An interesting augmented reality app:
Some other innovative apps:
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From DSC:
Publishers — take a look at what Reuters is doing here; consider offering such a constantly up-to-date stream of content that fills up digital “textbooks.”
Addendum:
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Note Anytime – Write stylish notes, mash up handwritten text or typed text with photos and high resolution graphics; scale from a piece of paper to a whiteboard, then output to your favorite social networks. Take a Note Anytime! By MetaMoJi Corporation
Stunning close-up picture of Saturn and its massive moon Titan — from The Atlantic by Rebecca J. Rosen
Scriptural insert by DSC:
Psalm 19:1-4 – NIV
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-2 (NIV)
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
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Also see:
Excerpt from
Seven Concepts for Effective Teaching — from Astronomy Education Review by Andrew Fraknoi
CONCEPT 2: “COLLABORATION BEATS COMPETITION”
There is no need to make an introductory astronomy unit or program like the Survivor show on TV. In any learning environment, it can be better to encourage students to work together and to support each other. After all, most jobs and even intellectual enterprises today require participants to do effective teamwork. When you approach a class period like an Olympic trial, those who don’t “score high” get discouraged pretty quickly. However, if everyone’s input is solicited and valued, everyone feels part of the team and more open to learning. This is why good teachers find ways to draw in a much wider group of students than those who happen to raise their hands first.
Also:
Concept 1: “Learning is not a spectator sport”
Concept 2: “Collaboration beats competition”
Concept 3. “Everything takes longer than you think”
Concept 4: “Less is more!”
Concept 5: “New knowledge must connect with prior conceptions”
Concept 6: “Give and get immediate feedback”
Concept 7: “Don’t give walnuts to beggars who have no teeth!” [old Portugese proverb]
Aruba MOVE delivers high-quality video simultaneously to 100 iPads in a single classroom at the University of Ottawa — from ArrubaNetworks.com
Multimedia applications included Apple Facetime and AirPlay, Blackboard Mobile™ Learn, Distribution Access Learning, HaiVision and Turning Technologies
Excerpt:
SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 13, 2011 – Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) today announced that it and several application partners delivered the next-generation classroom experience at the University of Ottawa. Validated by the university information technology (IT) department, the classroom experience consisted of six leading multimedia educational applications delivered to 100 iPads, concurrently. Each of the applications was delivered simultaneously to all 100 iPads with the highest quality and without any noticeable jitter, delay or frame loss. 100 percent of the iPads passed the multimedia Service Level Agreement (SLA), as measured by VeriWave WaveInsite, which was also used to objectively verify sustained performance of 1Mbps of multimedia streaming to each iPad.
From DSC:
I think there may be something here for the Smart Classrooms of the future. I can’t help but think of some of our courses in astronomy, for example, and that I think that sometimes we are using the wrong technologies to display images and videos to our students. Without investing an enormous amount of money on very high-end projection systems, we lose too much detail with a variety of images that feature galaxies, constellations, etc. with a projected image.
What about if a student could control where they want to zoom in on an image — and not lose any resolution or brightness? What about if they had such high res images available for viewing directly on their iPads? Sounds very interesting to me.
Also see:
Psalm 19:1-2— BibleGateway.com
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
From DSC:
First of all, I ran across this item:
Which reminded me of this item:
Which reminded me of some great feedback from Randall Pruim, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Calvin College, who wasn’t impressed with the importance or mysteriousness of this particular sequence or the above video clip…but who also provided me with some papers, each with the words “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics” in the title:
Anyway, I can’t say I understand all of this. But I believe God’s fingerprints are on many events, things, and changes that we experience — some of these things we see, but many are invisible.
May your Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter morning be especially meaningful this year for you and yours! Here’s to our Creator, Redeemer, and Friend!
Peace,
Daniel Christian
From biotech visionaries growing new body parts, to in vitro meat, from a global sensor web that monitors the health of the earth’s biosphere, to a massive effort to reverse-engineer the human brain, Surviving the Future takes a disquieting and astonishing look at some of science’s most radical new technologies.
The film also takes a hard look at the ‘new normal’ of the climate crisis, as we balance our desire to be environmentally responsible—to ‘do the right thing’—and still participate in the consumer economy that is, for better or worse, the basis of our society.
Surviving the future is an unsettling glimpse into the human psyche right now, as our culture staggers between a fervent belief in futuristic utopian technologies on the one hand, and dreams of apocalyptic planetary payback on the other.
Thought provoking and visually stunning, Surviving the Future looks at the stark and extreme choices facing our species as we prepare ourselves for the most challenging and consequential period in our history.
From DSC:
These are some of the things I was alluding to in my post here…I’d be more comfortable with many of these things if the state of the heart were in better condition.
Video clip (5.75 MB WMV file)
The above WMV video clip presents a variety of messages/lessons.
Quote:
What you will see in the attached movie clip is the air traffic around the world over a period of 24 hours taken from a satellite.
It is a 24 hour observation of all of the large aircraft flights in the world, condensed down to just over a minute. From space we look like a bee hive of activity. The yellow dots are airplanes in the sky during a 24 hour period.
Stay with the picture or watch it over again and notice the following:
— See the light of the day moving from the east to the west, as the Earth spins on it’s axis.
— See the flow of aircraft traffic leaving the North American continent and traveling at night to arrive in the UK in the morning.
— Then see the flow changing, leaving the UK in the morning and flying to the American continent in daylight.
— See if you realize that it was summer time in the north (by the sun’s foot print over the planet).
— See the daylight pattern moving across the earths surface and that the sun didn’t quite set in the extreme north and it didn’t quite rise in the extreme south.
We are taught about the earth’s tilt and how it causes summer and winter and also the movement of the daylight pattern and until now we have had to just use our imagination to picture what is going on. With this 24 hour observation of aircraft travel on the earth’s surface we get to see the above in actual action…
Remember to watch the day to night….. (day is over in Australia when it starts).
Video: Excuse me while I pinch the sky –– from Microsoft Research News and Highlights
Hrvoje Benko of Microsoft Research Redmond unveils Pinch-the-Sky, a new way to display and interact with data in a 3-D environment.
