we post the videos themselves?
A. Anywhere that you, your teachers and your parents or guardians are comfortable with.
We chose the 15-second limit since we know many teenagers are already onInstagram. You can post there, on YouTube, TeacherTube, SchoolTube,Vimeo or even on Google Docs, Flickr or anywhere else that provides an embed code so we can post your final product on our blog if you win.
This page on “Video in the Classroom,” from EdTechTeacher.org, offers an excellent, clear overview of how and where you might film and post.
We also recommend this Edutopia post, “Five-Minute Film Festival: Vine and Instagram Video in the Classroom.”
Of course, please follow the Terms of Service for whatever platform you use.
Q. Where can I look for inspiration?
A. Vocabulary videos aren’t an original idea — in fact, we originally came up with this contest after we saw an English teacher on Twitter, Brett Vogelsinger, post that he’d had his students make “Vocabulary Vines.”
Bridget Dalton, a professor, has written extensively about developing vocabulary through multimodal expression. In this piece for Literacy Beat, she describes the step-by-step process she went through with her graduate students to have them create short videos like this one:
Another set of examples come from students in John Mynatt’s Irving High School Webmastering 2 classes:
Still more examples can be found on the blog of a teacher, Vincent Bissonette, who talks about his process and shares tips, and on a site called Vocab Ahead, where videos of SAT words are available.
Finally, Larry Ferlazzo, a teacher and Learning Network contributor, recentlyexperimented by doing Instagram vocabulary videos with his E.L.L. students. Here is one:
(Please note that some of the video examples above exceed our 15-second limit.)
Q. Updated: How can I choose a word then learn enough about it to make a video?
A. To choose your word, you can click back through our Word of the Day feature to see about 10 at a time, or you can scan this seven-page list of all 979 words we published through Nov. 1, 2013. (Teachers, you might choose the specific words from that list that you’d like your students to use.)
Next, look up the word by putting it, along with the phrase “Word of the Day,” into “search this blog.” Read the entry to learn its definition and see how it has been used in The Times.
You might next head to the Vocabulary.com dictionary where you’ll find a friendly explanation and a rich supply of authentic usage examples from both current and classic sources. Take a look at the entries for retinue anduproarious — both from the Word of the Day — as examples. Once you have a handle on the word’s meaning and how it is commonly used, you can start to think about the most effective way to teach that word in a 15-second video.
Q. Vocabulary’s not really my thing, but I love the idea of a student video contest. What else do you have for me?
A. You’re in luck. Purely by coincidence, The New York Times’s Culture desk is currently running a contest in which young people are invited to submit 15-second “Hamlet” videos. Read more about it and join in.
Thank you for participating! Post the link to your video, along with the first name (and last initial, if you like) of all those who worked on it, in the comments field, below. You can also post your questions there, and we’ll answer them in bold as soon as we can.
No last names please, although if you win you will have the option of having your last name listed.
