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Archive for the ‘Technology’ category

KONY 2012

March 7th, 2012

“We cared, but we didn’t know what to do.”

We know about World War II. We’ve talked to veterans. We’ve heard from Holocaust survivors – but many people have only heard snippets in modern news about the Invisible Children and the name Joseph Kony is pretty unfamiliar.

Kony is the leader of a paramilitary group that has kidnapped 30,000+ children and forced them to commit horrible acts of violence. As an educator, I want to protect my students. As a father, I want to protect my own children. If what happened/is happening in Uganda happened to a child I worked with, I would want the world to know and to intervene.

That’s where Jason Russell comes in. His movie, KONY 2012, is a campaign to raise awareness and to not just be aware but to act.

This reminds me of how U.S. soldiers had only heard rumors of the concentration camps of World War II and then the shock of seeing some of the results of Nazi war crimes.

Check out the movie. Like the director says, you have to pay attention for 28 minutes, but it’s very eye-opening.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

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Posted in How You Can Help, Technology

Speech Resources

February 28th, 2012

Another librarian asked for a collection of speeches to use as examples for students. A co-worker of mine recommended these sites that are free to the public.

American Rhetoric – Michael E. Eidenmuller from the University of Texas has gathered a collection of speech audio and video from U.S. history.

Presidential Speech Archive – The University of Virginia organized these by sections of U.S. history.

Recorded Sound Reference Center – This is the Library of Congress’s collection of audio.

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Posted in Reference, Technology

Outdated idioms

February 22nd, 2012

A Language Arts class was learning about idioms, figures of speech, today. When the phrase “like a broken record” came up, they honestly had no clue what a record was – and why should they?

Some could picture a DJ turntable and we went with that and explained how scratching actually was that – scratching over the grooves of the record. I then dusted off a record player and brought it to the classroom. It had the red and white audio cords, so I hooked it up to the TV and blasted it. The students were amazed at the needle arm.

My friends will appreciate that the record played was the Broadway version of “1776”.

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Posted in lessons, Technology

Impossible Photography – TED Talk: Erik Johansson

February 13th, 2012

If you’ve been with this site for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the TED Talks. Normally, it’s world-changing presentations on amazing solar cells or cures for diseases.

Check out this one from Erik Johansson using Photoshop, planning, and the human imagination to create some M.C. Escher-esque photos.

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Posted in Photoshop, Tech How To, Technology

Build a Body

February 10th, 2012

Build a Body is an interactive anatomy lesson where you put the organs in and read about what they do. It’s organized really well by system, but the part that I found most intriguing was the case studies section. In it, you read about a person and figure out what’s wrong with their body parts.

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Posted in Science, Technology

The Lord of the Rings Family Tree

February 9th, 2012

The Lord of the Rings is one of the only books that I had to keep flipping back to the index while reading. Everyone’s an “-orn” this or an “-endil” that. It’s hard to keep track of.

Until now.

Check out this extremely large family tree. I do find some irony in ents being included in the tree.

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Posted in Fantasy, Technology

News Flash: The lost city of Atlantis is lost.

February 7th, 2012

I had always chuckled when I saw the lost city of Atlantis marked in Google Earth, hoping that users would check the validity of the information versus other sources. The “Atlantis” tag on the map over some shadowy areas of the ocean has now been removed.

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Posted in Google, Technology

Symphony of Science

February 3rd, 2012

Like Science? Like T-Pain-style autotune? Check out the Symphony of Science. It reminds me a lot of the Autotune the News folks.

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Posted in Science, Technology

Mobile 2012

January 31st, 2012

Are you interested in mobile learning, whether it’s on a tablet, a phone, or something else? AZK12 is hosting Mobile 2012 April 11-13.

Check out the list of speakers:
Jaime Casap
Eric Marcos
Janet Wozniak
Tony Vincent

I’ve attended a conference with Tony before and chatted with him. He definitely knows his stuff. And the Wozniak last name should sound familiar in connection to Apple…

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Posted in Administrative, Apple, AZK12, Mobile, Technology

ChillingEffects.org

January 27th, 2012

Do you know your online rights? If you write fan fiction, are you breaking copyright? If you link to another site, are you breaking the law?

ChillingEffects.org, a shared project from a number of universities, came to my attention because of recent decisions by Twitter to censor people’s status updates depending upon the laws of certain countries. In China, your Google search is filtered stricter than even a school network, and that took years to come about. Twitter isn’t even allowed in China.

Twitter was influential in the Middle Eastern and Russian protests in recent years. It will be interesting to see how protesters will coordinate now. ChillingEffects will at least keep a record of government requests to censor online messages.

Check out ChillingEffect’s database of cease and desist messages by clicking here.