Visual Turn

"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:11:15 -0500

““Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things … The gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl … Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.””

- Robert F. Kennedy

Bigger type is the future of web design. This is not only...

Fri, 18 May 2012 21:31:13 -0500

Bigger type is the future of web design.

This is not only because of responsive web design, but also because demographics: Baby Boomers are the fastest-growing segment of the social web.

occupyedu: School: An institution that prepares young people...

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:35:40 -0500

occupyedu:

School: An institution that prepares young people for a life of freedom and democracy without letting them partake in either.

Amazing … this Tumblr now has more than 10,000...

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:48:00 -0500

Amazing … this Tumblr now has more than 10,000 followers!

I am honored and humbled that so many total strangers find my idiosyncratic postings to be of interest. I am one of those people who believes that all of humanity is quite closely connected, and this is an inspiring manifestation of that idea.

A special shout to Die Neue Demian for being my first five-digit follower!

I also feel particularly privileged to be a contributor to the truly vibrant #Education community on Tumblr. I greatly admire the passion and commitment Tumblr educators show to your students and your fellow teachers.

Sabbe sattā sukhi hontu.

— Visual Turn

Testimony Lyrics taken from and inspired by the It Gets Better...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:14:00 -0500

Testimony

Lyrics taken from and inspired by the It Gets Better Project
Set to music by composer Stephen Schwartz
Sung by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

Is Your Distance Education Course Actually a Correspondence Course?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:06:26 -0500

Is Your Distance Education Course Actually a Correspondence Course?:

St. Mary-of-the-Woods College should refund $42 million in federal financial aid dollars that it dispersed to students over a five year period. That is the finding of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, which found that many “distance education” courses should have been classified as “correspondence” courses.

…

While St. Mary-of-the-Woods courses and faculty had access to a learning management system and online discussions, the Department said that these were rarely used in practice. For distance education (or telecommunications) courses, they also expect “regular and substantive interaction between these students and the instructor.” The Audit found that “instructors did not deliver lectures or initiate discussions with students.” … How do your classes stack up?

How reporters from The New York Times covered the sinking of the Titanic

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:46:44 -0500

How reporters from The New York Times covered the sinking of the Titanic:

There was one key source, and the Times had to get to him. His name was Harold Bride, and he was the wireless operator on the Titanic. It was Bride who sent the messages from the sinking vessel. It was he who would have the full inside story. But the authorities on the Carpathia and the dock were keeping reporters at bay.

[New York Times editor Carr Van Anda] sent a reporter to find Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless and one of the worlds’ great communications entrepreneurs. The reporter would eventually be mistaken for Marconi’s manager, and the two were escorted aboard the Carpathia, where they milked the exhausted and awe-struck Mr. Bride for the greatest story of its day.

via Poynter

Bold Strokes: New Font Helps Dyslexics Read Christian Boer, a...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:52:40 -0500

Bold Strokes: New Font Helps Dyslexics Read

Christian Boer, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, has developed a way to help tackle his dyslexia. The 30-year-old created a font called Dyslexie that has proved to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading.

…One of the first things he did was increase the boldness of letters at their bases, to make them appear weighted, causing readers’ brains to know not to flip them upside down, as can occur with “p” and “d.” Boer also enlarged the openings of various letters, such as “a” and “c,” to make them more distinguishable from one another, and increased the length of “the tail” of other letters, like the “g” and y.” He also put certain letters at a slant so that they would appear to be in italics, like the “j,” a tactic to increase the brain’s ability to distinguish it from the letter “i.” Finally, he boldfaced capital letters and punctuation, and provided ample space between letters and words, to allow the brain more time to compute the letters and begin forming them into words and sentences.

The details of this just totally fascinate me.

World-Shaker: Five Tips for Faculty Working with an Educational Technology Designer

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:55:23 -0500

World-Shaker: Five Tips for Faculty Working with an Educational Technology Designer:

world-shaker:

1) Trust me. I know how to use at least two different learning management systems, including the one at our school. I can train you to use at least a dozen different technologies to help you create interesting multimedia or content for your online course. I’m familiar with all the things that do…

All five … wow, do I relate!

overonehundred: Tackling Literacy Today, Milwaukee Public...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:07:57 -0500

overonehundred:

Tackling Literacy Today, Milwaukee Public Library:

This set of three images was taken from Milwaukee Public Library’s recent Internet campaign; it is clearly reaching out to younger uses that use the Internet as a form of social networking. They are trying to get users away from their computers, and into a book – hence ‘Put Your Face in a Book’, ‘You Could Be Reading’ and ‘140 Characters? Try Millions’.

It’s effective because it uses current Internet logos of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (three powerful, popular sites) and alters them so they show a statement about reading. This method makes their statement instantly relatable, as the logos of these sites are something that most of us see at least once a day.

prostheticknowledge: Photo Timeline Using Google Images, enter...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:54:05 -0500

prostheticknowledge:

Photo Timeline

Using Google Images, enter a search term and a year to construct a visual timeline on anything.

Try it out here

thelearningbrain: The gamification of education.

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:33:41 -0500

thelearningbrain:

The gamification of education.

"Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of..."

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:46:05 -0500

“Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.”

- Clay Shirky, How We Will Read

Infographic: Meditation in Schools Across America As a growing...

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 09:27:20 -0500

Infographic: Meditation in Schools Across America

As a growing body of research points to positive outcomes from meditation in schools, programs are spreading across the country.

Quiet time for meditation is transforming a troubled urban...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:16:00 -0500

Quiet time for meditation is transforming a troubled urban middle school in California, reducing truancy and suspensions.

“We’re giving the kids a coping mechanism. The problems that you have keep coming, except your ability to deal with them changes.” — Rose Ludwig, 6th grade teacher.

Twice a day, once at the first bell and again just before the last bell, students sit quietly for 15 minutes, either reading, sitting with their own thoughts, or closing their eyes and meditating. Nearly all students have chosen, with their parents’ permission, to receive meditation training, and about 90 percent of students choose to meditate during quiet time.

via Edutopia

Salvador Dalí illustrates Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 06:40:54 -0500

Salvador Dalí illustrates Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

sunfoundation: Time lapse of Hitchcock’s Rear Window This is...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:33:04 -0500

sunfoundation:

Time lapse of Hitchcock’s Rear Window

This is expertly done…a panoramic time lapse view out the rear window in Rear Window, stitched together from scenes in the film.

“We Didn’t Start the Scanner” … a...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:30:33 -0500

“We Didn’t Start the Scanner” …

a three-minute history of cognitive neuroscience sung to Billy Joel … with lyrics so you can sing along!

Winner of the ‘ICN Brains on Film’ Competition 2012 at University College London.

Music and film by Jake Fairnie and Anna Remington.

"A human being at rest runs on 90 watts … that’s how much power you need just to lie down. And if..."

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:28:22 -0500

“A human being at rest runs on 90 watts … that’s how much power you need just to lie down. And if you’re a hunter-gatherer and you live in the Amazon, you’ll need about 250 watts. That’s how much energy it takes to run about and find food. So how much energy does our lifestyle [in America] require? Well, when you add up all our calories and then you add up the energy needed to run the computer and the air-conditioner, you get an incredibly large number, somewhere around 11,000 watts. Now you can ask yourself: What kind of animal requires 11,000 watts to live? And what you find is that we have created a lifestyle where we need more watts than a blue whale. We require more energy than the biggest animal that has ever existed. That is why our lifestyle is unsustainable. We can’t have seven billion blue whales on this planet. It’s not even clear that we can afford to have 300 million blue whales.””

- Physicist Geoffrey West, as quoted by Jonah Lehrer in The Cost of Creativity

"What would it look like if the LGBT movement had a racial justice agenda? Well, for starters, we’d..."

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 21:02:35 -0500

“

What would it look like if the LGBT movement had a racial justice agenda? Well, for starters, we’d see our struggle for equality tied to other movements for justice, not just by analogy. So, for example, there’s been a noticeable silence about Trayvon Martin on most of the mainstream gay blogs, probably because most (white) gay folks don’t see the case as “our issue.” But as Zach Stafford recently pointed out here on HuffPost, gay folk should care about Trayvon Martin because all of us who are “outsiders” — whether because of sexual orientation, gender non-conformity, or race — can be targets of violence.

When we say that the gay right movement is the new civil rights movement, we’re playing into the divisive racial politics of NOM. We have to do better than “gay is the new black.” We have to see that the fight for sexual equality hasn’t replaced the fight for racial equality, because that’s not over. When the LGBT movement moves beyond shallow slogans like “gay is the new black” to embrace a racial justice agenda that sees our struggle as tied to others, then we’ll have truly won a victory against opponents like NOM that can only see “gays and blacks” as an easy place to drive a wedge.

”

- Moving Beyond ‘Gay Is the New Black’: NOM’s Divisive Racial Politics and the LGBT Movement’s Need for a Racial Justice Agenda

(via queerdesi)