Learn By Doing

A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education

  • This is from Google, check it out, and go Fly A Kite!

    Here at Google we publish a lot of imagery, most of which comes from the satellite and aerial imagery providers with whom we partner. Last week we published something a bit different: images collected from balloons and kites! The resolution is amazing, and it’s something that just about anyone can do themselves.

    Public Laboratory image of Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA (July 2011) in Google Earth

    Our friends at The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science have been working hard to make imagery collection easy, cheap and accessible. Their grassroots mapping work is based on the idea that citizens anywhere should be able to explore the environment in and around their communities, by collecting their own imagery and other data, and to do it in a way that is useful for scientific and social purposes.

    The Public Laboratory has developed an open source balloon mapping toolkit that allows anyone with an inexpensive digital point and shoot camera, and about $100 of other parts (balloon, helium, line, soda bottle, etc.) to take photos of the ground around them. They also provide a web-based tool called MapKnitter for aligning the photos into a georeferenced image that can be used inGoogle Earth and other digital mapping tools.

    Public Laboratory image of WhereCamp, Stanford University (April 2011) in Google Earth

    We’ve imported many of the images from the Public Laboratory’s archives into Google Earth’shistorical imagery database. To help you find them, download this KML file, open it in Google Earth (make sure you’re using the latest version), and fly to the image locations in space and time. Have fun exploring this unique imagery!

  • Colleges, online universities, and other educational forums in your community can be excellent places to learn more about a variety of STEM topics, but there is also a wealth of educational material available on the web for those who prefer to learn at their own pace or take a more individual approach. Even better, these resources, whether classes, lectures, or tutorials, are all free of charge, meaning you can improve your knowledge without emptying your wallet. Check out this list (organized by topic, not ranking) for some great STEM resources that can help you build your knowledge about everything from calculus to zoology.

  • 10 Must-Haves to Lift Us from the Grading QuagmireMy short list of tools that need to improve at a school include a better gradebook, a CRM (no, not an educational flavored one), micro standard driven badges, college and career awareness and planning tools, and ePortfolios.

    The dismal state of these tools, many of which were developed so long ago as to be of minimal practical value makes this a fight we are losing and the reality is that only this fight matters.  Without these tools, we aren’t going to succeed with learners, not in today’s Educational marketplace. 

    Read Tom Vander Ark’s 10 Must-Have to Lift Us from the Grading Quagmire for more information on this subject in general.

  • Why?  Because every young woman in school should have this name, these tools, and this in mind.  How else will we get it there?  As the NYTimes article suggests, it is time to give women the access code.

    Welcome LEGO fans! We looked around and couldn’t find a LEGO set that was geared towards inspiring young girls (and boys) to see how much fun engineering can be. After some recent articles and other LEGO releases geared towards girls we decided to work with a well-known LEGO artist Bruce Lowell to create "Ladyada’s Workshop" based on our own Ladyada who runs Adafruit.
    LEGO CUUSOO
    Ladyada’s workshop is a place where you explore all the cool things you build and use when you’re an engineer! Computers, pick-and-place machine, laser cutter, soldering station and more! In Ladyada’s workshop you can run your own open-source hardware electronics company, complete with Mosfet the cat.
    We’re documenting how you can make these on your own and we’ve entered the LEGO set in LEGO CUUSOO.
    LEGO CUUSOO is a site where you can share LEGO set concepts you’d like the whole world to enjoy and aim for their eventual release as real products. If we can get 10,000 votes here (http://lego.cuusoo.com/ideas/view/17491) LEGO will make it in to a real LEGO set. When we submitted the project to LEGO CUUSOO we granted permission for them to use, market and sell these if we get enough votes! So now it’s up to you, if you want to celebrate art, design, science, engineering and open-source hardware place vote for "Ladyada’s Workshop".

  • In a recent infographic from Teach.com, more students today are excelling in AP courses than ever before. AP Exam participation is up and scores are up since 2001, yet there’s still room for growth in science, computer science and more. With growing participation and success, I had hoped to take a look at AP courses this year.

    As the 2012 school year begins to wind down, many students across the country are diligently preparing for Advanced Placement exams in 34 different subject areas. AP courses are designed to help high school students acquire the skills and study habits essential for success in college. With test dates running from May 7 through May 25, AP students are poised to hit the ground running when beginning their post-secondary careers, should they earn a score high enough to gain them college credit.

    In keeping with the testing season, we are very excited to launch an infographic that highlights the progress made within AP curricula over the past decade. Our graphic, “The Rise of the AP,” shares information and statistics from the College Board’s 8th Annual “AP Report to the Nation.”

    We encourage you to share the graphic below with teachers, classmates and friends who might be prepping for an AP exam. And if you have any ideas on which direction AP courses should head over the next 10 years, tell us in the comments section!

    The Rise of the AP

    Via Teach.com and USC Rossier Online