Learn By Doing

A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education

  • What Do You Love?

    7/12/2011 10:09:00 AM

    A while back, a few of us wanted to make a little tool that we could use to show just about anybody more of what Google makes. That led to some simple ideas, and then a few more ideas and ultimately, to a challenge: how we could connect people to products they might not know about and may find useful, but make the discovery relevant to them and keep it fun.

    Playing about with that challenge produced a website—What Do You Love?—that we hope meets at least some of the challenge by demonstrating how different Google products can show you different things about any particular search query. Like always, you’re the judge, sogive it a go. Type in something that you love—polar bears, space travel, pickup trucks, Lady Gaga, early Foghat—whatever strikes your fancy (for some reason, the results for cheesealways crack us up, so try that if you’re momentarily stumped). No matter what it is, we’ll give you back something that will let you get even more into what you love.

  • Google Font Previewer – Lets you choose a font from the Google Font directory with a few text styling options, and preview them on the current tab.

    Simple sentence, simple tool, powerful results.  Install it, click on it, change the font on all of my blog, or just one style.  Copy the code.

    This is a tool that students will create amazing web sites with.  This is the tool I am going to use to finally get them into Web Fonts.

    To celebrate I installed the tool and in under a improved my display and utilized web fonts.  This is going to get crazy!

     

  • No, just kidding.  I was reading 60 Small Ways to Improve Your Life in the Next 100 Days at Lifehack.org out of my Instapaper bin of unread articles and I remind everyone that I believe large lists of items such as these are damaging in general, too large, too overwhelming.

    My approach is to read the list and pick one or two of the things from the list and do them.  If you remember where the list came from, and you wish to try them again, great.  Otherwise, move along.

    I am thinking about these two among the entire list.

    29. For the next 100 days, every time that you switch to a new activity throughout the day stop and ask yourself, “Is this the best use of my time at this moment?”

    46. For the next 100 days, make it a daily ritual to mediate, breath, or visualize every day in order to calm your mind.

    Next up, a summer reading list.

     

  • Hackety Hack will teach you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up. No previous programming experience is needed!

    With Hackety Hack, you’ll learn the Ruby programming language Ruby is used for all kinds of programs, including desktop applications and websites.

     

  • I am currently working with students using Kodu and Photosynth.  I already use Live MovieMaker and Photo Story and find those of great value.  Check them out and see.

    Microsoft offers free tools to help engage students in a variety of subject areas—from moviemaking to collaboration to science and beyond. Teachers can download these tools for free, the majority of which require no special training.

    http://www.microsoft.com/education/ww/teachers/Pages/free-products.aspx