Kuers introduces What If Learning dot com

 

Excerpt:

The site presents teaching examples—for both elementary and secondary classrooms—from a range of subjects: art, cooking, dance, technology, drama, English, environment, geography, history, technology, math, foreign/second language, music, physical education, health, Bible class and science. (There are also categories titled “teacher,” “tests” and “topics.”)

Each example leads off with a question: “What if a grammar lesson challenged selfishness?” “What if success in math depended upon forgiveness?” “What if history could inspire students to love their city?” The site also provides tabs labeled “The Approach,” “Training,” “Big Picture,” and “Information,” where teachers can learn how to apply what they’ve learned in their classrooms.

“The website helps teachers ask key questions and make strategic decisions, not only about what to teach but about how to teach,” said Matt Walhout, Calvin’s dean for research and scholarship. “It relates specific topics like language, history, and math to the overarching Christian principles of faith, hope, and love.”

 

Also see:

Transforming scientists into entrepreneurs– from Inc.com by Steve Blank
Our nation’s research labs hold a wealth of untapped innovation. But how do you bridge the gap between science and start-up?

Also see:

Excerpt:
Colleges are starting to become startup incubators by offering a variety of classes and programs in order to help students pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. This is good news for students because employers feel that they should gain entrepreneurship experience before graduating. Many professors are current or former entrepreneurs who act as mentors to students and teach them critical marketing, sales, and operation skills.

Students from entrepreneurship programs are creating their own future through their companies instead of having to apply to jobs.

Tagged with:  

http://www.futurict.eu/

.

 

Project summary for FuturICT

.

Also see:

  • Scientists aim to predict the future with $1 billion Earth simulator — from dvice.com
    Excerpt:
    Imagine what would happen if you had a computer program that could take in data from sensors everywhere on Earth and then plug that data into a detailed simulation for the entire Earth all at once. If you’re imagining being able to predict the future, you’re imagining correctly, and E.U. researchers want to make it real.The Living Earth Simulator is a billion-dollar proposal to spend ten years developing a computer environment that can simulate everything. And not just simulate, but also explore predictive models of how everything going on in the world interrelates with everything else, deriving connections and correlations that we never knew existed.

    In order to get that billion dollars, the Living Earth Simulator has to beat out four other future and emerging technologies projects that are all trying to win funding from the European Commission.

 

Tagged with:  

http://k12videos.mit.edu/

 

About:

American school children need better educational opportunities and more compelling forms of exposure to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—and to the people who work in these fields. Less than 5% of all university degrees awarded in the U.S. are in engineering (compared to 45% in China and 12% in Europe); only 0.8% of these degrees are being earned by women and 0.6% by underrepresented minorities. Further, 69% of U.S. public school students in 5th through 8th grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics: 93% are taught physical sciences by a teacher without a degree or certificate in the physical sciences. This crisis in STEM education is colliding with, and being compounded by, grim economic realities in most U.S. states. As a country, we are poised to expend fewer resources on one of our most pressing long-term educational and economic challenges. The National Academies have likened this crisis to a rapidly approaching, category-5 hurricane.

MIT has a unique relationship to these issues. We don’t have a STEM problem. As a world leader in engineering and science education and research we continue to attract a strong, diverse, and technically superb applicant pool. Half our undergraduate students choose to major in engineering; half are women; and a quarter are under-represented minorities. Moreover, because of our need-blind admissions policy, 19% of undergraduates in our most recent class come from families with incomes less than $50,000 per year, 37% come from families with incomes less than $100,000 per year, and 14% are the first generation of their family to attend college. However, our unique position also presents us with an opportunity to participate in the solution for the broader problem. These are challenges for our fields, our country, and our collective future. Finding solutions is not merely an opportunity of leadership—it is an obligation.

 

Tagged with:  

Top 10 iPad apps for science learning [Chadwick]

Top 10 iPad apps for science learning

Tagged with:  

MIT launches online learning initiative –from MIT
‘MITx’ will offer courses online and make online learning tools freely available.

Excerpt:

MIT [on 12/19/11] announced the launch of an online learning initiative internally called “MITx.” MITx will offer a portfolio of MIT courses through an online interactive learning platform that will:

  • organize and present course material to enable students to learn at their own pace
  • feature interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication
  • allow for the individual assessment of any student’s work and allow students who demonstrate their mastery of subjects to earn a certificate of completion awarded by MITx
  • operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions.

Advancing the open front — from InsideHigherEd.com by Steve Kolowich

Excerpt:

Forget free content repositories; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wants to deliver “interactive” elite education to the masses, complete with credentials certifying “mastery” of MIT-grade coursework.

In the latest boon for the “open education” movement, the engineering mecca on Monday announced a new online learning initiative, called MITx, that will give anyone the opportunity to work through MIT course material and earn a certificate of achievement.

M.I.T. expands its free online courses — from the New York Times by Tamar Lewin

Excerpt:

While students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pay thousands of dollars for courses, the university will announce a new program on Monday allowing anyone anywhere to take M.I.T. courses online free of charge — and for the first time earn official certificates for demonstrating mastery of the subjects taught.

M.I.T. led the way to an era of online learning 10 years ago by posting course materials from almost all its classes. Its free OpenCourseWare now includes nearly 2,100 courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.

But the new “M.I.T.x” interactive online learning platform will go further, giving students access to online laboratories, self-assessments and student-to-student discussions.

 

Simulation beyond perspective — from noemalab.eu by Pier Luigi Capucci
The discourse of holography as a tool for imagery, art, media studies and science.

Excerpt:

Holography suggests a new visual universe within a culture where the visual simulation is the most effective communication system; and it let us reflect about the need for a more comprehensive definition of “image”. We can believe that future images will also be holographic and that we shall communicate more and more through them, in a delicate balance between presence and absence, immediacy and remoteness, present and past, materiality and immateriality, matter and energy.

 

Lenovo -- youtube space lab

 

From DSC:
My thanks for Mr. Steven Chevalia for this resource.

20 stunning infographics to show how climate change affects ecosystems — from mastersinenvironmentalscience.org; with thanks to Donald Smith for the resource

Excerpt:

According to one infographic in this list, many people believe that climate change is happening and that it is irreversible. The difference in opinion is in how climate change is occurring. On the other hand, another information graphic shows that fewer people are believing the climate change scenario despite evidence of glacier melt and an increase in dramatic weather patterns such as more rain and drought. A degree in environmental science may not affect what you believe, but evidence-based science is difficult to refute, especially when faced with over 20 graphic images that show how climate change is affecting ecosystems.

Tagged with:  

Online marketplace helps professors outsource their lab research — from The Chronicle by Alex Campbell

Excerpt:

Jill Wykosky, a postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, needed to make some antibodies, but she couldn’t do it all herself.

To help find a lab partner, she tried a new Web site called Science Exchange, posting an ad there saying she needed someone to make peptides to be used as “antigen for monoclonal antibody production.” Within a couple of days, she had bids from seven or eight companies.

Also see:

http://scienceexchange.com/

Tagged with:  
Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple CEO "effective immediately"

 

From DSC:
I want to post a thank you note to Mr. Steven P. Jobs, whom you most likely have heard has resigned as Apple’s CEO. Some articles are listed below, but I want to say thank you to Steve and to the employees of Apple who worked at Apple while he was CEO:

  • Thank you for working hard to enhance the world and to make positive impacts to our world!
  • Thank you for painstakingly pursuing perfection, usability, and excellence!
  • Thank you for getting back up on the horse again when you came out of a meeting with Steve, Tim and others and you just got reamed for an idea or implementation that wasn’t quite there yet.
  • Thanks go out to all of the families who were missing a dad or mom for long periods of time as they were still at work cranking out the next version of ____ or ____.
  • Thanks for modeling what a vocation looks like — i.e. pursuing your God-given gifts/calling/passions; and from my economics training for modeling that everyone wins when you do what you do best!

Thanks again all!

 

 

Interactive streaming video technology from Stanford - Summer 2011

Stanford researchers designed software that allows a viewer to zoom and pan while streaming online courses. They recently released the code to the public.

The 15 best electron microscope images of 2011 — from dvice.com by Evan Ackerman

 

 

From DSC:
God does amazing work, doesn’t He? Glory to God in the highest! I love how these images show God’s creative and detail-oriented, attributes.

Tagged with:  

Custer and Calvin's new science lab -- featuring Steelcase's MediaScape product

 

Custer helped Calvin College outfit a new science lab;
above picture features one of the  possible implementations of Steelcase’s Media:Scape product

 

Custer and Calvin's new science lab -- featuring Steelcase's MediaScape product

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian