Archive for the ‘DataViz DataMining’ Category

When Wolfram Research set out to build Wolfram Alpha, they set out to make all knowledge computable.  Last week they published a Timeline of Systematic Data and the Development of Computable Knowledge.

You can interact with the timeline online, but far cooler (I think) will be hanging the 5-foot poster of the timeline ($7.25 + shipping) that links data and computable knowledge with history, science, and culture on the walls of our Math ELITEs.

The blog post about the timeline is pretty interesting too, discussing which civilizations have tracked the most data.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Navigating WolframAlpha Pro Features
• Abandoning ship on using Wolfram Alpha with Students
• Wolfram Alpha in a Nutshell
• Giving up Calculation by Hand
• Shifting Assessment in a World with WolframAlpha

Futuring

• How does consciousness change throughout history? Jeremy Rifkin on “the empathetic civilization” (RSA Animate)
• U.K. report on Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World
• You can listen to my interview with NPR’s Word of Mouth about the future of education.
• A European report: Mapping major changes to education and training in 2025 (PDF)
• 10 Changes to the World of Work in the next 10 years by Gartner Analysts
• “Beware any scenario that does not sufficient explore changing attitudes along with changing technology.” from @ericgarland [via @WorldFutureSoc]
• The Future of Video: Becoming People of the Screen [via @hrheingold and @iftf]
• Today “texting is mainstream” from fresh Pew Research stats: Texting among adult mobile phone users is up to 72%, teens at 87%.  [via @sidneyeve]

• How to crowdsource the presentation of your syllabus.
• Social Networking Made Easy (Geek&Poke cartoon about learning how to participate in “Real-World Chat“)
• Great video called What Should Everyone Know? – RSA Events interviewed all sorts of people to find out what they think is important to learn.  (8 minutes and embeddable, which means you can put it up as an announcement in your LMS)
• Email’s Dark Side: 10 Psychology Studies [via @arossett] If  you haven’t managed Inbox Zero yet, Gmail’s Priority Inbox looks pretty cool, especially for the start of the school year!  And finally, if you’re trying to get email all together, read A World Without E-mail.
• Here’s a list of all TED Talks to date.
• Some basic etiquette if you play FourSquare, from Geek&Poke.
• Great video about the “old” technology of 1986.
• Bloom’s Taxonomy according to Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Great visualization of How to Be an Expert.
• I loved @hjarche blog post about “Active Sense-making” … reminds me of my own “Random But Organized Thoughts.”

Possibly Related Posts:

• Scale of the Universe
• What skills should we be teaching to future-proof an education?
• Future of Education Interview in Unlimited
• Timeline of the Rise of Data
• Future of eLearning

Data Visualization and Mining

• “Snake Oil” is an incredibly data rich interactive data visualization.  Go play with it. You’ll see.
• I would love to see some of the stats from the Almanac of Higher Education [@chronicle] reformatted in data visualizations instead of pages of tables. Maybe this is a good project for someone’s classes this fall?
• Some blogs on data visualization: Information is Beautiful, Flowing Data, and Vizthink
• Some companies are beginning to mine the data of mood swings about their products on the Real-Time Web.
• According to Microsoft, the top three new technology majors are Data Mining, Business Intelligence, and Analysis/Statistics.  [via @flowingdata and @timoreilly]
• Google Earth now shows live weather. This is a pretty cool augmented reality visualization of data. [via @kylepace]
• The Geosocial Universe, by Jesse Thomas, shows the relative size of different social networking services as well as how much of the service is provided through mobile devices.  [via @gsiemens]
• Rapportive is an add-on for Gmail that makes email smarter by trolling for data about the contact you are emailing and then displaying some of their information.  [via @mashsocialmedia and @mcleod]

Great Links for STEM

• Repeat famous science and math experiments [via @johnfaig]
• @sciencemagazine has an article I’d like to read called “What is STEM Education?”  Of course, you can’t read it without a subscription. Bummer for us. This means I’m probably not going to take the time to look it up on my library’s system and place the order for Interlibrary loan.  Do you ever get the feeling that Academia is trying to keep us from reading their precious articles?
• A Futurama writer invented a new math Theorem just to use in the show. [via @edwebb]
• Newman’s book, Alchemy Tried in the Fire might be an interesting read for the chemists out there (and their students). [via @rpohancenik]
• There are some interesting applications of math modeling in this video about adding an augmented reality layer to Google Earth

Just for Fun

• Great video on plagiarism from Norway (a take-off on A Christmas Carol –  [via @derekbruff and @timchartier]
• Do you suffer from Information Overload Syndrome? is a very funny video from Xerox. ”IOS is highly contagious. In a matter of days, entire companies can fall victim.”
• Leadership Lessons from “The Dancing Guy” (3 minutes, an interesting observation about the importance of followers)
• Create your own Twitter Parade (and possibly drive your animals nuts).  Fun … and it was nice to see the whole crowd of followers a few at a time.
• SpatSolver is like Jing for marriages. LOL

Great Links for Everyone

• To move all your content out of Blackboard and to the open web quickly and easily, try bFree.
• How to find Royalty-free music for YouTube videos (could be helpful for student projects).
• Here’s a really nice site on Information Literacy from the University of Idaho.
• There are some great statistics in this white paper from Xerox: Cutting the Clutter: Tackling Information Overload at the Source.  While we’re on the subject of Information Overload, you might as well read Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime (NYT) [via @noahWG]
• As an Android user, I found this story to be a little unsettling.  Apparently Oracle (likened to Mordor by a friend of mine) bought Sun (which makes Java) and is suing Google over the Android OS.  There is a remote possibility that the lawsuit could force Google to pull the plug on Android.  (I said remote, right?)
• I keep saying that we’re going to have to shift higher ed away from being content providers.  Well, here’s a company hoping that you’ll want to sell your online course to other instructors or colleges. I wonder what something like will do to instructors’ ownership rights to course IP?
• I’ve been wondering off and on about whether I will leave Academia one day.  This post from Danah Boyd [@zephoria] is a great “food for thought” about why she left and how she likes her position at MS Research.
• Still one of the best explanations of Creative Commons License out there: The Mayer & Bettle Animation
• If you’re trying to teach with more of an International flavor, try these modules from the Midwest Institute.
• What leads someone to leave a following of 10,000 on Twitter?  Read: Quitting Twitter.  For the record, if you only follow 7 people, you probably don’t get much value from Twitter.  A Followers:Following ratio like 10,000:7 just shouts “all about me” to me. [via @gsiemens]
• Is professional development for educators moving the wrong direction?  [via RT @mcleod]
• How Can We Teach Someone If We Do Not Know How They Learn? Another must-read from @simbeckhampson which will lead you to a 182-page report about Learning Styles and Pedagogy.
• Westerners vs. the World: WE are the WEIRD ones.  This is seriously one of the most interesting articles I have read in a while.  Don’t skip it just because it’s last. [via @hrheingold]

• Wabash College picks a computer game (Portal) for the reading list in some of its Freshman-year seminar courses. [via @BryanAlexander]
• Farmville has more active users than twitter! “If Farmville wanted to take down productivity in the world, they could just change to a 30-min crop cycle and everything would stop.” from Seth Priebatsch’s TED on The Game Layer on Top of the World “School is a game. It’s just not a terribly well-designed game.”
• Games designed to help with real-world productivity, like the EpicWin App are intriguing.  Of course, they are only intriguing if you can actually try them.  Cross-platform please. 
• Gaming for the Greater Good: How Social Gaming Can Advance Sustainability by Derrek Mains is a MUST-READ about the potential power of social gaming. [via @randyfuj and @ricardolucas]

In other news, our Math ELITEs are ready to be used!  Here’s a picture of the new tables.  Also, my husband and I spent our 15th Wedding Anniversary sitting in front of a large screen TV (with no reception … not watching it) and watching TED Talks on a 3″ phone screen.  It was a great way to celebrate!  Also, I booked my trip to Mountain View for September. Can’t wait!

Possibly Related Posts:

• Scale of the Universe
• Timeline of the Rise of Data
• Numenko: Math Game for Arithmetic
• New Math Game: Antiderivative Block
• Giving up Calculation by Hand